Our car (a 2001 Saab 9-5 wagon) gets pretty good gas mileage without thinking about it much. Seems like we average around 26 MPG in our typical around-town driving, and on the highway (without racks or roof-top boxes) about 31 MPG. That’s partly why we chose it… most minivans and SUVs get considerably worse gas mileage. But where was I… when I am driving to and from school, if I reset the car’s little computer readout which shows AVG gas-mileage, so I am then looking at just the current trip, I can get around 40 MPG. Nice. So just now I got to wondering… is there anyway to get a readout like the Priuses apparently have showing real-time MPG to aid in my hypermiling on a regular basis — without having to constantly reset the Saab’s computer (a bit of a pain)? Yes! Here it is! SCANGAUGE II
Oh, and I just am reminding myself to check my tire air-pressure and to screw in those little cheap thingies that show you GREEN when your pressure is ok for a given tire — apparently tire pressure matters quite a bit too. Sure there will be some time to pay off the expense, but my guess is the breakeven point wrt fossil fuel use, emissions, etc (vs $$) is incredible quick even if one is able to dial back ones fuel use by even a small amount like 5%. For us, driving 12k a year at an average of ~26MPG, that’s 462 gallons of gas. Visualize 462 gallons of gas. (Google tells me that 462 gallons is 61.76 ft^3. So that’s a cube of almost 4 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet.) Yikes!
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