Sustainability Post #14 — Improving Gas Mileage

The other day, I spent 99 cents to improve my gas mileage. I bought a credit card sized calculator, at Big Al’s, to live in my car and compute gas mileage (divide miles traveled since last fill up by gallons filled) on each fill up, right then and there. I already record miles driven, gas, price, etc. and compute MPG when I enter all that into my financial records. But by that time it is too late to remember where and how I drove.

Not as great as an instantaneous reading, but a way to encourage awareness.

— Topher

Sustainability Post #5 — HyperMiling

What is hypermiling? According to a fantastic August 2006 story in the Washington Post, it is a method of increasing your car’s gas mileage by making skillful changes in the way you drive, allowing you to save gas and thereby have an easier time withstanding the rising oil and gas prices. — http://www.hypermiling.com

While some of the techniques are a bit extreme, many are perfectly usable in normal driving situations. I invite you to go take a look at that website, it says things far better than I can. I have started trying the techniques myself, we will see how it goes.

One item which makes this much easier is a instantaneous Miles per Gallon meter. Instead of waiting until you fill up to evaluate how well you drove on that tank full, it tells you how you are driving right now.
I found one at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/ScanGauge-Compact-Multifunction-Computer-Customizable/dp/B000AAMY86/
It sounds like it isn’t too hard to install, though the directions are full of acronyms and expect car-geek levels of buzzword knowledge. I will report on how easy it is to install as soon as I get one. The description says it will work on any 1996 or later car with OBDII (whatever that means).

Edit: It seems that all cars sold in the US starting with 1996 model year have OBDII, and the plug should be easy to locate in the passenger compartment near the driver. There are a few cars (mostly diesel) which are incompatible.

Sustainability Post #4 — Biking.

Biking.

Yesterday, we went and bought Barbara a bicycle. It is what is called a hybrid (meaning a bit of rough terrain and a bit of road riding). It cost about the same as 100 gallons of gas. I told Barbara that she needed to use it for more miles than that.

So, let’s look at the energy equations for biking.

Biking uses somewhere between 135 Calories per hour (for 6 miles per hour riding) and 700 Calories per hour (for 14 miles per hour). This works out to 12.5 Calories per miles and 46 Calories per mile, respectively (after subtracting normal body upkeep).
1 Calorie (kilocalorie) = 3.968 BTUs.
1 Gallon of gas = 125,000 BTUs.

Now we need to know how much fossil fuel goes into each Calorie of food. This depends greatly on where you buy your food and how much it is processed. I have seen numbers as high as 10:1 for the American diet of high processed long distance food. I will assume that 1:1 is the low end of the scale. So, 1 Calorie of food is somewhere between 4 and 40 BTUs of fossil fuel.

So, riding 6 MPH on a local organic diet gets around 2500 Miles per Gallon (of fossil fuel).
While riding 14 MPH on that diet gives around 679 Miles per Gallon.
And riding 6 MPH on an American diet gives around 250 Miles per Gallon.
Finally, riding 14 MPH on that diet gives around 67 Miles per Gallon (not much better than a prius).

— Topher