Advanced hypermiling techniques

From hereon things start getting a bit surreal, and scary. Care for shutting your engine off on a highway while tailgating a lorry, or voluntarily passing up a close parking space?

Enter advanced (read insane) hypermiling techniques…

1. Pulse and glide. Accelerate until you're driving at about 10 km/h above your desired average speed. Turn your engine off and glide to about 10 km/h below your desired average speed. Repeat.

2. Ridge riding. Putting two wheels on the left-hand painted strip offers less friction than driving in the middle of the lane. This is especially true when the road is wet.

3. Perpetually steady accelerator. Instead of keeping a steady speed you keep the accelerator pedal fixed. Your speed will drop when you climb a hill and you'll speed up when going downhill.

4. Driving as if you don't have brakes. Hypermilers pretend they have very weak or nonexistent brakes and increase the distance between their cars and others accordingly. This allows them to maintain some speed before losing energy by braking. If they maintain large enough buffers in traffic they'll be able to carry on driving at a very slow speed while other cars are continuously stopping and going.

5. Potential parking. Hypermilers don't mind a longer walk and will always choose a parking space that allows forward departure or a downhill exit.

6. Parking face-out. This entails always parking with the front of the car pointing out. You save petrol because it's more efficient to spin your car around when it's warmed up.

7. 'Smart' braking. When approaching a red robot on a descent, hypermilers stop as far from the robot as possible and use gravity to help them accelerate through the traffic light.

   When coming towards a red robot hypermilers will attempt slowing down, without actually stopping, until the light turns green. This technique negates the need to speed up from a dead stop.

8. Cruising at the lowest speed that's possible in top gear. This could mean cruising at 60 or 70 km/h (or less) when the speed limit is 120km/h.

9. Remove everything that weighs anything and isn't absolutely necessary. This includes removing, for example, passenger seats if they're not in use.

10. Overinflating the tires. Hypermilers never stick to the owner's manual's recommendations and routinely inflate their tires by more than 50 percent above the maximum suggested on the tire's sidewall.

11. Riding the slipstream. This entails driving extremely close to a lorry or large SUV in order to reduce wind resistance. Extreme hypermilers will even turn their engines off while tailgating to further improve their fuel consumption.

Do you think hypermiling is a good idea or just plain bonkers? Leave a comment below...

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