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I'll be either driving or getting a ride from you to these 2 events coming up...either one is fine.
1. Ed Lentz is hosting a get together with Don Barber at his home on the evening of August 8th. Don Barber is a progressive candidate for State Senator from Tompkins County. He's been Town Supervisor for Caroline for several years, his record is good.
2. Harmony Hill plans an Herb Day from 12 noon to 6pm, details on "Events".
Jennie Williams (607)432-2038

• Cooperstown to Boston: MONTHLY, early in the SECOND or THIRD WEEK of each month, leave very early one day, return the next afternoon. Some flexibility on which days. Sarah MacArthur 547-6275 or smacarth@akamai.com

• DELHI To NYC/Bklyn almost EVERY WEEK: Leave DELHI TUESDAY 7:00 AM
  

  LEAVE Bklyn THURSDAY 1:30 pm. I go to Downtown Bklyn but could be persuaded to stop on West side of NYC or pickup there. Nancy Fales, 607-746-2815 or nfalesg@aol.com

• ONEONTA TO NYC ROUND TRIP EVERY OTHER WEEK: Usually every other THURSDAY at 5:00AM leave Oneonta, drive via Walton, Roscoe to Middletown NY. From there, I park at the New Jersey Transit train station and take the train into NYC for around $12. I take the train back at night and arrive sometime between 7:00 and 9:00PM in Middletown. Then I drive back to Oneonta, arriving sometime before midnight. For more information contact Daniel Blacklock @607 433-4729 or abcde@stny.rr.com.

• Oneonta to Cooperstown Mondays-Thursdays leave mornings back late afternoon- times vary. Erik: erikmiller3 *at* Yahoo.Com

• Oneonta to Syracuse— Most weekdays, usually somewhat flexible. Departing in the 7-9 am range, returning (leaving Syracuse) in the 5-7 pm range. Schedule may change from week to week. Prefer to split whose vehicle we take if possible. David, 432-1087.

ICS started taking applications for membership on Earth Day, and between then and June 25th we had about 60 members already. On June 25th, we officially launched service starting with 6 Nissan Versas and knowing a PICKUP TRUCK truck was coming soon also. Now, we have 120 members, about half of which are Cornell students/faculty/staff. Some of our cars are already being used an average of 4 hours per day, and usage is ramping up so fast that we are already planning a second round of cars to be added to the fleet.

How I got started:
At one point I was frustrated with high gas prices, but didn’t want to spend money on a new car. I started testing out many methods for achieving higher gas mileage instead, and found out which ones work well, and which ones benefit the most. I decided to offer my knowledge to others to help spread the information so that we can all save money and learn how to use less gasoline. You may oppose our foreign wars to get oil but not taken any action about it before, and using less gas is an easy and opportune way to rely less on foreign oil.

My story:
I’ve been driving a Subaru Legacy Wagon for the last three years, which was handed down to me. At that point, I didn’t care about gas mileage and drove 10-15MPH over the speed limit most of the time. It took two years of that before I got my first speeding ticket at which point I decided another speeding ticket would cost me thousands in extra insurance fees and started driving the speed limit. Back then, I had calculated my gas mileage on a few long trips and found I got 23 miles per gallon average on the highway trips. For reference, this car is rated for 23 miles per gallon for combined city and highway driving. I then began coasting through some areas where it was easy to, and that alone got me to 29 miles per gallon on one trip when I calculated it. After reading about “Hypermiling” online, I found out that some people were able to consistently average double their original gas mileage. I didn’t believe it and decided I had to try it myself. Soon after that I averaged 35 miles per gallon on the same trip as the 23 and 29 which is more than a 50% increase. My best trip to date was 30 miles long and I got 40 miles per gallon without using highways, almost 75% better than the car is rated for.

About this guide:
I invite you to read this guide and use the techniques that I have proven to work. From the beginning, I have been using a fuel economy gauge to tell what works and what doesn’t and everything posted here are ones that have worked and are recommendable. There is a lot of information in this guide, and I would recommend only reading one point at a time, trying it out a few times, and then progressing to the next one. I understand that most people will want to read a lot of it at once and then try everything simultaneously, but I believe the most benefit will come from trying one at a time and seeing which works well for you and your car. I broke it into three sections: Things to do before you drive, Basic Techniques, and Advanced Techniques. Try to complete testing out one section before going to the second.

