I'm not obsessed with hypermilling lately, what with gas being semi reasonably priced and all, but I am obsessed with making sure I at least know what's going on with hypermilling, and beause of this I am forced to make a correction about my previous hypermilling post.
In my post I said that coasting in neutral can save you gas in some situatuons. It turns out that I was wrong. Logically it makes sense that if your car is idling rather than in gear that your car has lower RPMs and is therefore saving gas. However, after some research, I have determined that to be wrong.
The truth is that when in gear and going down a hill in a fuel injected, stick shift car your engine senses the throttle position and RPMs and put your engine into an extremely low fuel injecting state, one that is, oddly enough, using less gas than just being in idle. Rolling down a hill in gear without using the throttle is therefore more fuel efficient than coasting in neutral.
Frankly this sounds very counter intuitive to me, but I checked a dozen or so sources, and while a lot of people believe that coasting in neutral is better, the only people with actual proof are the gear heads who say otherwise.
So I was wrong! I don't know how much difference in terms of MPG this is, but I can say for certain that it is greater than zero, so it could be worth while.
July 26, 2010
An error old...
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In testing this so far, I am not 100% convinced that there is going to be a significant improvement in MPG, but I will continue testing to be sure. Cars are complicated.
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