[gdcwatt]

The effects of hypermiliing are obvious in and around Toronto: it takes longer to get anywhere, and I use MORE fuel. HYPERMILING IS PENALIZING PEOPLE WITH FUEL EFFICIENT CARS. Sorry, but I made a choice to not buy an SUV, or a minivan, so I'd appreciate it if those here who did would move over and let the rest of us go! Other hypermiler's selfish driving habbits, for example, mean I spend more time getting into a higher gear, I often have to downshift from 6th to 4th gear when others slow going up a hill... Recognize, though, that I'm not really complaining, I'm just explaining.

Frankly, when I drove my semi-race prepped Civic Si (sold long ago) I NEVER worried when I got 7.0L/100km during a "bad week"; a good week was 6.2L. In hindsight I figure the modifications compensated for all the tens-of-thousands of miles I drove over 130, 140, 150kph, and the way I drive...6,500-7,200rpm shifts, but minimal braking for corners and an ability to navigate around moving chicanes in a small car = lots of fun just getting there.

I'm disappointed that since my last post not much of a techical nature has been added. I purposefully left off things like "...consider disconnecting your car's powersteering belt, if you have a light car and are strong enough..." to see "who else out there is reading this".

Having put 200,000km on a smaller 4wd vehicle I am always amazed that people so often berate those with 4x4's while completely overlooking things like their ability to pull into traffic from a sidestreet - "more" safely - on a wet or snowy road. The alternative is often massive understeer which millions of people compensate for with longer wait times, looking for a "safe gap". Sounds like there's a hypermiling thread here, but it's probably too complex for many to grasp, unfortunately. Better educated drivers, from a practical and techical point of view, would be a start, and at least ecomodder.com is getting some people who used to not think about "how" their car works to now do so. I can appreciate that bimmerguy's frustration with this website, but I want to make a contribution although I often look at things coming from the other direction.

Reading some older replies here, I'd like to make some more comments: the size of wheels on race cars in certain classes is limited by the rules, not necessarily the engineers or drivers; during the blackout I ran a series of appliances in my house using an inverter connected to a 3.0L Dodge Caravan for 4 hours while the gas guage never seemed to move from "full" meaning that idle time wasn't so fuelish.

I'm off, now, to check the refurbishment of the heavy "steelies" with my winter tires. I sanded the rust off yesterday - and no, that wasn't to make them lighter... - prior to repainting. The cost of a lighter-weight set of alloy rims in Canada has typically been double that for US customers. Higher taxes, the low dollar, shipping costs, significant duties and lots of red tape for the individual might lead some to think governments wanted us to use more fuel; if Canadians don't use more energy per capita than any other nation on earth then we're number 2. Various Cdn governments have added taxes to our energy costs, and as the price or volume of energy consumption - or both - increases, so does tax revenue. I accept that, but the price of fuel was, in the past, never part of my preference for smaller, lighter, more manouverable cars, although I think it's great that other people are paying for govt programs for me that way.