BEFORE YOU DRIVE
Before evening grabbing your keys, here’s a few things to try that will help you save gas and money.

1. Don’t Drive! The first step of saving gas and saving money is to simply NOT drive! Now, this isn’t always the easiest transition for someone, but it’s guaranteed to work. Just some things to keep in mind: biking increases lung capacity, improves health, gives you time to enjoy the scenery, and uses no gas. Cars (at least the way we know them) aren’t going to be around forever, and we will all eventually be driving less, so why not get used to it now?

For practical things you can do now to limit driving, try combining trips. I generally buy all my food for the week on a Saturday, so there’s only one trip into town for that. If you can set aside time to do all the errands in one trip, you can save quite a bit of gas and time overall.

2. Use a fuel efficient car. If you drive a van, SUV, crossover or truck consider how often you use the features of that vehicle. Most people would do fine with a small car for 95% of their driving. It is often cheaper to own a small car, and rent a larger one for the few times you need all that extra space. Obviously some larger vehicles can be justified, but generally Americans drive cars for commuting and don’t need much more than that. If you live in a household with several cars, consider owning one small efficient vehicle for commuting, and one larger one for when you go on trips or need to drive more people around. Although many people will think they each need a larger car, it’s just not true. If status was taken out of what we drive, the roads would be full of safer and smaller cars. You can read more about the safety of car sizes in the appendix of this guide.

3. Find the best route. Usually the shortest distance is the best route, but it all depends. For short trips through the city, try to find the roads that require the fewest stops. On short trips, each time you stop energy is wasted by braking, so finding a route slightly around the city might be longer but uses less gas and may even be faster. For longer trips, take the county and state routes since the speed limit is lower, and they are often more direct. There are many more of these roads than highways, which offers more direct routes. For example, I drive between home and college about 5 times a year, and the highway route is 258 miles while the state routes are 207 miles. Just by distance, that’s 20% savings, and with better speeds and more opportunities for high gas mileage driving also. From route planning and driving efficiently, I can do this route with LESS THAN HALF the gas now.

A great way to find the shortest and most direct route is using Google Maps http://maps.google.com. A new feature is now available that allows the route to be “dragged.” If you typed in your destination and the route looks longer than needed, click and drag the route to fit more to a straight line. You can drag it all over and it will instantly calculate the distance – let go when you find the shortest route, and it reloads the web page with the driving directions for the route.

Especially with routes you drive often, taking the time to figure out the best route now will save you gas, time, and money every time you drive that route in the future.

4. Inflate your tires. Most tires are under inflated. Can you remember the last time you checked the pressure? If not, it’s time to find a gas station with a free air pump with a gauge and fill them. I recommend inflating tires to the maximum recommended pressure printed on the tire walls. The benefits of this are less wear from the bowing-in shape of under inflated tires, and less rolling resistance (all friction hurts gas mileage). Tires can actually hold much more pressure than their listed maximum, which is more of a guideline for comfort. Older cars or ones with poor suspensions might feel better with a low pressure, but all cars today are good enough that low pressures are no longer needed. Properly inflated tires will also increase handling, which helps for safety.

5. Get rid of extra weight. A car already weighs thousands of pounds, and there is no need to add hundreds more in extra unnecessary weight. Are there things in your car that have been there more than a week? Take a few minutes each week to take everything out of the car, then put back only what you need. This will also keep your car cleaner and less cluttered. Even 100 pounds of extra weight is around 5% of the total weight of the car, and can reduce the gas mileage by a few percent. Of course safety equipment, a spare tire, a tire iron, and a first aid kit should stay in the car.

6. Improve the aerodynamics. Many people have roof boxes, roof racks, bags, bike racks, or sports equipment like kayaks strapped to the roof of their car which gets used occasionally. If you have any of those and don’t use them regularly, keep them in the trunk instead of on the car. Even just a roof rack can reduce the aerodynamics enough to lower gas mileage by several percent. Add a bike to that, and expect 20-30% loss in gas mileage.

