The current gas crisis is pinching the pocketbooks of drivers in every imaginable way. People are rethinking a simple trip to the grocery store, and a drive across town to visit a friend or see a movie is now more of a luxury than a casual spur of the moment decision.
It’s causing independent long distance truckers to go out of business and airlines to ground large portions of their fleets and lay off employees.
And the alarming thing is…politicians don’t seem to have any answers to this crisis in the short term, and they don’t seem to be able to offer any assurance that it will end soon.
Once upon a time the idea of paying three dollars a gallon for a tank of gasoline seemed outrageous.
Now, we can look back on that price with nostalgia.
However, we’re not here to deliver nothing but gloom and doom, or to tell you things that you already know.
Instead, we’re here to give you some practical tips that anyone can put into use to make their vehicle more energy efficient.
We’re talking about an increasingly popular practice called…hypermiling.
Hypermiling involves a number of tweaks, improvements, and techniques to squeeze every last mile possible out of a gallon of gas.
Some of this involves free or low cost things that you can do to or with your car, some of it involves more expensive alterations which cost money up front but which save a fortune in the long run, and some of it involves common sense driving techniques – many so easy to implement that it will truly surprise you.
All of these little tricks and techniques add up to serious savings at the gas pump.
Hypermiling is a term believed to have been coined by an Illinois man named Wayne Gerdes, who is referred to by many as the “father of hypermiling.” Mentions of it first began appearing on the internet several years ago when gas prices really started to shoot through the stratosphere, although efforts to save money and improve gas mileage efficiency have been around since cars were invented.
So without further ado, let’s talk about some hypermiling techniques that you can put into practice literally the next time that you pull out of your driveway.