He averaged just 88.3 miles per gallon.
Most drivers would take a victory lap if they managed to squeeze that kind of mileage out of increasingly precious gasoline. Even on this, a bad day, Hudgin coaxed 28 mpg more out of his 2000 Honda Insight hybrid than its federal highway mpg rating.
Hudgin's disappointment — he usually averages about 100 mpg this time of year — stems from his pride in being no ordinary driver.
He's a hypermiler, part of a loose-knit legion of commuters who've made racking up seemingly unattainable mpg an art. And a sport.
Hypermilers practice such unorthodox techniques as coasting for blocks with their car's engine turned off, driving far below speed limits on the freeway, pumping up tire pressure far beyond car and tire makers' recommendations and carefully manipulating the gas pedal to avoid fuel-burning excess.
They endure not only occasional honks from other motorists angry at their slow-poke ways, but intentional discomforts, as well. Like keeping the air conditioning off and windows barely cracked on a more than 90-degree day. Or parking in the boondocks at shopping centers so they can motor head-first toward the exit rather than backing out of a space.
Just about anything for an extra one, two, maybe even four mpg. With their odd fixation and log-book scribbles obsessively tracking their mileage, the hypermiler community might in other times be typecast as tightwad eccentrics. But in an era of $4-plus-a-gallon gas, they're garnering increasing attention as driving superstars, even saviors of the planet.
"More power to them if that's important to them, and they are accomplishing a goal that also benefits society," says Ron Cogan, publisher of Green Car Journal.
Automakers are taking notice. Honda will install an instrument in a new hybrid it will roll out next year that cues drivers for gas-saving actions, such as when to ease off the accelerator, says spokesman Sage Marie.
Hypermilers share their triumphs and secrets on a handful of websites. They also gather in some cities as a subset of clubs for hybrid-car owners, which many now are.
Driving safety advocates laud some of their habits — but heap scorn on others.
"Probably the most beneficial aspect of hypermiling is its emphasis on a less aggressive approach," says Geoff Sundstrom, spokesman for AAA, formerly the American Automobile Association. "The downside of hypermiling is some of the techniques can be extremely dangerous."
Turning the engine off while coasting can, in some cars, leave the driver without power steering or brakes and allow the possibility that the steering wheel will lock up. Drivers can endanger themselves and others if they go too slow for the pace of traffic.
How about that urge to "draft" trucks — follow close behind for less wind resistance — on the interstate?
"There's another term for that. We call it tailgating," Sundstrom deadpans.
Safety first
Hudgin, a 56-year-old professional pilot, says serious hypermilers always put safety before mileage. Sure, he doesn't mind using a truck as a windbreak — but only, he says, if he can stay at least three seconds back.
During the afternoon drive with a reporter, he observes all traffic laws in a mix of city and highway driving.
But having to make a stop at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, grabbing a quick taco at a Mexican restaurant and getting stuck in rush-hour traffic on Interstate 10 take their toll on his usual mpg.
Normally, Hudgin says, he can roll up 100 mpg in warm weather, about 90 in the winter. But on this day, the kiss of mileage death came when his hybrid's battery started recharging, which causes the hybrid's gasoline engine to work harder and burn more gas. Those few minutes on the freeway slashed his mileage temporarily to a paltry 48 mpg, according to the car's computer. That's 12 below the two-seat, three-cylinder Insight's EPA mpg rating for highway driving.
Hudgin is not new to the mileage game. When Hudgin was young, an uncle drove a 1955 Morris Minor, a small English car, to Canada and bragged about 50 mpg. "I thought, 'That's phenomenal.' And it made an impression on me."
Hudgin has owned a series of compact vehicles known for their little engines and big mpg, such as a Subaru Justy and Chevy Sprint. He had a long commute, he says, and needed dependable and cheap cars.
Some mileage tricks he found himself. "I started going the back way, slowed down from 55 to 45 miles per hour and saw an increase of 16 mpg," says Hudgin, who flies executive planes for the state of Arizona.
Slow going on the byways tacked 19 minutes onto his commute, but he says he didn't mind.
In 2001, he bought his then-slightly-used Insight, an odd-looking car that was the first hybrid sold in the USA, though in limited numbers. It got the highest EPA mileage rating of any model until it was discontinued. He got 59.6 mpg from his first tank of gas.
Not bad, he says, but around 2005, he discovered the world of hypermiling, including Internet sites such as CleanMPG.com, Greenhybrid.com and several others where hypermilers share mileage tactics.