There are many aftermarket and homemade modifications that improve aerodynamics, and I discuss a few of these in the Appendix B (non-existent yet, still working on putting this together). Driving techniques should always be maximized before attempting to modify a car, so that you can tell if and which ways are helping.

7. Limit power use. A car has an alternator which converts some energy from the engine into electrical energy to help charge the battery, run the lights, the air conditioning compressor, the radio, and anything else powered in a car. If you are using more electrical energy, than the alternator is using more of the engines power for electronics instead of driving. The air conditioning is the biggest electrical energy hog on a car, so if you can handle driving with it off you will see benefits in gas mileage. If you do need the A/C, turn it on full blast until you reach the temperature you want, and then turn it off – the compressor for the A/C uses the same amount of power whether the fans blow out the air gently or hard. When moving under 40MPH, having the windows down won’t affect aerodynamics heavily and is more efficient than running the A/C.

8. Consider buying a gauge for fuel economy. There are few aftermarket devices that will show fuel economy, and the only one that does not require any installation is the ScanGauge. This gadget will show many different gauges, and four at the same time. A few important ones for driving for fuel economy are miles per gallon, percent throttle and engine speed (useful if your car lacks a tachometer). This model is $170, but the benefits from it will pay itself off after about 10,000 miles. While this will show instantaneous results of how much the gas mileage is improving, I would not recommend spending money to save money unless you truly plan on sticking with the mindset of driving for high gas mileage. This device only gives the driver readouts, and does not affect the gas mileage directly. It takes time to learn how to read the gauges properly and learn to adjust driving style to get the best results.

NOW IT’S TIME TO DRIVE!
These basic high mileage driving techniques are easy and when used properly will save 25% more on gas.

9. Accelerate moderately. Accelerating fast uses much more gas then needed, but accelerating too slowly will also use too much gas since it will take longer to get to an efficient speed. A good start to finding the best point to accelerate is trying 2200RPM on flat ground (for a car; vans/trucks/SUVs will be different since the engine size is much larger).

Finding the right spots to accelerate is also important. When traveling down a slope, accelerating uses less energy than on flat ground, so this is the place to do it. Driving with the small changes in terrain can make a large difference in gas mileage. Here’s a common scenario which describes this well: You see a hill approaching which is 20 feet tall and you are currently on flat ground in a 55MPH zone. Would you keep a steady speed the whole way or go faster on the flats? The answer is to speed up on the flats, maybe to 60MPH, and let your speed go down as you go up the hill. (More detail on driving with hills in the following sections).

10. Find your car’s most efficient speed. On a flat stretch of road, get in the highest gear possible, and slow down until you find the slowest speed for that gear. Driving in the highest gear at the lowest RPM will be the most efficient for gas. If you drive an automatic car, watching the tachometer (RPM gauge) will show you this point that it shifts at. If you get up to 55MPH or so, then let off the gas to slow down to around 45-50MPH, you will likely be in the highest gear. For a standard transmission car, the RPM slightly above where the engine is lugging in the highest gear is the most efficient. Generally the speed for highest efficiency is between 40-45MPH, this depends on how many and the size of the gears in your transmission.

There is a myth that 55MPH is the most efficient speed to drive, but this was only a guideline for highway driving and is not based on fuel economy. It was just used as an easy number to recommend as 10MPH under the general 65MPH limit, and also because it was the adjusted speed limit during the oil shortage of the 1970’s.

11. Use as little throttle as possible. Throttle use can be measured in percent: 0% meaning your foot is off the throttle, and 100% means that it is on the floor. Most people drive with the throttle around 30-50%. A more efficient use of the throttle is staying under 20% almost all the time. Around 10% throttle is necessary to travel on flat ground at 40MPH to overcome friction and air resistance. This light use of throttle may feel like it is barely above idling, but it is enough to keep a steady speed. Minute control of the throttle is easiest with a Scangauge device, but can be estimated without one. Going up hills is another issue, but even then staying under 25% is best if possible. This would depend heavily on the slope of the hill however.

