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My girlfriend has a 2010 focus... nice little cars. Her's is an automatic. It has a MPG display on the dash which is really cool.
Mind you, my girlfriend knows nothing about cars nor how to improve fuel economy.
One day we had a little competition. Going to the movies, i bet her an icecream sundae that i could drive there and get better mpg on the way there than she would on the back. I reset the meter right before i took off from the house and using my techniques (except EOC, she doesn't like when i do that) i was able to achieve 44mpg displayed. Along the way i explained to her how to drive more efficiently. Try not to brake, accelerate easy and try to get just over 40mph (where the torque converter locks up), don't go over 55mph, avoid stopping, avoid braking.
When she got behind the wheel, it was absolutely amazing how her driving changed once she saw how the MPG meter changed in different situations. She first realized that the mpg reading would drastically decrease if she had to stop. She would say "no no no turn green turn green". Then if there was a stop sign or red light ahead she would let off the throttle way early (and i mean, the car would have come to a stop before the sign if we continued coasting) and try to coast to it because the MPG reading would increase while coasting. Then she started driving very slowly and i encouraged her to speed up to just over 40mph. She did and noticed that the mpg's were slowly increasing.
She was able to achieve 38mpg on the way home. Her previous average was 35mpg.
So she was able to achieve a 10% improvement just by watching the gauge and learning how different driving styles influence it!
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