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From Live Science
With the cost of crude oil surging to record highs, a heated battle of blame is in full swing, with a lineup of suspects that includes the oil industry, Congress, commodity speculators, environmentalists and developing countries in Asia.
Meanwhile, predictions that we've reached a peak in oil production or will very soon — dismissed only a few years ago as being alarmist and without merit — are receiving more serious consideration.
The problem is, nobody really knows how much oil is down there. The only thing that's certain: Dead organisms produced a limited amount of oil long ago, and eventually there won't be enough to sustain the current rate of consumption.
Further complicating matters, global consumption is spiking. An average of 86 million barrels of oil are guzzled per day across the globe, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, up from 74 million barrels 10 years ago. World demand for oil is expected to increase by 37 percent to a staggering 118 million barrels per day by 2030, the agency estimates. Assuming, that is, there's enough to go around.
Peak oil?
Peak oil, followed by a permanent decline in global oil production, is a "reasonable hypothesis," according to David Goodstein, a physics professor at Caltech and author of "Out of Gas"(W.W. Norton, 2004).
"If we've reached the peak, then that's it," Goodstein said this week, echoing a March 2007 report by the U.S. General Accountability Office speculating that oil resources would begin to dwindle sometime between now and 2040. "I think you can invest as much as you want in new exploration and it won't improve matters."
A study last year by a Swedish researcher predicted oil production will peak sometime between this year and 2018.
Other analysts, however, say that we've barely explored our energy potential, much less run the risk of being tapped out completely.
"New field discoveries are only about 25 percent of the source of most of the reserve additions of oil," said William Fisher, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin. "About 70 percent of it comes from oil through increased recovery out of existing fields. Around the world, up to this existing point, we have already discovered about 7 trillion barrels of oil in the ground."
Increasing the current rate of recovery from 35 to 45 percent, said Fisher, could yield an even greater surplus of petroleum. "Ten percent of 7 trillion barrels is a lot of oil," he said. "But peak-oil advocates just concentrate on new discoveries and put that aside."
Supply and demand
By Fisher's reckoning, rising oil prices are more likely due to an old-fashioned case of supply and demand — as well as the faltering U.S. dollar.
"We've just had a red-hot increase in demand in the emerging economies of Asia, particularly China and India," he said. "The other contributor is the weakening value of the dollar compared with the Euro, since oil is priced and sold in dollars."
A third offender: commodity speculation. "When you see a commodity like oil that will vary by 2 to 3 percent of its value in a day's time, you suspect that there's some speculation that's going on," Fisher said. "And I'm not saying it's a nasty word — people speculate in margins all the time — but that would, in my view, have some secondary role."
Still, the growing demands of a fuel-hungry planet obscures a different, self-imposed problem, said David Cole, chairman of the non-profit Center for Automotive Research.
"We have failed to develop our resources due to the inability of Congress to permit drilling in high-probability petroleum regions," he said, arguing that the United States has had an "absurd energy policy" for years.
"The only thing Congress has done over the years is promote the development of corn ethanol, which doesn't make any sense because it has very low energy potential," Cole said. "I think our broad energy capability is still very substantial, but we really need to bridge the gap between our existing resources and alternative technologies, including cellulosic biofuels and lithium batteries."
Another looming issue is the sizable chunk of change that is being spent on foreign oil each year.
"We're basically sending billions of dollars to people in the world we're not very comfortable with, because of our own inability to develop our own resources," Cole said.
Fisher agreed: "If you're forever growing and you're that much of an importer of a commodity, you don't get a whole lot to say about pricing," he said. "We can scream and yell all we want to, but we're at the mercy of the market."
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From NYTimes
HOUSTON — As the price of gasoline quadrupled over the last decade, American drivers seemed to defy the laws of economics by pumping more into their vehicles year after year.
But this is the year American drivers appear to be finally succumbing to price shock at the pump, according to a new report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm affiliated with IHS Inc. It says the slowdown in the economy and soaring gasoline prices have finally persuaded Americans to drive fewer miles in fewer gas-guzzling vehicles.
“U.S. gasoline demand will likely decline in 2008 for the first time in more than 17 years,” says the report to be released Thursday. “For the first time since the 1970s and early 1980s the number of miles driven by Americans has clearly begun trending downward.”
