Gas-saving tips - fact or fiction?

[aleonard]

Cool little article and a test on your gas saving know how............

Gas prices got you down?
At roughly $4 a gallon, many people are desperately trying to squeeze more miles out of each drop. The best ways are usually the most obvious: reduce your load, resist the urge to drive aggressively, and cut the number of trips you make, for starters. However, there are some unusual tips that might surprise you.
Take our short quiz, and find out which tips are true energy savers and which are merely gas station myths.
— Stephanie Peters, Boston.com Correspondent

(REUTERS/Mike Blake)



http://www.boston.com/business/personalfinance/gallery/fueleconomymyths/

[sowalgayboi]

There was an email floating around a couple of months ago that snopes had deemed as unverifiable. A lot of it seems kinda goofy. Some of it's just common sense.

[Here4Good]

I have one of those "Fuel Economy" displays on my car, so yesterday when I drove back to PW from Sandestin, I decided to reset it as I started out and monitor the MPG as I was driving. (This car usually gets around 25 MPG in mixed driving around here.)

It was sort of like biofeedback; I could see the MPG climbing, or at least not dropping, when I had the cruise control engaged and was not accelerating or stopping. I found myself "hypermiling" without meaning to - I'd roll slowly to a stop light, savoring the 30+ on the gauge, and wince when I had to accelerate from a stop, anticipating the moment when I could stop accelerating and the little bar would climb back to 30.

The best stage for MPG on the drive was the 45 MPH zone in Town of Santa Rosa. I watched the cumulative MPG go to almost 35, and the realtime MPG was pegged.

Overall, paying close attention to what I was doing, I got almost 29MPG on that drive. Having the MPG meter up on the display all of the time just made me pay attention.