Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, either everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says get your
Speaker 1: motor running on the highway. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we wanted to talk a bit about
Speaker 1: the concept of fuel economy and miles per gallon and
Speaker 1: kind of demystify it because there's a lot of misunderstanding
Speaker 1: out there. I think about what makes a car economic
Speaker 1: as far as fuel consumption goes, and and the behaviors
Speaker 1: that that tie into fuel economy. Right, well, it seems easy.
Speaker 1: It seems like you know, you've got this this miles
Speaker 1: per gallon thing on a little sticker on your car
Speaker 1: when you buy it, and and better miles per gallon
Speaker 1: is better, right, higher miles per gallon equals Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, um, everybody's heard these words, but there's some
Speaker 1: of these words that I don't know why certain terms
Speaker 1: end up this way. But you know this concept of
Speaker 1: semantic satiation where you hear a phrase so many times
Speaker 1: that it stops having meanings. It becomes sort of a cone.
Speaker 1: You're just you're just you hear it, and it just like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, those are words that I've heard in that
Speaker 1: order before, but it doesn't actually have any applications. It
Speaker 1: just sounds, you know, that's pretty much everything. My wife,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that. It's a joke. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, you're a sweet man. Okay, So let's make
Speaker 1: miles per gallon reel again. Well, first of all, let's
Speaker 1: apologize to anyone who's not in the United States who yeah,
Speaker 1: because this this is going to be a very US
Speaker 1: centric kind of of topic, mostly because when we're talking
Speaker 1: about miles prig gallen, we're talking about a government agency
Speaker 1: in the United States that actually tests this stuff, Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency. Yes, the e p a UH in the
Speaker 1: US tests vehicles and then gives the miles pregallon rating
Speaker 1: for both city miles and highway miles for every vehicle
Speaker 1: sold in the United States. Well, and it's it's not
Speaker 1: that foreign countries don't have some kind of Some countries
Speaker 1: that are not the US rather have you know, don't
Speaker 1: have never heard of this kind of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's either leaders per kilometer or um. I think
Speaker 1: that the designation in many metric using countries, these days
Speaker 1: is leaders per hundred kilometers actually, but I'll get into
Speaker 1: that in a moment. Right, A hundred that actually seems
Speaker 1: maybe more useful because it's more averaged out, it's more
Speaker 1: averaged out, and it gives you a more manageable number
Speaker 1: to think about. Well, yeah, I guess miles per gallon though,
Speaker 1: I guess that's comes from some kind of averaging process.
Speaker 1: But then, but then, you know, it's not that every
Speaker 1: vehicle has the same amount of storage space like tank space, right,
Speaker 1: So miles per gallon is really only useful if you're
Speaker 1: actually doing the math in your head of well, my
Speaker 1: my tank can hold twelve point five gallons and it
Speaker 1: gets forty miles to the gallon, which means that a
Speaker 1: full tank of gas, I've got to contact my child
Speaker 1: who's in school and can still do math. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's but if you're talking about miles to
Speaker 1: the hundred, you know, how many leaders for a hundred kilometers,
Speaker 1: then that gives you a better idea of how far
Speaker 1: you can go based upon a certain amount of fuel.
Speaker 1: And it's also when you're comparing vehicles that makes it
Speaker 1: pretty easy. But what does the e p A do
Speaker 1: well Technically, it does one of two things. Either will
Speaker 1: test a vehicle at its National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions
Speaker 1: Laboratory in vf e L, which is an an arbor Michigan. UH.
Speaker 1: It will either put a vehicle through tests there, or
Speaker 1: they will also accept vehicle manufacturers data on the subject.
Speaker 1: So if the manufacturer has done its own tests and
Speaker 1: the data, they can send the data into the e
Speaker 1: p A, and the e p A will use that
Speaker 1: and its rating. What happens if they're not entirely truthful.
Speaker 1: That's a good question, and I don't have the answer
Speaker 1: to it. I would I would suspend. I'm hoping that
Speaker 1: they that they only accept data of a certain scientific rigor.
Speaker 1: I would imagine, so, although I cannot that, I am
Speaker 1: fairly certain. And that's well at any rate in the
Speaker 1: United States anyway, particularly in well not everywhere, but many
Speaker 1: places the United States, you have to do what are
Speaker 1: called emissions testing, where you are making sure that your
Speaker 1: vehicle emissions are within certain parameters. And UH, I would
Speaker 1: suspect that if a lot of vehicles were testing outside
Speaker 1: of it of a particular make and models. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's that's related to malls pre Gallant. It's not analogous
Speaker 1: to it. It's not exactly the same thing, but any anyway,
Speaker 1: So the e p a UH uses this information not
Speaker 1: only to put on the stickers of cars, and by
Speaker 1: the way, those stickers have changed over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, they've been updated, and I'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in a second, But they also provide this information about
Speaker 1: the fuel economy to various other departments within the United
Speaker 1: States government. Some of them would be pretty easy for
Speaker 1: you to guess, like the Department of Energy. The Department
Speaker 1: of Energy uses those to create its annual Fuel Economy Guide.
