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Adventures in Hypermiling
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"Do I have to?" I asked.
Johnson does, all the time. Fed up with high gasoline prices, he decided to become a hypermiler in September. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, he should be able to drive 30 miles per gallon in the city and highway combined in his Aveo. According to FuelEconomy.gov, it should cost him about $3.74 to drive 25 miles. With techniques he has learned on CleanMPG.com, he has routinely been able to eke out 10 more miles per gallon, a savings of about 4 cents a mile, by his calculations.
Johnson knows all this because he bought himself a contraption called a ScanGauge. It's an electronic box that plugs into a port connected to your car's computer and tells you how fast you're going, how many miles per gallon you're getting and much more. Johnson climbed into my car and plugged in the device somewhere underneath the steering wheel. Then he pulled it over to the passenger side as I settled into the driver's seat.
"We'll pull it over my way because we don't want you to see what you're doing," he said.
"Okay, that's fine. I usually don't know what I'm doing," I said.
Upon hearing this, Johnson turned around and asked his wife, sitting in my tiny back seat and munching on cereal bars, to buckle her seat belt.
Johnson planned a trip that would take us through the campus; east on Route 193; south on Route 1; back into the campus; around a rotary; through several stops, crosswalks and lights; across Route 193; then back into campus and into a student parking lot.
"How fast should I go?" I asked.
"How fast do you normally go?" he asked.
"I never really pay much attention," I said.
"You just drive your normal way," he said.
It turns out that my normal way is slow. I will admit it. I am not a good driver. And that makes me nervous, especially when I have other people in the car with me. When it comes to driving, and probably nothing else, I'm simply too scared to go fast.
