Monday, August 29, 2011

The results are in...

Summer Road Trippin' in August

2,539.8 miles
42.785 gallons of 87 octane gas
59.4 mpg

$152.41 was spent on all this travel, which included leaving Vermont, passing through Boston and Rhode Island, then NYC for an evening, DC for a weekend, continuing through Virginia down through Knoxville to Nashville, where I hung out for a week, and then the 1100 mile trek back by way of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

I will say that the number of gallons seems off to me by about 0.7 gallons, since I had what was likely a partial fill-up today due to the Prius bladder. Even with that extra 0.7 gallons added in, I'd be at 58.4 actual mpg for the entire, mountainous, hilly, highway trip. Maybe next time I'll get 60...

Some of the more memorable pics, using mostly the Prius display, so numbers below are inflated by an mpg or so:

To DC from New York, 66.8 mpg over 240 miles


Frustrating start to the day in Pennsylvania driving home. Mountains, hills, decrepit panel pavement, winds - my least favorite place to drive. During the entire trip there were plenty of mountains (or at least huge hills) to navigate, taking down entire tanks of gas by several mpgs over just a fraction of the total driving time. The worst was when I arrived at the pump with 57.0 mpg on the display!


After the last fill-up during the trip, I headed to a rest stop in New Jersey right across from NYC (I felt the earthquake!). I was so tired of driving, but even more tired of getting poor mileage through Pennsylvania, so after a little fast food fill-up for myself, I headed home for the final 190 miles or so, completely focused on hypermiling the rest of the way. I was mostly between 55 and 60 mph, sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down, depending on traffic. The tank started progressing upwards.



A little more...


And home.




You read that correctly...67.0 mpg for the last 190 miles or so from NYC. A couple things about that. While I did "cheat" and do the last 35 miles on roads that I knew (read: slower, hypermiling), some of those were still 50 mph roads. Secondly, when getting off the highway onto said slower roads, I was already over 65 mpg on the Scangauge. And finally, the Scangauge underestimates quite a bit. We could conservatively say it's really 68-69 mpg for the last 190 miles, most of that highway travel. Thrilled :-)

While it was awesome to see friends and family (especially old friends!), I'll be happy to avoid those long, all-day drives. Also can't wait to get back to getting some good mileage, and the challenge of finding fuel efficient routes from my new place of residence this coming year!

Saturday, August 13, 2011

NYC to DC on the highway, 66.8 mpg

Well, I'm sort of on vacation and had been busy with work...but sometime later I'll have to do an updated highway driving post. Tons of other people have gotten it before me (namely Hobbit), but finally finding it on your own and being able to implement is pretty cool.

66.8 mpg (so about 66 in real life) over 240 miles from NYC to DC