I may have found my retirement obsession (in case retirement is still a thing in sixteen years). Imagine, a hobby that combines mental math, white-boarding, and garage-style engineering with sticking it to big oil in an obsessive-compulsive way that means virtually nothing to anyone but yourself. Booyah, it’s the perfect obsession for an increasingly irrelevant old white crank.
And it’s called hypermiling. Wikipedia defines hypermiling this way:
Hypermiling is driving or flying a vehicle with techniques that maximize fuel efficiency. Those who use these techniques are called "hypermilers". In the case of cars, this is an extreme form of energy-efficient driving. Hypermiling can be practiced in any vehicle regardless of fuel consumption.
I stumbled upon this titillating niche of penny-pinching activism while searching for the pros and cons of alcohol-free gasoline. I found so much more beneath the surface than I had bargained for. Did you know the benefit of higher octane levels decreases with your increase in altitude? I had no idea, but this is exactly why states like Utah proliferate the annoying 85 octane gasoline in a sort of bait and switch operation that pisses me off every time I pull off the interstate just to discover that I gotta pay $0.40 more a gallon for the octane level I was expecting.
Speaking of being pissed off in Utah, on my cross country trip back from Texas (driving my band-new-to-me Ford C-Max Energi) I discovered an 88 octane ethanol-free gasoline at a blessed Maverik Market (Adventure’s First Stop!). How have I remained ignorant of this delicious petrol-flavor all this time? I had accepted years ago that the corn lobby was much too powerful for the collective boneheadery of our elected representatives. I mean, it’s all too obvious that corn must be fed to our animals, put in all human foodstuffs, used as packing material, and burned as fuel…even if it’s considerably less efficient? Wait, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Oh, right. The corn lobby.
Anywho, not only does it turn out that ethanol-free gasoline results in higher fuel economy, but there are all sorts of other things one can do to increase gas milage. Personally, I’m shocked automakers don’t know about all this stuff thus applying it to their manufacturing practices, because one can only assume if these large corporations knew how to conserve energy they most certainly would. Right? Of course they would. No one loves Mother Earth more than the automotive industry.
Upon deeper investigation, it turns out that my car’s make and model, while officially rated at 40 mph by the EPA is capable of 65 MPH and upwards! With a few simple tweaks to my driving behavior, I’ve already started achieving 56 MPH around town. What the bleep! I feel like reality is dissolving around me. First, electric cars become a real thing. Then ethanol-free gas. Now out of control fuel efficiency with your standard, run-of-the-mill plug-in hybrid made by none other than Ford!? That statement is worth an interrobang if ever one is.
It’s a brave new world, boys and girls. Regular folk are using their scienticianary skills and mathematical inclination to compute things like ideal engine combustion temperature for maximum gasoline efficiency. (It turns out the C-Max typically runs around 50 degrees cooler than optimum, even in the summer.) Not only are these people calculating and white-boarding things, but they are modding their automobiles in such a manner as to make practical application of their computations. Madness! It’s sheer madness to think that regular people can engineer a more efficient auto than the fine people at Ford. Then again, I suppose Ford did most of the work. It’s up to the retired, crank hobbyists to take us the rest of the way.
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