because i post so rarely, excuse this if its redundant or already covered - But i was very impressed at some of the videos on YouTube of people with insanely high mpgs - until i asked myself - "hey - wait a minute - maybe they work pretty close to home, took the readings in warm months, possibly with an EV mode switch mod/and or block heater/Plug in mod.. ....but mostly: maybe they live in an area thats flatland for hundreds of miles! Come out to New England or the White Mountains in winter with ridiculous MPG-killing hills and show me your numbers, smartasses! LOL!
My longest South to North billiard table smooth drive is US49 in Eden MS (112 feet) to US61 in Walls MS (197 feet) a rise of 85 feet in about 820,000 feet. (156 miles) This is Mississippi, they are all warm months. East to West is less smooth, US 82 in Greenwood MS (131 feet) to Greenville MS (131 feet) to Lake Village AR (108 ft) then US 65 to Gould AR (164 feet) is 128 miles, but you will have a 122 foot bump at the Greenville bridge over the Mississippi River.
There are city blocks around her with far bigger elevation changes than that. Having lived around oceans/mountain/hills most of my life I enjoy an occasional drive though large expanses of flat farm country.:rockon:
I don't know which videos you have watched and numbers you saw, but . . . Think outside the box. Treat hills not as MPG-killers, but as MPG-magnifiers. Reset the trip meter at the top, take pictures at the bottom thousands of feet lower. That is how the highest ridiculous numbers in the VW TDI Tank Wars contest were achieved (nothing in the rules forbid it), and how I achieved this: There are people who achieve even better results over greater distances, into the triple digits, and on flat land to boot. But they use special methods (e.g. pulse & glide) at lower speeds with either no traffic, or traffic far more cooperative than we North Americans have available. And they don't do it in winter.
everytime i read a thread on hypermiling, somewhere somebody mentions that they go out of their way to commute on sparsely travelled roads so they can maintain average speeds of 25 to 35 mph. they dont seem to care if commuting to work takes 1.5 hours at 25 mph... i drive 14 miles each way to work on heavy traffic roads in the philly area, so plenty of hills stop lights stop signs and tons of traffic. i can manage 47 mpg at normal speeds, in the winter, and my grill is blocked. in no traffic at 2 am i can do the same exact route , less stopping, more gliding slower speeds, and 56 mpg. but if i coasted that much and that slow during rush hour, i would be killed. we all cant drive 25 mph for 50 miles to get 75 mpg!!!! i want to spend my time relaxing, not hypermiling. and i cant arrive to work every morning an hour late and tell my boss " i got 75 mpg!!!", because he would say "you're fired"
7°F here today, snow and ice covered roads. We averaged 46 mpg over a 60 mile trip. The bad roads kept the speed down, which helped make up for the cold weather. Tom
