67.1 MPG!

My son has a summer job and I drive him to work each day, a round trip of about 14 miles. There are two choices on the route basically. We can take the direct route along the highway, or a back route through a town. Takes about 4 minutes more to take the back route. But it can make a huge difference in the MPG that you get in the FusionH. Here's why:

Driving the highway the speed is roughly 55 mph. Recall that the FusionH will run in electric up to about 47 mph. Above that the gas engine runs continuously. So by running the highway route, you are running on gas the whole way. The roundtrip figures I've been getting are around 45 MPG.

OK, so lately I've been experimenting with the back way. This is typical suburban type driving, a few stop lights, top speed about 40 mph. Last night I took this route and came back with 67.1 MPG(!) That's my top MPG for this run, usually I'm squeaking in at around 61 or so. I'm refining my hypermiling technique a bit, which I will describe shortly in upcoming posts.