Try traveling on flat ground, and take your foot off the throttle. Now press it in only enough to keep moving at a constant speed. This ties in with traveling at efficient speeds also. If you are driving at 55MPH, 15% throttle might be needed to keep the speed constant. At 65MPH, you might need 20%.

In my experience, the best gas mileage was when I kept the throttle around 8-10% on flat ground, and around 20% on steep hills when there’s little momentum, but never going above 20%. This works best around 40MPH.

12. Drive as if you don’t have brakes. Think of a car as a “potential energy bank.” Every time you step on the gas, you take from the bank. This is fine, since we know it takes energy to get somewhere. If you drive efficiently, you’ll be taking less from the bank. But every time you step on the brake, you just threw out a lot of energy which changes to heat and doesn’t benefit the car. On the other hand, if you plan ahead a few hundred feet and coast to a stop, then you used your energy more efficiently and didn’t need to throw any out.

Ideally, if you can let off the gas well before a place you want to stop, the car will slow down and by the time you are at the stop you will only need a light tap on the brakes to stop. Normally people drive a constant speed to the place they are going to stop until the last 100 feet when they step on the brakes. Not only does staying off the brakes save gas, it also saves a significant amount of wear on the brakes. With this technique, the brakes could last several times longer than usual! That’s easily hundreds of dollars saved each year, since getting all the brakes, rotors and calipers replaced can be over $1000.

To try this technique, pay attention far ahead and note the places that require stopping. For example, traveling on the highway approaching an off-ramp, let off the gas 2 to 3 tenths of a mile before the exit. By the time you reach the stop sign, you will be moving slowly and will not have used your brakes yet. In city driving with many stop signs and lights, only accelerate enough to roll to the next stop. If the next light is only a few hundred feet away, you only need to accelerate for a few seconds, then coast at a slow speed until you reach the light.

13. If you aren’t moving, you don’t need gas. It’s a simple concept, yet rarely used. When you get to a stop light and know that you will sit for half a minute, turn the engine off. Older cars and some diesel cars use a small amount of gas to startup, but any car from the last few decades benefits from this in 5-10 seconds depending on the size of the engine. Even at idle, a car uses between around 0.3-0.5 gallons per hour. That calculates to almost an ounce of gas per minute. Even for my 15 minute commute I might be at stop lights for 3 minutes total, which is 3 ounces of gas saved, and 5% of the total gas for that commute. Most cars can start again in neutral, so I recommend shifting to neutral before turning the car off so that you can start quickly and shift back into gear when you need to start moving again.

There are two common retorts to this, which hold some validity:
A) “Doesn’t that wear out the starter?” While it does require using the starter motor more, these parts are designed much better than most parts in a car. A typical car will succumb to other critical problems before ever needing a starter. When is the last time you needed to replace one? Even if you have done that in the past, it is more likely a design failure than overuse since you likely weren’t turning off the car all the time before.

B) “I don’t want to hold up traffic.” Anyone who isn’t paying attention will hold up traffic. If you watch the lights, you will know when it is changing to green. If there are any cars ahead of you, you can turn the car on without holding the traffic up at all. Even if you are the first car in line, it takes literally one second to turn the car on and shift into gear. You may consider foregoing this method if you are the first car, but in most circumstances, as long as you as paying attention, it will not have made a difference. The next point helps with this also.

14. Learn the traffic light patterns. Many times lights in a city are synchronized, either in a way that allows for a car traveling to make it through most of them in one shot or in a way where they all change at the same time. Often times accelerating from a traffic light only lands you waiting at the next one. For example, if two lights are synchronized and you are turning left through the first one, the second one will make you wait. If you accelerate to a cruising speed, then you will just have to stop a block later. The best thing to do is wait a few seconds if possible, then drive slowly to the light, only using the gas once to get there.

Lights can be mentally timed so that you know if it is worth accelerating or just coasting to a red light. Generally if you look at the side of the traffic light and it changes to red, three seconds later your side will be green. This does not work as smoothly if there a turning lanes in some places though. If you take the same route all the time, you will learn the traffic light patterns if you pay attention.

