Adventures in Hypermiling

That's Hyper-Mile-ing. Think of it as a real-life video-game sort of thing. Basically, hypermiling is about trying to get the most miles per gallon of gas that you can. It is popular among some Prius owners, who compete to see who can use the least gas.

I've been hypermiling - and I'll share some of my secrets.

But first, and here's where the "idea" thing comes in, I have an idea that would help hypermilers. What if cars had real-time instantaneous miles-per-gallon (mpg) gauges on the dashboard. That way you could alter your driving habits to achieve the best milage.

You can buy gauges that are just vacuum gauges, which really don't tell you how much gas you are using, just how hard you press on the accelerator. A co-worker tells me his Saab can tell him cumulative mpg, but not instantaneous.

Here's how you could make a simple, but reasonably accurate mpg meter. You know from the speedometer how many miles you are traveling and how fast. You know from a tachometer how fast the engine is going (and all cars with computers have an engine speed sensor, even if you don't have a tach inside). Just connect the two together. You'd have to calibrate your engine to find out how much gas you use for a particular engine speed. And I realize that under heavy load, you are using more gas for the same engine speed. But this would be reazonable accurate for the purposes.

Actually, if the car makers built it into the car, they could probbably figure out gas usage from the fuel injectors - how often they fire and how much fuel they use with each injection.

So how about it auto makers?

p.s. Please see my next post for my hypermiling secrets.