Thanks Kingziptie. I found your post interesting. I would have to disagree with you, in a more perfect world city driving could be more energy efficient then highway driving. If you think about it a bit you would have to agree that most vehicles get their best fuel mileage at a steady speed of 35 to 45 mph. Even my big truck (Ford F 150 XLT) gets well over 30 mpg at these steady state speeds. My truck doesn't get into 6th gear until it is going over 40 mph.
The problem in the city is as you pointed out having to stop, start, and idle at lights. If cities we're redesigned to make non stop driving at these speeds possible then we could literally reverse the standard metric that normally says that hwy is the highest mileage. Today I was seeing 32 mpg at 40 mph, 27 mpg at 55 mph, 24 mpg at 65 mph and 21 mpg at 75 mph. These were steady state numbers so you can see how non stop city driving would be my best mpg return.
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