I’ll describe my commute to school from my residence in town for an example: The first light coming into the city has turning lanes from multiple directions, and when the opposing traffic starts turning, I will get the green light in about 10 seconds. The second light is a simple one: when the side turns red, mine goes green in 3 seconds. But since I turn left here to another simple light, I only roll at 10MPH so that it turns green just as I am approaching the light instead of having to stop at it. The last light can be seen from a distance, and I have counted that it lasts about 25 seconds each way. When I can first see it, I am about 15 seconds away. So if I first see it and it is green, I plan on hitting a red light by the time I get there and just coast up to it. If that light is red when I first see it, I will approach it at normal speed for halfway, and if it still isn’t green by then I will start slowing down (this is about 500 feet away) so that I know I can roll through it when it is green. Driving slow through this small city can be intimidating with cars behind me, but I remind myself that it is just a red light, and I am actually getting through it faster if I can roll through it when it turns green rather than stopping and starting again from a red light. By timing the lights, I do not need to come to a full stop as often, which saves both on the brakes and on gas consumption.

ADVANCED TECHNIQUES
These techniques are good to try once you get a handle of everything before this. Before trying any of these, read and understand the descriptions. As always, do not do any of these in an unsafe manner. These can all be done very safely, but do not try them all at once, just take your time learning each one before moving on to the next.

15. Pretend that you have cruise control connected to the throttle. Cruise control is more efficient than regular driving, but if you have started using the techniques above, then you will have noticed that a constant speed does not always correlate with constant gas consumption. The best example of this is when in cruise control the car starts up an incline, jumps down a few gears and the engine speed increases significantly. Use your foot as a throttle cruise control, especially on long flat sections of road. Any area where acceleration isn’t need is the place to use this technique. In most cars, just to the right of the gas pedal is part of the center base of the dashboard, and allows your foot to rest on that so that you don’t move it inadvertently. Once you find the lightest pressure for the gas pedal to keep your speed, rest your foot so it does not move. When a small hill comes up, you can keep the same throttle pressure, and will lose a little bit of speed, but the gas consumption will stay fairly regular.

16. Pulse and glide. An engine has a certain range of engine speed where it is most productive – where the gas being used puts out the most amount of power. This can be different for varying engine sizes and types, but it is often around 2500RPM. To keep a steady speed on flat ground, you could probably stay at 1800RPM, but since the engine is more efficient at 2500RPM, try to only use it at that engine speed. To do this, you “pulse” the engine gently to its sweet spot until the upper speed you want is achieved, then let off the gas and glide down to the lower speed. This can be done extremely smooth with very small but frequent variations, or with larger variations less often. For example, if more cars are around, you might only use a range of 5MPH. You could pulse up to the speed limit, then glide until it is 5MPH below the limit and repeat that. On more open roads ranging 10 or 15MPH allows for more time between the pulse and the glide.

To make this technique work better, use the terrain to your advantage. If there’s a slight downhill slope, make that the gliding section. If there is a flat area before a slight hill, make that your pulse section.

To get the absolute best efficiency with this technique, the glide can be done with the car in neutral or even with the engine off (recommended only for standard transmission cars) if there seems to be enough of a glide to warrant the effort of restarting.

17. Coast at any time possible. The best way to save gas is to stay off the throttle. If every opportunity to coast is utilized, the average speed will be lower, but the fuel economy will rise for the trip. If there is no traffic, coast until you reach the lowest speed for another gear. For example, if the most fuel efficient speed for third gear is 25MPH, and the most efficient for fourth gear is 40MPH, then coast from 45MPH down to 25MPH before using the throttle again. The best places to coast are when there is a stop expected at the end. If you see a stop sign a quarter of a mile away and you are traveling 55MPH, let off the gas, shift to neutral, possibly turn off the car, and coast all the way to the stop sign. The most difficult part with coasting is getting out of the habit of driving a constant speed until 100 feet before the stop. The best coast would land you at 0MPH right at the stop, but that would also take more time since you would roll at very low speeds for more time. If you are uncomfortable with this, or if there is traffic, than pick a speed such as 20MPH to aim for instead of zero. Even coasting from 50 to 20MPH can take half a minute, but the whole time you will be getting over 100 miles per gallon if the engine is on, or infinite if the engine is off.

