Comments on: Using Anti-Road Rage to Save Money

By: C.D.

C.D. — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:51:03 +0000

Oh and Jon the tailgate myth is crap too. I’ve tried it on both of my trucks and they both get better mpg with the tailgate down. That show is stupid!

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:08:27 +0000

So….speaking as an Engineer married to a Business major – wouldn’t excel be less nerdy and more like a B-School cop-out? I mean, think of the data mining you could do if you set up a SQL database and wrote some perl scripts. Excel is for managers and physics majors…

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:51:13 +0000

I disagree that this myth is really busted. For their test they were only driving 45mph. Everything I’ve heard is once you get going above 45 (like on the highway, 55/65/75) things start getting worse.

This is actually one myth that I thought they screwed up on.

By: Jill

Jill — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:40:13 +0000

The Mythbusters already started the research on your windows down vs a/c (http://mythbusters-wiki.discovery.com/page/Keeping+the+Car+Cool)

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:34:47 +0000

The Chevy HHR that we rented in Florida did the realtime MPGs also. I played with this a little bit and even though the car drove like a box on wheels, I found that turning the A/C on subtracted about 1-2mpg, while drafting from the car in front of me added about 1-2mpg. I didn't do any tests with the windows down or anything crazy like that...but I found the drafting to be rather intesting. Another thing that helped was maintaining a constant speed, ie, using the cruise control. Throttling up/down on the gas really hurts.

Oh, and the Excel document is sweet...don't knock it 'til you try it!

By: Jill

Jill — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:10:46 +0000

I was all ready to support you in your study, but the Excel sheet took it a step to far to nerdom. My parent’s new fancy shmancy car does real time mpg calcs while driving. My mom recently started paying attention to this (as we all have, right?) and found that on her 30 mile drive through the FLAT land of NWOH, the moment she goes over 60mph her mpg$ plummet-in lieu of an Excel doc, this hit the same point home.

Cool kids ride the bus.
Burn calories not gas.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:09:53 +0000

No, you are not responsible for me getting goofy with my gas mileage. My car gets pretty good mpgs to begin with, and for a while I’ve wanted to stretch it out to see just how good it could get. $3.99/gallon gave me a good reason to play around. It’s really turned into a game for me now.

By: Mike D

Mike D — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:16:54 +0000

Did I inspire you to check your gas consumption? Let me apologize for my posts. I’ve been experimenting with mobile blogger (shmucks like me need to rely on google services) and using jott. Though I wanted to let you know I successfully set up a wifi network in our home. Booyah.