The Transportation Department reported on Wednesday that Americans drove 1.8 percent fewer miles on public roads in April 2008 compared with the same month last year, the sixth consecutive month of driving mileage declines.
The Cambridge Energy report cites some fundamental shifts in consumer behavior that suggest the beginning of an enduring trend. The report noted that in California, where gasoline prices have historically led the rest of the country, gasoline consumption has declined for two consecutive years and hybrid vehicle sales are rising.
Now the rest of the country seems to be following. Sales of pickup trucks, minivans and sport utility vehicles have fallen below 50 percent of new passenger vehicle sales this year for the first time since 2001, the report says, as consumers turned to smaller vehicles in favor of fuel economy.
“It’s kind of stunning,” said Aaron F. Brady, a co-author of the report. “It was over 50 percent as late as February and by May it fell under 44 percent. It’s like falling off a cliff.”
Drivers, meanwhile, are becoming more prudent in their driving habits, either by using public transportation, carpooling or just cutting down on unnecessary trips, the two authors said in an interview. “Public transit ridership is surging all over the country,” said Samantha Gross, the other author.
While total vehicle miles Americans traveled grew by nearly 3 percent a year from 1984 to 2004, the rate of growth slowed suddenly in 2005 and 2006 and has declined since then.
The last time gasoline consumption declined for a prolonged period was during the oil shocks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when annual United States consumption declined by 12 percent. Fast-rising oil prices, a deep recession and improved fuel efficiency standards drove down demand for gasoline.
The same situation is beginning to emerge today, according to the report, and basic home economics explains the trends. Since the 1980s, demand for gasoline has climbed fairly steadily, except in late 1990 and 1991 because of a sharp price increase related to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and a recession. That is because spending on gasoline became a smaller percentage of family income, especially through the 1990s.
Americans spent about 4.5 percent of their after-tax income on transportation fuels in 1981, according to Global Insight, a forecasting firm. As gasoline prices dropped and family incomes rose, that percentage dropped to 1.9 percent in 1998. Today, it is back to 4 percent or more.
The national price for unleaded gasoline would need to average $4.23 a gallon “to create the same economic pain as in 1981,” the Cambridge Energy report said. “Once unthinkable, such a level is now within view.” On Wednesday, gasoline averaged nearly $4.08 a gallon.
It would take a sizable decline in consumption to get back to the levels of gasoline use only a generation ago.
National gasoline consumption has grown over the last 25 years by 40 percent because of the growing popularity of sport utility vehicles and minivans as well as longer commutes to work from the suburbs. Low gasoline prices made the growth relatively painless, until the last three years or so.
The Cambridge Energy report said gasoline demand growth slowed significantly from 2005 to 2007 and peaked last year. Demand in the first quarter of 2008 declined by 1.3 percent from the first quarter in 2007.
Even if consumers start driving more, the report predicts that the efficiency of the American vehicle fleet will continue to improve. “New fuel efficiency standards for light vehicles (scheduled to phase in starting in 2011) by themselves have the potential to begin reducing U.S. gasoline demand within the next decade,” the report said.
If gasoline prices remain high, motorists may well “accelerate their preference shift toward more fuel-efficient vehicles,” the report concluded. “If these trends hold, then 2007 could stand as the peak year for U.S. gasoline demand.”
The authors said they thought gasoline consumption would continue to ease even if gasoline prices went down, unlike in the 1980s and 1990s when consumption sprang back up as prices went down.
“With climate change concerns now, it’s very likely that fuel efficiency will be at the forefront for the foreseeable future,” said Ms. Gross, “and it’s unlikely we will go back to not caring about fuel efficiency the way we did in the late 1980s.”
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From Grist
The U.S. Big Three automakers will get $30 million over three years for plug-in hybrid R&D, the Department of Energy announced Thursday. While less than automakers wanted -- last year they pushed for $500 million -- each welcomed some funding for various aspects of plug-in research. Chrysler plans to build a test fleet of 80 plug-ins, including 10 adapted Dodge Durangos and Chrysler Aspens; General Motors will also build a fleet, as well as focusing funds on enhancing engine innards; and Ford will work on a project "to identify a pathway that accelerates mass production of plug-in hybrid vehicles." DOE wants cost-competitive plug-ins ready for wide use by 2016; General Motors has said it'll have plug-ins available by 2010, but warns the cost will likely be high until a cheaper battery is developed.