Speaker 1: They also send this information to the Department of Transportation,
Speaker 1: which uses this information to create its Corporate Average Fuel
Speaker 1: Economy program I'll soon as Cafe CF and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a little accent over it, so who knows. And
Speaker 1: then of course they send it off to everyone's favorite
Speaker 1: governmental agency in the entire world, Internal Revenue RS. That's
Speaker 1: for their gas guzzler taxes programs where they get taxed
Speaker 1: more if you're having a vehicle that is not very efficient. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of different incentives to getting
Speaker 1: a fuel efficient car, one of which is just that
Speaker 1: you don't want to spend so much money whenever you
Speaker 1: have to go to the to the gas station, right,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to go frequently. Even if
Speaker 1: you hate the planet Earth, You've actually got a totally good,
Speaker 1: selfish reason to want to get really good fuel economy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to refuel all the time.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be some kind of environmentalists to
Speaker 1: to really want to maximize milesburg Allen. Sure. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: you want to be able to to stretch your dollar
Speaker 1: as far as it will go, right in the United States,
Speaker 1: But assuming you don't hate the Earth, well, assuming you
Speaker 1: don't hate the Earth, you'll also want to be very
Speaker 1: economic with your fuel consumption to produce fewer greenhouse gases,
Speaker 1: to also create less demand in general for fuel, because
Speaker 1: that causes you know that that's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: energy that's just put into getting fuel, refining fuel, getting
Speaker 1: it to the place where it needs to be. There's
Speaker 1: also from a national perspective, there is a a an
Speaker 1: incentive to reduce our dependence upon foreign oil politically. Politically, yes,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of purposes reasons there, and
Speaker 1: you know, granted that's been changing a lot recently anyway,
Speaker 1: with different techniques for getting oil out of the ground.
Speaker 1: But all of these factor into reasons why fuel economy
Speaker 1: is a big deal, from the very personal to the
Speaker 1: global scale. So the way they do this is they
Speaker 1: test out these vehicles in this facility and they try
Speaker 1: two different general styles of driving, which have undergone some
Speaker 1: tweaking over the years as Bull's driving habits in general
Speaker 1: have changed. Keep in mind, all of this is very
Speaker 1: very generalized. The individual driving style is going to determine
Speaker 1: a lot about the fuel economy of a specific vehicle
Speaker 1: more than just these tests. So Lauren could be driving, uh,
Speaker 1: the exact same type of car that Joe drives, but
Speaker 1: both of your driving styles may be very different, so
Speaker 1: your actual experience of how frequently you need to refuel
Speaker 1: could also be different. It also depends, I mean, because
Speaker 1: because I think, Jonathan, that you're about to talk about
Speaker 1: highway versus city driving, and and that also depends highly
Speaker 1: on um. I mean, you know, what you would consider
Speaker 1: a highway here in Atlanta, you perhaps would not reach
Speaker 1: the speeds that sometimes of day that you would reach
Speaker 1: on a highway in any other place on the planet
Speaker 1: besides Los Angeles. Well, Los Angeles and Atlanta have a
Speaker 1: lot in common as far as the driving habits are concerned.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean it's in general. The way they
Speaker 1: define this, it's it's called city versus highway. But really
Speaker 1: what they mean is with highway driving, it's you're the
Speaker 1: idea that you're traveling at what the speed limit would
Speaker 1: be on your typical highway, at cruising speed without a
Speaker 1: lot of acceleration or deceleration or breaking. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: your engine would be operating at a consistent level for
Speaker 1: a prolonged period of time. How many miles pre gallon
Speaker 1: would you get in that set of circumstances. That's so
Speaker 1: that's highway miles, and those, of course tend to be greater.
Speaker 1: I mean they are. They are greater than city miles,
Speaker 1: because what city miles are. That's the idea of if
Speaker 1: you're driving around in an area where you do have
Speaker 1: to decelerate or accelerate depending upon you know, traffic lights,
Speaker 1: traffic itself, stop signs, that kind of thing. Um, whether
Speaker 1: you're going to be using the brakes a lot, whether
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a lot of idle time. So let's
Speaker 1: say that you come up to a stop stop light
Speaker 1: where you're gonna be sitting there for about thirty seconds
Speaker 1: just running your engine with your brakes to press down.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. That ends up consuming fuel. So your city
Speaker 1: miles are always fewer than your highway miles. But they
Speaker 1: test this in laboratory additions. So first of all, it's
Speaker 1: not directly analogous to what you are going to experience
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis driving your vehicle. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you're driving your vehicle, whether it's in Atlanta, which
Speaker 1: can be a traffic nightmare for anyone who has traveled
Speaker 1: through our beautiful city, or someplace where the traffic is
Speaker 1: considered to be pretty light and well managed, it's still
Speaker 1: going to be different than what you see on that sticker.
