Quote:
Originally Posted by Kodak
That's impressive. What is it about mornings that make for better numbers? Traffic, temperature? Or maybe it's not the time of day at all, but the fact that your return trip is uphill.
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There are a few reasons for that. I think the biggest factor is that, for most of the days in the log, I made a stop on my return trip. We're in the process of moving to a new house. We bought it at the end of May and it needed quite a bit of work. I stopped on the way home pretty much every day, did about 2 hours worth of work, then went the rest of the way home. I think the biggest FE hit came from the fact that everything needs to warm up again. Another part of it is that I have to drive an additional 1 mile into and 1 mile out of the neighborhood (lots of unavoidable stop signs).
That being said, we moved in to the new house 5 days ago (after the data you see in my bar chart), and my morning commutes still tend to be better than the evening ones. I'm still trying to figure out exactly why. There's no significant elevation change--it's pretty much as flat as a board here in most places. It's warmer in the evening, but in general the higher temps help me at least a little (when I compare morning to morning ot evening to evening). I think traffic is the biggest factor--it tends to be heavier on the way home for whatever reason, so I can generally do less P&G.
Here's also another thing that may be making a difference: My commute is mainly highway with a few miles of in-town driving on both ends (unavoidable stop signs, etc.). There's about 1 mile of in-town near my house and about 3-4 miles of in-town driving near my work. I wonder if that may make a difference. I know my efficiency stinks before things warm up. I wonder if the combination of warm up and in-town make things really stink. If the engine is warm (at the end of a trip) maybe in-town only slightly stinks. In the morning I only have about a mile of really stinky efficiency & 3-4 miles of slightly stinky efficiency--in the evening I have 3-4 miles of really stinky efficiency and 1 mile of slightly stinky efficiency. Just a theory, I don't know.