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I agree with what the others have posted here, the answer "it depends" is true given how and why any of these things work. For me the one that stands out as true regardless city or highway, and is easy low hanging fruit to get is tire pressure. Tire Pressure works regardless of the driving style, city or highway... Tire pressure is always the first mod I make while I am trying to figure out the best driving style for the routes or commutes. Ranking however based on efficiency I don't think could be done as every commute, vehicle, and driver are different and how things respond are different.
One thing is for certain. The less driving we can do the less fuel we are going to burn. Try to combine trips, wait until you have a few things that need to be done where you need to use a car/truck etc. Try to to take care of multiple things in one trip if you can to reduce the number of times you have to hop in your vehicle. The worst mileage is when the car starts and has not come up to operational temps. Many of our hops in a car to run an errand the car hasn't even come up to full operating temp. So extending a trip into multiple stops can possibly extend the run times so that your getting the best performance from your fuel burned and you still reduce the number of runs you made.
I have been driving conservatively for a very long time, and I can say just when I think I have hit a plateau in how efficient I can be I learn or discover something new that seems to help me break through to a better mpg number. Recently I have been paying more attention to when I am able to coast and finding I can go a lot longer coasting and in places I didn't expect that coasting would work. I am a rookie compared to the guys here that go all out for the last drop of fuel... It sounds like a Maxwell house commercial, good to the last drop... :-)
The big thing to take away from all of it is that the biggest gain will be in you, and your adaption. These mods to our vehicles help, but the biggest factor is going to be you.
Someone else mentioned having the most fuel efficient car possible. I agree that certainly helps a great deal. I have noticed though even if you own the most fuel efficient car possible it is still up to the driver to maximize what that car can do. If I drive my Insight poorly then I can easily be down in the 40 mpg range in town. If however I adapt my style to the drive and learn then even my around town fuel economy jumps to the upper 50's and lower 60's. So I certainly agree on buying the most efficient vehicle possible is a great move if you can do it, and then get back to adjusting the loose nut between the seat and the controls! LOL
The lines sort of blur between what is the maximum we can get out of a given vehicle. Is it the vehicle limitation? Or our own limitation?
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