Speaker 1: You might have a little sticker shock when you start
Speaker 1: actually figuring out how many miles prell in your car
Speaker 1: quote unquote really gets compared to what it says on
Speaker 1: the sticker. But that depends both on the real world
Speaker 1: situation you're in and you're driving habits. Now, back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, the e p A and the
Speaker 1: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration redesigned the miles per gallon
Speaker 1: stickers on cars. So if you haven't bought a car
Speaker 1: recently or haven't been shopping for a car recently. The
Speaker 1: stickers will look a little different to you now, depending
Speaker 1: upon if they've rolled them out yet or not. They were.
Speaker 1: I think they began in all model year cars. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but but I think that was a It wasn't. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if it was mandatory. It was not mandatory.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things that people that manufacturers
Speaker 1: and dealerships could opt into doing, and more and more
Speaker 1: are doing that because it tends to reflect well in sales.
Speaker 1: But generally the stickers now have lots of stuff on
Speaker 1: there besides just these two numbers. So originally you would see,
Speaker 1: you know, the highway highway miles per gallon and the
Speaker 1: city miles per gallon. Now it goes into things like
Speaker 1: a comparison of the energy use and cost between uh
Speaker 1: that particular vehicle and a typical gasoline powered vehicle the average.
Speaker 1: So take all the vehicles across the entire line average
Speaker 1: that out, that would compare your vehicle, the vehicle you're
Speaker 1: looking at, versus that that hypothetical average vehicle. So and
Speaker 1: the amount of of savings specifically in fuel that you
Speaker 1: would assuming that you would get that because you could
Speaker 1: have you could have a you could be looking at
Speaker 1: a vehicle that falls below this average, in which case
Speaker 1: you would see that there's a deficit there um. But
Speaker 1: it would give you the idea of UH, how it
Speaker 1: matches up against this sort of hypothetical average vehicle. It
Speaker 1: would also give you estimates on how much you'll save
Speaker 1: UH per year on fuel costs compared to this average vehicle.
Speaker 1: So it might say, you know, if you were to
Speaker 1: buy this, you would save two thousand dollars per year
Speaker 1: on fuel costs or eight thousand dollars per year. It
Speaker 1: all depends on what kind of vehicle you're looking at.
Speaker 1: It also gives ratings on how your vehicle compares to
Speaker 1: others when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, which again,
Speaker 1: if you're environmentally conscious, that could be a very important
Speaker 1: component to buying a car. There also will give an
Speaker 1: estimate of how much fuel or electricity it requires to
Speaker 1: drive one miles, So this is more similar to the
Speaker 1: approach you were talking about about the leaders to a
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers. This would give you an idea of how
Speaker 1: how many how much gas do you need to go
Speaker 1: one hundred miles or how much of a charge does
Speaker 1: it take to go a hundred miles? So you can
Speaker 1: kind of make that determination of is this vehicle efficient
Speaker 1: for the way I use vehicles. If I go on
Speaker 1: a lot of cross country trips, Uh, an electric vehicle
Speaker 1: may not be very Uh, it might not be a
Speaker 1: good decision for me, just because the way that I
Speaker 1: would need to recharge it. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: would be able to hit enough recharging stations, and the
Speaker 1: recharging time it takes to get back to a full
Speaker 1: charge might mean that a different kind of vehicle would
Speaker 1: be better for me. But if I do a lot
Speaker 1: of short trips in a city, an electric vehicle may
Speaker 1: make perfect sense. So these are the sort of things
Speaker 1: that allow you to make those kind of decisions with
Speaker 1: as much information as possible. It also gives you the
Speaker 1: idea of the driving range information for electric vehicles, plus
Speaker 1: the actual amount of time it takes to charge one
Speaker 1: to full charge from empty. And uh, like you said, Lauren,
Speaker 1: the labels began to roll out late into It's still
Speaker 1: being adopted in some places and some places it may
Speaker 1: not have been adopted yet. But if you see one
Speaker 1: of these, that's what you know. That's what this is
Speaker 1: all about is to give the consumer more information when
Speaker 1: it comes to few economy, and of course things have
Speaker 1: made that more complicated. Everything from hybrid cars and electric
Speaker 1: vehicles have made this a very difficult conversation to have
Speaker 1: in some ways because we don't all we're not all
Speaker 1: using the same power source, right, We're not all using
Speaker 1: the same sort of fuel, So that makes it a
Speaker 1: little tricky when you're starting to try and make comparisons. Right,
Speaker 1: what is a gallon of gas compared to the output
Speaker 1: of electricity from a nuclear power plant? For this is
Speaker 1: a coal power plant. Are you are you charging your
Speaker 1: car at peak our journey? Yeah? Sure, yeah. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of different factors. It makes it pretty complex,
Speaker 1: so I can understand why this is a confusing subject.
