Coasting down
Don’t stop unless you have to and slow down, well, slowly.
A good hypermiller rarely uses their brakes. A dead hypermiller never uses their brakes but that is a different story.
Keep your eyes open and read the road conditions – if you are on the motorway and observe a sea of red lights ahead its pretty obvious that you are going to have to slow down or maybe stop.
If in cruise control mode drop out of cruise control, if not then back off the accelerator (either fully or gradually depending on the road conditions). You will start to coast to a halt. Remember that the gradient you are on will massively effect this retardation of speed – if you are going up hill you will slow down very quickly so be careful not to do this too quickly as you will end up have to get back on the throttle to drive up to the slow down which is a bit silly.
Modern cars are designed to use almost no fuel at all when in coast down mode. They effectly cut the fuel to the engine. So even though the rev counter may be showing 1500 rpm that does not mean it is using fuel – remember rpm stands for “revolutions per minute” it is not a direct measure of fuel used. Your foot is off the throttle pedal so the throttle is effectively closed.
Do not, not ever, put the car into neutral when doing this. You have less control of the vehicle making it unsafe and its even poor hypermilling as the car will then drop into idle mode and will actually being using more fuel than the correct and safer method. Also if you have an automatic this will lead directly to you having to spend thousands on a new gearbox. Don’t do it.
Oh and don’t ever turn the engine off – just the chance of engaging the steering lock should be enough to put you off. Its probably illegal as well and restaring the engine manually, at speed, is going to ruin it eventually, as well as using much more fuel than just coasting down nicely.
As an added benefit this technique will lead to you stopping less often as you get to the obstruction a little later by which time, if you are lucky, the obstruction wil have cleared so you can hit resume on cruise or use the gentle acceleration technique to hypermill back up to optimum efficient speed so avoiding a stop/start and wasting fuel.
Hypermilling.co.uk is simply a small website about hypermilling – hypermilling techniques wll be listed and explained, news about hypermilling listed and links off to useful hypermilling resources.
Remember – being safe is more important than miles per gallon and even a small bump will totally negate any savings made by hypermilling.
You should always make sure your car is totally road legal and your car insurance is up to date, if you have any doubt contact your car insurance company.