Ha! Good find, Ben.
The guest who was interviewed on Science Friday, Jonathon Keats, writes a column for WIRED called
Jargon Watch, which has added:
Ecomodding v. Modifying a car to maximize fuel economy—it's the gearhead complement to hypermiling. With green tweaks like aerodynamic hubcaps and combustion-optimizing thermostats, ecomodders second-guess the engineers behind the Honda Civic and even the Toyota Prius.
But he linked to an edmunds.com article about EM instead of here, so we didn't get any obvious increase in visitors.
Here's the NPR interview audio:
8mb MP3 download
In it, Keats talks about what we do as related to
hypermiling, but with "even more complex sorts of procedures, known sometimes by a newer term, which is Ecomodding..."
"...ecomodding being a form of 'modding' or modifying your vehicle in order to make it optimal in terms of mileage. So that, for example, you might make your hubcaps more aerodynamic, or even more involved than that, people have started installing high temperature engine thermostats."
Of course, he didn't quite get it all right, since strictly speaking ecomodding doesn't necessarily equate with hypermiling. You can hypermile without ecomodding, and you can be an ecomodder without being a hypermiler. Some ecomodders don't give a hoot about their driving habits.
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