Speaker 1: But even if you're just looking at miles per gallon,
Speaker 1: that alone gets pretty confusing. That also ties into a
Speaker 1: tool I wanted to mention, the instant miles per gallon readout,
Speaker 1: which is also known as an instant fuel consumption display
Speaker 1: or instant fuel economy gauge. Now, if you've ever driven
Speaker 1: a hybrid vehicle, you've seen one of these, because they're
Speaker 1: standard and just about re hybrid vehicle. I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: This is. This is what tells you how much gas
Speaker 1: you are consuming at the current moment, at that precise moment.
Speaker 1: I've seen even non hybrid vehicles. Sure, there are non
Speaker 1: hybrid vehicles that have it's just that you find them
Speaker 1: in all hybrid vehicles at this point as far as
Speaker 1: I know. But yeah, this is starting to become something
Speaker 1: that you'll see in other vehicles as well. Uh. In
Speaker 1: fact that I've driven, well, I've written in a couple
Speaker 1: of vehicles. At least I don't drive, so I am
Speaker 1: the wrong person to talk about the personal experience. But
Speaker 1: how these work. They actually have lots of different sensors,
Speaker 1: and the sensors are all collecting data on various things
Speaker 1: that are going on inside your car. For example, the
Speaker 1: how hard your engine is working. Their sensors that measure
Speaker 1: that and factor that. There are sensors that measure the
Speaker 1: fuel flow rate through the fuel lines of your vehicle.
Speaker 1: There are manifold pressure uh sensors. Now, your manifold, in
Speaker 1: case you don't know, the intake manifold is a series
Speaker 1: of tubes that distributes air into your engine so that
Speaker 1: it can mix with the fuel so that it will combust.
Speaker 1: How are you laughing at joke? A series of tubes.
Speaker 1: It's not the Internet. It's not the Internet. It's a
Speaker 1: totally different series of tubes. Um, But no, it is.
Speaker 1: It is a series of tubes. It's you know, these
Speaker 1: tubes open or clothes, depending upon the cycle that your
Speaker 1: engine is in, because in some cycles it needs to
Speaker 1: take an air and the rest of them you do
Speaker 1: not want those to be open. But it will measure
Speaker 1: the manifold pressure. There are other sensors that will measure
Speaker 1: the throttle position of the vehicle. And there is a
Speaker 1: central computer that takes in all this information that's been
Speaker 1: gathered up by the sensors and then calculates how much
Speaker 1: fuel is being consumed at that exact moment, sending that
Speaker 1: information to some sort of display that is easily readable
Speaker 1: uh for the driver. Uh. And this will give you
Speaker 1: an instant look at what what your your car is
Speaker 1: doing at that time. And in fact, if you have
Speaker 1: a vehicle in the United States anyway, if you have
Speaker 1: a vehicle that was manufactured after but does not have
Speaker 1: one of these, it's very easy to get one installed.
Speaker 1: Because any vehicle manufactured after that year sold in the
Speaker 1: US had to have as part of it an onboard
Speaker 1: diagnostic system or the O b D two. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is essentially a computer on your in your car that
Speaker 1: it's monitoring everything that's going on in your engine and
Speaker 1: et cetera. Exactly. Yeah, So if your engine check engine
Speaker 1: light comes on, that's because something has been detected by
Speaker 1: this on board system and it tells the light to
Speaker 1: come on, which of course tells you to put a
Speaker 1: piece of tape over that light. Uh. The but no,
Speaker 1: you can have you can have one of these gauges
Speaker 1: connected to that system. I would not do this myself
Speaker 1: because I am not a car guy. I would actually
Speaker 1: have someone else do it for me. But I have
Speaker 1: been told that it's one of those relatively easy things
Speaker 1: to do for yourself if you're if you're the handy type,
Speaker 1: I am not, so I would. I would leave that
Speaker 1: to someone who is much more confident in their abilities
Speaker 1: to work with the car without ruining it at any rate.
