Save Fuel By Driving Less!

That's the brilliant advice offered by Toyota on their corporate blog. Seriously, they've got some pretty intense, hard-hitting journalism there. I never would have thought that not driving my car uses less fuel.

In all fairness though, they do make one or two valid points... things that not everyone may think of. In that same blog posting they link to an earlier article about "hypermiling", which is the practice of adjusting your driving habits & style to improve fuel economy. It's a good article that is definitely worth taking a few minutes to read. Lately I've been making a concerted effort to apply certain hypermiling strategies as often as I can. It's not always feasible, but the techniques do make a difference.

The two biggest changes I've coerced myself into making is avoiding heavy use of the gas pedal, and eliminating idling as much as I can. Accelerating modestly isn't nearly as fun, but driving like your grandmother is in the passenger seat saves a ton of gas! (I'll admit, this is still the hardest change to adopt... I just love really driving.) As for avoiding idling, I don't turn my car off for every stop-light, but the lights that I know are particularly long... lights I wait at nearly every day of the week... for those I definitely cut the ignition. The traffic light to leave my office can be well over 3 minutes. Drive-thrus are another trap to be avoided like the plague. That is much too much time spent with the engine running while not making any forward progress. Nine times out of ten, when I go inside there's barely any line-up there... yet I can't say the same about the drive-thru window.

The other tips mentioned in the article linked above all help too.

I've personally seen a difference of as much as over 18% between the mileage of a tank of gas driven how I usually drive, and a tank of gas hypermiled as much as possible. Even a "moderate" amount of hypermiling saves me over 12% per tank. Over a year that's nearly 10 tanks of gas for me.

Ten tanks of gas at well over $70 per fill-up (@ $1.499/L - current price) is over $700 that I would much rather see in my pocket than the oil company's.