Friday, September 25, 2009

Rush hour pleasures

Just got back from a run to the airport. The first part of my trip is on surface roads with a 45 mph speed limit. But the majority of the trip is highway and when I was about halfway to the airport the mileage readout said 48 MPG.

Then I saw the brake lights ahead. A long line of traffic snaked into the distance, as far as I could see. Funny thing is, it didn't bother me as much as usual. Not that I love bumper to bumper traffic all of a sudden, it's just that now I know that it will probably give me an opportunity to up my MPG for this trip.

As soon as I braked the Fusion switched over to electric. Yeah, I'm not burning gas in this baby waiting for this to clear up!
We crept along, stop and go, the mileage bumped up 50, 51, 52, finally the traffic cleared up about 2 miles down and I had reached 55.6 MPG.

Traffic is never fun. But now you can save money when you hit a bit of it. Kinda crazy!

2 comments:

  1. I've had my FFH a few months. Just went over 3,000 miles. I do some highway driving but mostly a 10-mile commute at less than 50 mph. I live in TX, and it has been hot, so I have used AC all summer. I was only getting 36 mpg and that was trying to use whatever hypermiling techniques I know. Lately, it has been cooler and maybe because the engine is breaking in, but I'm up to 38. I still feel lilke I am missing something. Individual trips register in the 40s and occasionally the 50s. Any thoughts?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Donna,
    One thing that becomes apparent from some of the other entries, is that FFH drivers are getting surprisingly different results. Which I didn't expect. What is your 10 miles commute like, is it mostly flat, any stop and go, traffic lights? What kinds of hypermiling techniques are you using?
    I'm in a fairly hilly area which, and I don't know this for sure, may be better for achieving higher mileage figures. My results are almost always in the 50's, occasionally in the 40's if the battery was low and it came on to charge or something. I really wish we had some Ford engineers reading this blog to weigh in and give us some help on questions like yours!
    Richard

    ReplyDelete