Speaker 1: So you can get these that are standard with your vehicle,
Speaker 1: some of them are optional with vehicles, and of course
Speaker 1: there are aftermarket solutions like I just said, and this
Speaker 1: will give you that instant look at what your car
Speaker 1: is doing. So if you think of the e p
Speaker 1: A numbers as kind of like climate and the instant
Speaker 1: gauge as being weather. That's kind of the idea here,
Speaker 1: Like the climate is sort of the long term, that's
Speaker 1: what you can expect as sort of the average under
Speaker 1: average conditions. The instant gauge gives you exactly what's happening
Speaker 1: at that moment and can even tell you what which
Speaker 1: of your behaviors as a driver are contributing to fuel consumption. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm you know. Part of it is just that it's
Speaker 1: making you more self aware of what you're doing, the
Speaker 1: same way that that wearing a fitness tracker, it's going
Speaker 1: to make you more self aware of your movement. And um,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's part of what that entire switch from
Speaker 1: miles per gallon to gallons per mile thought is about
Speaker 1: researchers at Duke who had had an argument while car
Speaker 1: pooling in a hybrid car put together a study true
Speaker 1: backed they did, um, put put together a study and
Speaker 1: found that when you express things as gallons per one miles,
Speaker 1: people are able to make a better judgment call about
Speaker 1: what car of of two, or or what kind of
Speaker 1: upgrade is going to be more I love that the
Speaker 1: reason that study was done is because some scientists had
Speaker 1: an argument in the car pool lane. That to me, like,
Speaker 1: that's how science has done. People. You get a bunch
Speaker 1: of scientists together, maybe get a drink until not if
Speaker 1: they're going to behind the wheel obviously, but you know,
Speaker 1: then they start getting in an argument. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: science happens. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: came about. Turn off the A C. Let him get
Speaker 1: a little cranky. Turning off the A C is one
Speaker 1: of the ways that you can save fuel. Did you
Speaker 1: look into So what are some ways that the average
Speaker 1: person can get better miles per gallon or gallons per
Speaker 1: mile or uh fuel ecout leaders per hundred kilometers. Let's
Speaker 1: just say fuel economy out of their standard car. For
Speaker 1: my sanity, let's say feel coconomy. Okay, well, you know,
Speaker 1: like like I said, air conditioning, and there is a
Speaker 1: little bit of buzz about you know, if if you're
Speaker 1: cruising around town and you have your windows rolled down
Speaker 1: and you accidentally form rhyme schemes while you're just talking
Speaker 1: in conversation, Um, that's not a necessary part of the equation.
Speaker 1: What would the drag from the open windows create uh
Speaker 1: more taxing energy than the A C unit. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you have the windows rolled up a C blasting,
Speaker 1: or you had the A C off but the windows
Speaker 1: rolled down and the drag affecting the car, is one
Speaker 1: more inefficient than the other. Basically, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: rolling around town, if you're if you're not getting up
Speaker 1: to highway speeds of say over fifty miles an hour,
Speaker 1: then go ahead roll your windows down and suffer, you know,
Speaker 1: enjoy the terrific air if you like to roll your
Speaker 1: windows down and have the A C blasting at fifty
Speaker 1: because then your villain and captain planets. That's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 1: He sludge, what were their names? He has had some
Speaker 1: words with me in the past. I'm forgetting entirely right now, Joe. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you're if you're idling for more than a minute,
Speaker 1: turning off your engine, it seems like it would be
Speaker 1: a drastic thing. But if you know that a stoplight,
Speaker 1: for example, is going to take more than more than
Speaker 1: a minute, and and that's that's getting a little bit
Speaker 1: into um. Something called a hyper miling, which I believe
Speaker 1: Joe is going to talk about in a seconds. That's
Speaker 1: also something that's going into the design of vehicles, and
Speaker 1: we can probably expect to see that rolled out over
Speaker 1: the next few years. A lot of more hybrid vehicles
Speaker 1: do this all the time, but a lot of other
Speaker 1: standard gasoline powered vehicles are starting to get into this
Speaker 1: start stop or idle stop mode where if the car
Speaker 1: detects that it's an idol, it'll end up shutting off
Speaker 1: the engine. When you depress the accelerator, it will cause
Speaker 1: the engine to come back on, and that way it
Speaker 1: will cut down on fuel consumption automatically. So right now
Speaker 1: you've got people who are doing this manually unless they
Speaker 1: happen to have one of the vehicles that like a
Speaker 1: hybrid that does this already. Uh. But soon it's not
Speaker 1: even going to be a manual thing. It's just gonna
Speaker 1: be built into various vehicles, right um uh. Furthermore, don't
Speaker 1: speed um cars. Cars gain efficiency up to about fifty
Speaker 1: five miles per hour, about eighty eight kilometers per hour,
Speaker 1: and after that they lose fuel efficiency. Um. It can
Speaker 1: be you know, for for another ten miles per hour,
Speaker 1: what's that kilometers per hour, you can lose like efficiency.
