well, there's a rude but true saying back in my country:
for foxy d..k, there's ars with a labyrinth,
for ars with labyrinth,
there's d..k with corkscrew.

basically, no matter how one will try avoiding looking at display, they went back to "on the windshield" displays now. NO ESCAPE!!

i said - went back, as our old faithful Volga GAZ21 had interesting speedometer arrangement - on top of the dashboard, a hemisphere, with rear cup transparent, made out of some light blue plastic. basically, it was all right in driver line of sight. very much so like BMW has it now on the windshield.

 

Terrain has a lot to do with this also. I have found it very difficult to get past about 37 mpg in my NAH. My highest was 39 mpg. I have now made it a PHEV and routinely get >42 mpg and max has been 46.5 mpg, but it's all route dependent and these are tank averages not trip averages. If we start talking about those, then it's more difficult to track, but not impossible. For individual trips of more than 20 miles (my commute), best mileage was 73 mpg.
Guy that's tailgating the big rig is nuts... You don't have to be that close... I've found that 2 - 3 seconds of separation is more than sufficient to make a noticible difference in mileage, especially with the CVT transmissions. Over a 40 mile commute, can make about a 3 - 4 mpg difference.
I make it a game or challenge... But I have other things to worry about when doing this... NAH driven too much in city, with not enough time for engine to warm up has carbon build up. I get mine onto the freeway under heavy accelleration to kick the carbon out...

 

"Mileage obsession...is it worth it?" Only to drivers that are obsessed with getting the highest mileage and cant live with themselves if they don't.

Haroldo, your $$$$ calculations are spot on. I was driving a 10mpg Ford conversion van when I bought my first hybrid in '06. I calculated before I purchased the vehicle that even if gas was totally free for all the driving I did, my huge gas guzzling van was cheaper to own/operate (total cost of ownership) than the hybrid. I am quite happy with my current hybrid vehicle but the fuel economy is irrelevant. It is just a great vehicle.


"I've seen people fret over whether or not to use AC" My all time favorite post on this site that still brings a smile to my face even now was a driver commenting on how he kept a bowl of water and a washcloth in his car and dabbed himself with it to keep himself cool rather than turn the a/c on.

Happy motoring!

(I suppose if/when gas hits $6, $7 per gallon or higher, we hybrid owners will be a bit happier than non-hybrid owners.)

 

OMG Elliot please link me to that post.

I ALWAYS use the air....I love 'auto' climate controls.

The fact that AC is electric spurs me to use it more. When I drive a normal 4-cylinder with the A/C on it feels like a DOG. The camry never feels like a dog. To me it feels like a turbo on the top end especially on the highway!

 

jetttstream, I did a quick search but could not find the thread. It is buried deep somewhere in the HCHII (Honda) threads. I did find a few of my old posts in those threads from years ago, LOL!!!

Unlike my HCHII where the a/c consistently dropped the FE easily 10mpg or more, I find that the a/c does not affect overall FE with the TCH all that much, and sometimes not at all.

 

You obviously don't know any old people in Florida. No one (over the age of 70) uses the AC in their home down there (as parodied in a Seinfeld episode)!

 

Well if you only look at one thing and not the entire picture you may be right. If you only look out for number one and not for your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren you maybe on to something.

 

huh?

 

Is the A/C in the HCHII electric or what? My Altima and probably your Camry use electric motors to run the A/C...

"I was driving a 10mpg Ford conversion van when I bought my first hybrid in '06. I calculated before I purchased the vehicle that even if gas was totally free for all the driving I did, my huge gas guzzling van was cheaper to own/operate"

And that's part of the problem... Our gasoline here is artificially kept low. If we were paying what they pay in Europe or probably Japan... Attitudes would definitely change...

 

I've used trucks for two reasons in the past. The first is simply taking advantage of following a slower moving vehicle.
The second is on an open freeway driving against a strong head wind. I'll follow 100-200 feet behind and the turbulent wash, which is trailing behind the truck. That turbulence is enough to deflect much of the headwind.

The act of tailgating a truck, only a short distance from its rear is not only dangerous but is theft in my view. They are riding within the suction caused by it and some of the energy is transfered from the tailgating vehicle to the truck. That's the main reason the trucks will try to shake them off.

It wasn't a bowl of water but a Coleman 6-pack size cooler half filled with ice water. Remember the topic of this thread is obsessing over MPG and whether this obsession is it worth it.

An average person who moderately does things which they think might increase their MPG, and maybe tries it once in a while isn't obsessing over it. A person who drives a bit slower in the right lane, easy on the acceleration isn't obsessive. The moderately conservative driver will see an increase proportional to their efforts.

A person who forfeits AC for ice water, a person who shuts off their engine to coast or does a pulse and glide techique is obsessive and can't be ranked into the same category as an untrained moderate conservative driver who gets negligible results.

I've scaled back to moderate status years ago, but I can tell you why I was obsessive in the past.
My previous vehicle was a 1994 Dodge which got 16MPG and I never dreamed of a vehicle which got over 48MPG, which my HCH did at the start. Soon I was over 50 and later over 60MPG and I had a keen desire to find its highest possible efficiency. I worked off-hours with a 50 mile commute one way which was a perfect situation for this. I drove into the city at 6pm as everyone was heading out, and went home at 2-3am while the roads were empty.

It wan't so much for the savings but simply to find out how high I could possibly get it. I guess it's the same thing which drove Lindburgh in his airplane or a track runner to get there first.... only on a personal scale.

What did I accomplish?
Far as I know, I have the highest recorded efficiency in an 04 HCH CVT anywhere (Literally anywhere) and an extremely high calculated savings compared to a similar non-hybrid Civic EX.

Green hybrid website began a month or two before I joined and was primarily hypermilers. The grand - daddy prize winner I believe would be exel... you can still do a search on his ID here. These are some of his efficiency records:

2005 PZEV Accord EX-L w/ NAVI ... 48.3MPG
2003 Ford Ranger XLT Pickup .... 38.6MPG
2003 Acura MDX ...28MPG
2000 Honda Insight ....92.8MPG

Those are low-ball numbers compared to what he did after he left GH and started his own hypermiling website at cleanmpg. Given those numbers you can planily see there's a difference between being obsessive and being moderate and you can't mix the two as if they are the same. Certainly not the results of a trained hypermiler vs a moderate.

Me? I always operated under the rule not to cause any problems on the road for other drivers. Unfortunately not all hypermilers had the same attitude.

Our other vehicle is a 2001 Grand Caravan which efficiency varies between 19 and 23MPG, the difference between the two figures is driving without any efficiency at all vs. moderate attempts. Is 4 MPG really worth a moderate attempt? Probably not. But that's not being obsessive either.