I hate rain!

[99LeCouch]

I'm on my way to a whoppingly bad 28 mpg tank. At least it's carpooling, so it's using less fuel than me and my rider both getting 35 mpg in our own cars.

Anywho, the heavy rains earlier today on I-20 caused my trip FE to be 25 mpg for the segment when it was raining, and 27 mpg for the entire trip. It was amazing seeing how much water was blown up off the road by my car passing over it at 70 mph, and knowing that my gasoline was being used to displace water instead of move the car forward.

I keep telling myself that even though my fuel economy stinks in absolute terms, it's helping the fleet average. We get infinite MPG when we're not using our cars.

[SentraSE-R]

Man, first thing I'd do in the rain is slow down from 70 mph! 70 mph with double the stopping distance is a formula for great bodily harm.

That should net you an easy 5-10 mpg, enough to make up for the 14% loss that normally occurs in the rain.

[99LeCouch]

I wish I could slow down. As it is, I'm already waking up at 5 AM to meet my rider and cover 75 miles to get to our site. We get there with 5-10 minutes before we need to start, or just enough time to check in with the supervisors before the day begins. If it were me we'd leave earlier, but we're both sleepy enough as it is at that hour. Oh well, it's only twice a week, and at least we're still using less fuel than two vehicles. And 70 mph is legal here in SC.

Trust me, I was leaving lots of following distance. And trucks and other cars were still whipping by me.

The one time I hypermiled this route when my rider had to go separately, I managed ~35 mpg. Unfortunately with a rider that's not possible due to hypermiling adding a good bit of time to the trip.

[brucepick]

I hear you LeCouch.
I'm also a car pooler, driving 50 miles each way. I too curtail my hypermiling techniques. But I do what I can to keep the car in lean burn as much as possible on our ride; in my car that's a big part of the game. Covering a lot of distance you need to keep the speed up or you'll be riding solo again.

[99LeCouch]

It's definitely cheaper to go together than solo. My mileage has been dropping because of the colder weather also.

3 more times I have to make this trip. I'm pretty happy.

[99LeCouch]

Hypermiled it today, and got 34 mpg out of my car doing 60-65 instead of the typical 28-29 mpg at 70-75 mph. 5-6 mpg by slowing down is quite a large change, and one I like to see.

[RobertSmalls]

And if you don't go at least the speed limit, you'll end up riding in his car, going 9mph over with cruise control and no ScanGauge.

[99LeCouch]

It's a her, so it's 15-20 over the limit and texting while driving. I much prefer my car doing the driving at a safer speed. Thankfully her car is much smaller so it runs out of steam a lot sooner than my car, where 75 is barely cracking 2000 RPM.

Today she was heading on in that direction, so she drove herself.

[SentraSE-R]

Originally Posted by 99LeCouch

Hypermiled it today, and got 34 mpg out of my car doing 60-65 instead of the typical 28-29 mpg at 70-75 mph. 5-6 mpg by slowing down is quite a large change, and one I like to see.

What did I tell you?

Man, first thing I'd do in the rain is slow down from 70 mph! 70 mph with double the stopping distance is a formula for great bodily harm.

That should net you an easy 5-10 mpg, enough to make up for the 14% loss that normally occurs in the rain.

One more quote for thought:

There is, of course, an obvious drawback to driving slower: it takes more time to get somewhere. If you do the math, you discover that slowing down from 75mph to 65mph means it will take you an additional 7 seconds to go a mile. (Slowing down to 55 will cost another 10 seconds)

What all this means is, over a 10 mile commute, you will waste 25% more gas (which also means you spend 25% more money), and increase your risk of death by 160%, all to save 2 minutes.