Speaker 1: According to the Department of energy. You Also, if you
Speaker 1: were to go fifty five miles per hour on an
Speaker 1: Atlanta highway, you would probably be run off the road. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, like obviously this is a thing that that
Speaker 1: you know, don't don't disobey traffic laws and don't get
Speaker 1: yourself killed in order to save fuel. That would that
Speaker 1: would not kind of defeats the purpose. No other basic
Speaker 1: stuff coasting too stops rather than accelerating into a red
Speaker 1: light and then breaking. Really sharply, I can't believe everybody
Speaker 1: does this. I ride with people who there's a red
Speaker 1: light up ahead and they're still pressing the gas. What's
Speaker 1: going on? It makes me very nervous or um or
Speaker 1: I don't say anything because I've been yelled at too
Speaker 1: many times. Or consider idling forward when you pull out
Speaker 1: rather than peeling out. Um quick acceleration is always going
Speaker 1: to be your your biggest gas guzzler. Remove excess baggage
Speaker 1: from your car if you've got, uh, you know, removing
Speaker 1: the kind of rule of thumb is that removing a
Speaker 1: hundred pounds or about forty of weight from your car
Speaker 1: will give it a boost of one in fuel economy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so don't just leave stuff laying around in
Speaker 1: your car if it doesn't need to be there right
Speaker 1: right got Um, Changing your air filter will not help uh,
Speaker 1: contrary to popular belief, unless your cars from before nine Um.
Speaker 1: But a tune up can improve mileage by about four
Speaker 1: percent and keep your keep Keeping your oil fresh and
Speaker 1: clean um and and of the right grade for your
Speaker 1: car can give you another efficient and a lot of
Speaker 1: the things we're talking about here will also help cut
Speaker 1: down on general maintenance fees as well if you're keeping
Speaker 1: your car in good condition. While you will have to
Speaker 1: endure regular costs to keep your car in good working order.
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you if you add those together,
Speaker 1: that's still less than what you have to do if
Speaker 1: you have to fix something, if something catastrophic happens. Right.
Speaker 1: That's also the case in terms of keeping your tires
Speaker 1: at the correct pressure. If you keep them at whatever
Speaker 1: the correct pressure is for your car, you can you
Speaker 1: can prevent like three fuel efficiency loss from drag. I.
Speaker 1: Of course, if you overinflate them, um, you can either
Speaker 1: pop them and cause a terrible accident or um it
Speaker 1: will make breaking harder and therefore um it will cancel
Speaker 1: it any benefit you might have had. Yeah, So so really, obviously,
Speaker 1: taking care of your car is one of the big things,
Speaker 1: and just trying to avoid being overly aggressive when you're
Speaker 1: driving is another. But there's some people who have really
Speaker 1: taken these techniques and extend them out to what one
Speaker 1: might say is a crazy level, right, Joe, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: these people are called hyper milers. They are people who
Speaker 1: want to get hyper miles, just ridiculous amounts of miles
Speaker 1: per gallon, totally unreasonable expectations for fuel economy and above
Speaker 1: and beyond what the e p A says. Right, A
Speaker 1: lot of what they do is based on the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff Lauren just said, which is totally reasonable. Uh So,
Speaker 1: a lot of it's about optimizing your car. You want
Speaker 1: to remove all unnecessary way. You want to keep the
Speaker 1: oil change, You want to keep the tire pressure optimal
Speaker 1: and especially balanced so it's not more on one side
Speaker 1: than the other. Um and to just slow down, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like she was saying, if every few miles
Speaker 1: per hour you go beyond fifty five or so, you're
Speaker 1: losing an incredible amount of efficiency. Um. So, stuff like
Speaker 1: that is reasonable. Other stuff not so much. Now I'm
Speaker 1: going to explain a few things here and do not
Speaker 1: take this as a queue to go try them. These
Speaker 1: are not personal recommendations. We have we have moved out
Speaker 1: of the recommendations part of the episode. Yeah. Much of
Speaker 1: this is frankly not safe. Um, and some of which
Speaker 1: isn't exactly dangerous, could be majorly annoying to other people
Speaker 1: on the road. Uh. Yeah. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that these guys talk about is uh coasting, and so
Speaker 1: coasting makes sense in one way. If you see up
Speaker 1: ahead there's a red light or something like that, you
Speaker 1: don't want to continue applying gas. You want to slow
Speaker 1: down and just coast. Another way of coasting, though, ties
Speaker 1: in with the thing they want to do, which is
Speaker 1: avoiding idling. So what you'll hear from a lot of
Speaker 1: these hyper miler hobbyists is that they will turn the
Speaker 1: gas off when they are going down here. Turn the
Speaker 1: gas off, turn the engine off. Do not do this, Okay.
