Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Charlie
Yet that's the world all nonprofessional drivers have to deal with: driving for the rest of us isn't our full time job, it's what we have to do to get to our jobs. I know how to get from home to work with minimum gas burned, but I don't start work at 4:00 am and other realities keep me from getting there that early and waiting. If our lives let us pick days, times and routes like "serious" drivers, most of us wouldn't be driving, period. Commuters don't get to pick start or end times in much of a meaningful way, but hypermilers apply the same attention to their part time job of commuting that they do to their full time jobs. They develop and apply those monkey skills into habits and reflexes that can easily reproduce efficiency deep inside the very traffic that you make it a requirement to avoid. Because we don't get to avoid it.
My commute was the same from 2003 to early 2018, and when I came here in 2011 my first tank testing these monkey skills brought me from a 20-22 mpg "normal" up to 28. Over more than 41,000 logged miles miles, those monkey skills took an EPA rated 19 mpg car to an average of 29.7 mpg- in conditions that your entire plan is built to avoid.
As to letting the drivetrain drive, in the rough conditions you can avoid but we can't, a drivetrain can't do the driving because it can't see conditions and predict needs. Building skills that can be applied anywhere isn't a stunt, it's a necessity.
|
You’ve entirely missed the point. Skill at the wheel is irrelevant. It’s in executing a plan that can be replicated over & over. The only way to chart what works is against an unchanging backdrop.
Thus, constant use of cruise control. Set travel speed.
Thus, planned breaks decided the night before.
Thus, a set destination.
No variance.
What time one departs, etc, is part of that plan. EARLIEST departure enables higher MPG as traffic, etc, is less. LATER departure is a penalty.
What’s to overcome from the sluggish habits of being a commuter is situational awareness. Use of mirrors. Learning how to stay away from other traffic. For our purposes here, minimizing any associated FE penalty for deceleration and eventual re-acceleration (use terrain; study method computer follows: my big truck is best to allow all re-accel by re-engaging cruise; my pickup isn’t).
This is what all truck drivers are taught: form and follow a plan. The single difference here is in maintaining those 1/10’s MPG.
If there is something striking about today’s traffuccversys forty years ago, it’s t the prevalence of pack behavior. Which is to be avoided at all costs. Risk, and mpg.
.