Audi Event Concentrates on Fuel Efficiency - October 14th, 2008
Although gas prices are, at last, thankfully coming down a bit, the price per gallon is still hovering around $3 and larger economic woes continue to make a trip to the pump a pain in the . . . well, you get the idea. People are trading out of their monster SUVs and trucks and into smaller, more efficient vehicles. Alternative transportation is the buzz phrase of the day (and don’t you think the bike shops aren’t loving it) and driving techniques like hypermiling are generating a ton of interest. (Click here for the Wikipedia entry on hypermiling.)
Sam Abuelsamid over at AutoBlogGreen participated in the Audi Mileage Marathon, a seven-day, 2.832-mile event dedicated to competitive fuel economy. You can read about the resulting adventures and the techniques the drivers tried out in, “Audi Mileage Marathon: Fuel Efficiency Strategies.”
A sample of Sam’s conclusions include:
“It seems that for a long haul, driving smoothly, and staying at a reasonably safe distance behind a truck, is the best approach. If you have adaptive cruise control, especially on an Audi, it’s worth using. If you drive in traffic, manually shutting off the engine at stops is really only helpful if you have a manual transmission vehicle. As automatic start stop systems proliferate in the coming years this will become less of an issue though. The most important aspect however is safety. If you don’t get where you are going in one piece, it really doesn’t matter how little fuel you used.”
Posted on October 14th, 2008 by Shorty
Filed under: technology, lifestyle |
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