Speaker 1: The police say that this is illegal in some places,
Speaker 1: and where it's not illegal, it's dangerous either way. Uh,
Speaker 1: you should not be trying to do this. But they'll
Speaker 1: find every chance they can, essentially to turn the engine
Speaker 1: off because when a car is in neutral usually it's idling,
Speaker 1: which means it's using gas and you're getting zero miles burgallon,
Speaker 1: and they don't like that. So if you're stuck at
Speaker 1: a train, or if you're say, going through a drive through. Now,
Speaker 1: typically hyper milers seem to hate drive throughs. You don't
Speaker 1: want to go through them. But if you do have
Speaker 1: to go through a drive through, what they're saying is
Speaker 1: turn your engine off while you're sitting at the drive
Speaker 1: through and just wait for the person ahead of you
Speaker 1: to go all the way through, and then you go
Speaker 1: after them, which is I'm sure makes you extremely popular
Speaker 1: with the people behind you. Um. There is another idea,
Speaker 1: which is um ridge riding. I'm not sure where this
Speaker 1: fits into the safety picture, but the idea goes like this.
Speaker 1: So every day on a standard road there might you know,
Speaker 1: there are thousands of cars that go by, and eventually
Speaker 1: they cause an erosion or deterioration in the parts of
Speaker 1: the lane where the tires usually fall. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of wearing away a little spot and it's creating depressions there.
Speaker 1: And so the idea of ridge riding is to ride
Speaker 1: in such a way that your tires do not you
Speaker 1: fall in the ruts made by most other cars and
Speaker 1: I think the idea is that if the road is
Speaker 1: at all wet, you'll avoid the friction created by puddles there,
Speaker 1: And if the road is not wet, you'll just generally
Speaker 1: cut down on the surface contact between your tire and
Speaker 1: the road. Your your car is a little offset from
Speaker 1: where the average car has traveled down that road. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the experts say about the safety
Speaker 1: of this. It sort of sounds weird to me because
Speaker 1: it sounds like they're saying you want to ride like
Speaker 1: off kilter of the lane. Yeah. I guess it would
Speaker 1: depend upon the width of the lane. If the lane
Speaker 1: is is particularly you know, there's some anyone who's had
Speaker 1: the pleasure of driving through Atlanta knows that lane with
Speaker 1: this kind of a variable. Yeah. It's it's sort of
Speaker 1: different things to different people, you know. Um, but Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some parts of Atlanta where you'll be in a
Speaker 1: lane and you're thinking this this this lane is like
Speaker 1: a car and a half wide, And there are other
Speaker 1: ones where you're thinking, I hope no one's coming the
Speaker 1: other way, because even though this is technically a two
Speaker 1: lane road, there's no space. Yeah. So I don't know
Speaker 1: for a fact that that one is a safety hazard,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't recommend it, right, I would say hold
Speaker 1: off and and let's wait till the facts are in. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: One that is absolutely not a good idea is known
Speaker 1: as drafting. Um. This is where say you're on the
Speaker 1: freeway and traffic is moving at seventy miles an hour
Speaker 1: and you want keep up with traffic and go quickly. Well,
Speaker 1: why don't you just get over right behind a big
Speaker 1: tractor trailer and and ride right up on his backside,
Speaker 1: Because then that cuts down on the air resistance. The
Speaker 1: tractor trailers doing all the work for you creates a
Speaker 1: slip stream, so it's sort of creating a cone of
Speaker 1: air resistance that goes around the truck, and you're not
Speaker 1: hitting it, so you're going just as fast, but with
Speaker 1: much less friction from the atmosphere. MythBusters actually did a
Speaker 1: segment on this where they tested it out to see
Speaker 1: if I think they said it works. They showed at
Speaker 1: least in their tests. Keep in mind that it's a
Speaker 1: MythBusters test, and I love the MythBusters, But you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that gives you an implication.
