Postby marktime » Sun Jun 03, 2007 7:28 pm
Chris, you don't want the 'most' little green cars (LGC's) you want the fewest for better fuel economy.
Lot's of LGC's suggest accelerating towards red traffic lights and late braking, not the stuff an EV driver would do.
Nikki, don't loose heart, not only is there a knack to good MPG you also need to get the 'average' gauge on your side.
I will repeat here a post of mine from the Prius forum with some additions for clarity.
If like me you reset the MPG at refill you will see that when you first set off or within the first 100 miles it is very easy to influence the MPG one way or the other as you get towards 500 - 550 miles it is much harder to
influence the MPG.
I once 'sold tickets' to show off that I had got to the office car park with 90+MPG on the display, I had just filled the tank the car was 'good and warm' and I arrived with less than 5 miles on the counter. If you just reset the MPG at any time you can get very good or very bad figures in the first 100 miles that can be much harder to influence later.
This is very apparent if you ride a bike and have a cycle computer
that gives average speed. If you set off at a fast pace your average
speed will be high but to try and sustain that average over about 8 -
10 miles kills me!! If you set off at a slower pace you can
certainly maintain the average over a greater distance and might
even be able to push it up if you put on a spurt.
Weather it is Miles per Hour or Miles per gallon the more miles you
are dividing into small variations in the divisor have little
influence.
Try these examples: If you use 1 Gal to drive 50 miles or 10 gals to
drive 500 miles that is still 50 MPG but if you vary the fuel used
in the first 50 miles i.e 0.9 Gal for 50 miles = 55.55MPG or 1.1 Gal
for 50 Miles = 45.45MPG. Big difference! These figures will carry forward and influence your final average for the tank full.
Over 500 miles the same variation in fuel used gives a much smaller
variation. 9.9 Gals for 500 miles =50.5 MPG and 10.1 gals gives 49.5
MPG. This is why it is so much harder to influence the avarage at the end of a tank full.
I do hope that this makes some sense.
Mark
Soft as Graphite, Hard as Diamond, Black as Coal & clear as CO2, It's a Carbon thing!