Took my Subaru Forester for an Eco-Trip...
 

So one thing that's bothered me is that my Forester hasn't been able to break 30MPG. It's an auto, it's got 260,000 miles on it, and it clearly isn't aerodynamic. I had never had the chance to dedicate to much of a trip with her, so figured it was her time.

Removed the windshield wipers, the cross bars on top, used packing tape to do a 2/3 grill block, and aired the tires to 40+psi. Used Ethanol Free 87octane. I decided to do 50mph to give me the best shot at my 30+ goal. I used the cruise control for most of this, but sometimes accelerating some down hill if it was steep enough to warrant.

After arriving and after refueling, I nailed a 33mpg.

Coming from my insight that's starting to creep into the 90's, it's little... but knowing that I've never been able to get this close, I'm happy.

On the return trip, with some of the tank being city and the highway was 75mph (didn't have the time for going slow, sadly), I still nailed a 29mpg!

Oh, the grill block held up and I never saw temps past a rare 205*F (hill climbs, mostly). Otherwise, 185 was average and is the same temp with no grill blocking. Nailed it.

Awesome! It seems like Subarus are harder to hypermile for some reason. 33mpg in a SUV is great!

The AWD really makes it hard to get good numbers. On my wife's outback the best I ever got was like 29 mpg.

Its too bad they don't have a selector to unlock the rear axle. AWD is totally pointless on dry pavement, and normal driving conditions, doing nothing but rob fuel economy.

I wonder if there is a way to do that...

Subaru's are very difficult to hypermile. 33 MPG is probably the best I ever got out of a full tank in my '96 Legacy 2.2L manual. I had briefly owned a 2007 Outback auto 2.5L, but was dismayed that my gentle driving returned 24 MPG. Sold it a month later for $1k more than I paid for it and continued driving the '96, which averaged 28 MPG.

Subaru has got to drop the mechanical AWD and start implementing it in a hybrid electric way. Also, I find it funny that they lower the center of gravity by using a boxer engine, and then jack the whole thing up to increase ground clearance.

I have a friend who has a 2012 Legacy AWD who can get 33 MPG highway without hypermiling. CVT though.

They are appealing to the off-road, faux rally crowd, who don't really care about fuel economy. Which is a shame because the boxer engine has good potential to be efficient. They should have a 3-position AWD like the Suzuki SX-4: 2WD, standard AWD, and AWD Lock, manually selected on the dash. With that in place I think they would see routine 30 mpg highway and 40-45 with a good hypermiler, especially if you start to fix aero.

Highway travel is about steady-state cruise.

As the iron rule is vehicle spacing (hundreds of feet; NEVER any traffic next to one) finding a cruise control set speed is ALWAYS just below most other traffic.

1). No lane changes
2). No acceleration or deceleration past entry & exit, per se
3). Constant use of cruise control is the predictor.

Managing overtaking traffic is the only challenge. Some new habits.

The “sorta economical high speed” will be 64-66/mph dependent on traffic.

The Wall is 60-mph. 59 is the true high mpg speed.

The best compromise is 62-mph. Other traffic will have a safe overtaking margin of speed (that you don’t have to cancel cruise to get them around you faster and avoid traffic building up), as it’s close enough to average to not be an outlier.

The operator is always more of a problem than the vehicle. (At 50-mph I can be above 30-mpg in my four ton pickup).

4). Planned stops (in same direction of travel)
5). Time of day (to avoid the worst traffic)
6). The right blend of factors to avoid steering changes, speed changes and to use cruise control every moment.

At 75-mph how often did you change lanes? How many times did you have to use brakes? How many times did you come within 300’ of the vehicle ahead of you?

These are the marks of the unskilled and high risk driver. MPG is a marker of operator skill, which is first safety.

The irony is that THE AVERAGE SPEED difference between 62 and 75 WON’T be 13-mph. Maybe 7 or 8 given traffic volume. And on a trip of under 300-miles, that’s an irrelevance. (It’s not ever justified).

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I can also be at 32-33/mpg in the pickup in my sig at 50-mph with [5] 200-lb passengers plus another 1,100-lbs or more in the bed. Which puts me near GVWR.

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