18. Let the big hills affect your speed. If you have ever pushed your car on flat ground, you know that it is possible but takes some energy. If you tried to push your car uphill, you would never be able to do it. The amount of energy to overcome a hill is significantly more than on flat ground, but this can be used to our advantage. When approaching a hill, increasing your speed will allow for the most efficient gear to be used. While traveling up a hill let your speed drop but try to stay in the same gear. This can be very difficult for an automatic transmission, but possible if you learn how to feel the gears well. If possible, aim to reach the crest of the hill at a very low speed without changing throttle pressure, since on a big you will gain back a lot of the energy on the way down. Remember the potential energy bank? Hills use a lot of energy going up, and you can save up your energy so that no gas is used on the way down. At the bottom of the hill before you reach it, your potential energy is only from the current momentum. At the top of the hill, your potential energy is the momentum, and more importantly, a portion of the energy used to get up the hill. As you go down the hill this energy is used up until you are left with only momentum again.

Advanced: To incorporate both coasting and hills you need to be aware of how the car will handle. Only coast in neutral until you feel that you are ready to try coasting with the engine off. Be aware that in most cars, turning off the engine also turns off vacuums that power the power steering and power brakes. Without power steering, it is very hard to turn the steering wheel at low speeds, but at higher speeds it is less noticeable (especially in lighter vehicles). While power brakes are very helpful for sudden stops, driving without them only means that it will take more effort from the driver to apply the brake, not that the power of the brake is lost. I’ve tested braking while driving down extremely steep roads, and was still able to brake and stop where I wanted to. Again, only turn off the engine if you are ultra aware of your driving and your surroundings. This is not safe in the dark, in heavily populated areas, or in traffic because the risk of needed to stop fast is high.

1) A smaller car is actually safer. Many people assume that a large car is safer than a small one, and in some limited cases this is true. Imagine this simple scenario: two cars collide head on. You would want to be in a larger car because it takes the impact better and has more room to crush. The problem is that this scenario is the most rare form of crashes. There are significantly more accidents with sideways hits, or swerving out of the way of an object. There are two things that we do to react before a crash: brake and swerve. These are natural reactions to slow down and move out of the way in hopes of missing the object whether it is stationary like a tree, or a moving car. In a large SUV or a van however, swerving while braking is what causes rollover accidents, and uncontrollable maneuvers. A small car carries less momentum, so therefore can brake quicker, and swerving does not risk a rollover. So for most cases, the smaller more maneuverable car is actually safer than the large vehicles, as long as there is at least a split second to react. The problem is that accident reports only account for the collisions, not the near misses. So just because a large car might fare better in a collision does not make it a safer vehicle.

2) Gas saving devices simply do not work! There is no proof of any device put in or near a gas tank helping gas mileage. Many companies sell these with ridiculous claims of improving gas mileage, which sound unreasonable because they are “too good to be true” deals. If something actually worked that well, don’t you think the company would have installed it already? Additives to gasoline such as acetate have shown some increases in gas mileage, but they are not that simple. They cause other stresses on an engine that will wear it out faster, and the long term outcome does not benefit. Again, if it is not widely used, it does not have an overall benefit.

3) It doesn’t matter when you buy your gas. I’ve heard people mention buying gas early in the day to avoid expansion of gas when it gets hot. While this property of physics is true, it is so tiny that it is not worth the hassle. Gas tanks are buried underground which stays a constant cool temperature around 55-60 degrees Fahrenheit. Even on the hottest day outside, a tank would not heat up its enormous amount of liquid gasoline to expand more than a fraction of a percent. Only a very small amount of gas resides in the handle at the pump, and even if that is 10% hotter, it will not be expanding any noticeable amount. As with the above tip, it would be widespread knowledge if it were true.

Interested in learning more?
For a full guide to driving efficiently, contact Andy Goodell at goodella@hartwick.edu or 603-831-0356. I am available for driving courses on these techniques and much more in-depth advanced techniques.