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From Gas2.0
"Cars.com has announced that for the first time ever, the Toyota Prius has become the most searched for new vehicle on the popular vehicle classifieds site — surpassing long time favorites such as the Accord and Camry.
Not only that, their top ten list for new car searches (see below) now contains mostly fuel-sippers including the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic Hybrid, Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit.
The Prius first appeared in the top 10 most searched vehicles list last summer.
Patrick Olsen, Cars.com editor in chief, had this to say about it:
“It’s not surprising that the Prius became the No. 1 most searched vehicle on Cars.com at the same time gas reached a $4 national average. Surveys have shown $4 to be the tipping point in consumer purchase behavior, and we are seeing that ring true in shopping patterns on Cars.com.”
One of the surveys he’s probably referring to in his statement was recently conducted by the Ipsos News Center on how high the price of fuel has to go before Americans change their driving habits. The main conclusions of that survey are:
The Ipsos study also found, interestingly, that one in ten Americans say they will never change their driving habits, regardless of the how high the price of gas climbs.
Cars.com Top Ten New Car Searches for May 2008:
| 1 | Toyota Prius | |
| 2 | Honda Civic | |
| 3 | Honda Accord | |
| 4 | Toyota Corolla | |
| 5 | Toyota Camry | |
| 6 | Honda Civic Hybrid | |
| 7 | Toyota Yaris | |
| 8 | Nissan Altima | |
| 9 | Ford Mustang | |
| 10 | Honda Fit |
I don’t know about you, but to me that Ford Mustang sure looks out of place on this list."
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From CNNMoney.com
"As part of a green marketing bid, automotive giant General Motors plans to unveil a lighthearted television ad that begins "Dear Oil," and proceeds to suggest a cooling off of its "relationship" with petroleum products.
GM marketing executive Kathryn Benoit spoke about the ad in a panel discussion at the American Advertising Federation conference Monday, said Kelly Cusinato, GM (GM, Fortune 500) spokeswoman.
While discussing green marketing, Benoit cited the company's plans for the new spot, which is aimed at promoting alternative fuel, said Cusinato.
In the ad, the "Dear Oil" letter continues: "We've had this great relationship for many years. We think we will both be a lot happier and healthier if we see less of each other."
The ad spot is still in the planning phase, but the target date for release is June 22nd during NBC's Meet the Press, according to Cusinato. The ad will also appear on the Discovery Channel's new environmental TV channel, Planet Green.
"The message in this creative spot is that we need to move beyond fuel and look to other options," said Cusinato.
The ad is an attempt to communicate the corporation's commitment to move beyond petroleum products, Cusinato said. The spot is still being developed and could change between now and the targeted release date, she said.
GM's plans for the ad was first described on AdAge.com Tuesday.
GM's ad plan comes as gas prices hit record levels, pinching consumers at the pump. The national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline rose to $4.043, up 2 cents from the previous day's mark of $4.023, AAA's Web site showed on Tuesday. Crude oil prices, on the other hand, slipped Tuesday."
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From gas 2.0
"As much was we covet electric cars like the Tesla Roadster, most of us balk at the $100,000 sticker price. But with gas prices at or above $4 / gallon, the cost difference isn’t as dramatic as you might imagine.
The NYTimes reported last week that if you account for total ownership of a full-sized truck, including insurance, interest, repairs, taxes, and gasoline, a big vehicle like Ford’s F-250 will now set you back $100,000 in the first five years of ownership. Five years is the average amount of time an owner keeps one of these trucks.
Obviously, the average person and automakers alike are noticing how expensive large vehicles have become (GM just announced it would stop making trucks and SUVs at four of its North American plants). Until May, full-sized trucks accounted for 13% of the US vehicle market. They’ve now now plummeted to 9%. Ford’s F-series trucks have been the best selling vehicle annually since 1976, but for the first time in years the top selling vehicle last month was a car: the Honda Civic sedan.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a great renewable energy replacement for heavy duty trucks yet, besides incorporating hybrid technology (like GM has done) which can boost fuel economy by 20%, or modifying the fuel system to accept high ethanol blends (50% of GM’s fleet will be Flex-Fuel by 2012).
One thing has been made abundantly clear: the threshold for buying a full-size truck has gone up a few notches. I was shocked earlier this month when my mechanic said he would be downsizing to a Toyota Tacoma for his daily commute. Will he keep the full-sized truck? Of course, he says, because well, he still has a boat and horse trailer to haul around."
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