Speaker 1: You can't really think of it as necessarily scientifically rigorous,
Speaker 1: but there their experiments that they did were seemed to
Speaker 1: show that, yes, it was working. The only thing is
Speaker 1: that it is really dangerous things that if if someone
Speaker 1: in front of you breaks between between human human lapse
Speaker 1: time of of seeing and reacting and reacting, um is
Speaker 1: at least a second. Yeah, you become you become semi pete. Right,
Speaker 1: you're well, you're you're putting yourself in danger, You're putting
Speaker 1: other cars on the road in danger. It's just it's
Speaker 1: a really horrible idea. Don't do this, Yeah, good, good,
Speaker 1: good rule of them is is to have two seconds
Speaker 1: between you and whatever is in front of you on
Speaker 1: the highway. Yeah. I usually go with uh, I usually
Speaker 1: hear three. But it's the same sort of idea, the
Speaker 1: idea that you you look at something that the vehicle
Speaker 1: I have you has passed and start counting and if
Speaker 1: you got to if you didn't even get to two,
Speaker 1: you are a little too close. You need to back off. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: So some other things that are definitely not as dangerous
Speaker 1: as that, but uh, but maybe really annoying and obsessive
Speaker 1: involved the meticulous planning of routes. UM. So you learn
Speaker 1: exactly like, this route is ideal for the This is
Speaker 1: going to end up costing me the least amount of fuel,
Speaker 1: even if it's It might be a slightly longer route,
Speaker 1: but because there are fewer stops, that might mean that
Speaker 1: you get better fuel EFFICI Right, So if you if
Speaker 1: you go to like Google Maps or something and you
Speaker 1: ask them for directions, they're typically going to just give
Speaker 1: you the shortest route to get there, right, But that
Speaker 1: isn't always the most fuel efficient route because if you're
Speaker 1: if you have the choice of driving a longer route
Speaker 1: with no other traffic on the road versus a shorter
Speaker 1: route with a lot of red lights in traffic, the
Speaker 1: longer route is in many cases going to be more
Speaker 1: You're gonna use less gas doing it because you're gonna
Speaker 1: spend less time idling. You're gonna spend less time changing speeds.
Speaker 1: That's a big thing. You want to avoid changing speed.
Speaker 1: Keep your engine at a nice consistent level and it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to do a lot of work as it's
Speaker 1: shifting up or down. Right. Um, Hills can be a
Speaker 1: big thing to uh, ideally you'd want to just drive
Speaker 1: while ideally I guess you'd want to drive downhill all
Speaker 1: the way, but which you can do if you live
Speaker 1: in certain parts of San Francisco. The trouble is stopping.
Speaker 1: Um so a flat road is better than going over
Speaker 1: a bunch of hills. And then also there are even
Speaker 1: more they're they're crazier things that people really do consider,
Speaker 1: like cross winds and headwinds. Now, let me ask you
Speaker 1: something about this, Joe, because I mean, I have heard
Speaker 1: about hyper miling before this. Our our colleague Josh Clark
Speaker 1: wrote an article for How Stuff Works about how hyper
Speaker 1: miling works. He even and he chucked an episode of
Speaker 1: stuff you should know about it. Uh so, but I
Speaker 1: really didn't know much about it before I had heard
Speaker 1: them talk about it. To your knowledge, do you know
Speaker 1: if most people who are hyper milers are is that
Speaker 1: something they do consistently, Like this is something they do,
Speaker 1: This is a lifestyle choice for them that they do
Speaker 1: to in order to really conserve on fuel or is
Speaker 1: this one of those things that's more like I wonder
Speaker 1: how little fuel it will take me if I do
Speaker 1: all this stuff to do it like almost like bragging rights.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Well, I obviously I'm not deeply embedded
Speaker 1: in the hyper miler community. But I've done a little
Speaker 1: reading online and from what I see, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's like people who are really interested in, say the
Speaker 1: environment or saving money all the time. I think it's
Speaker 1: more often a hobbyist kind of thing, you know, like
Speaker 1: like like min maxing your character in a role playing game.
Speaker 1: Me think Stephen King's short story about finding the shortest
Speaker 1: shortcut between two points. It's a really good it's it's
Speaker 1: a really good short story anyway. Um, But you just
Speaker 1: think about all the things they go through. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I do think getting really good fuel efficiency is
Speaker 1: a cool thing to do if you show how to
Speaker 1: do it, and paying attention can make a big difference.
Speaker 1: But when you think about all the things they do,
Speaker 1: in some cases it's it's such minutia, you know, just
Speaker 1: these tiny little things this that you're adding up. You
Speaker 1: kind of have to think it has to be sort
Speaker 1: of an intentional in most cases at least an intentional
Speaker 1: lifestyle choice that that's sort of like a hobby. I mean,
Speaker 1: you think about like just the planning that goes into
Speaker 1: choosing a parking space. If you're a hyper miler, right,
Speaker 1: say you want to go park at some department store, Well,
Speaker 1: you don't actually want to park close to the door,
Speaker 1: because the time you spend looking for a parking space
Speaker 1: is going to be uh, fuel wasted while you're idling
Speaker 1: or waiting for somebody to back out, or trying to
Speaker 1: get around where people are walking. Instead, what you probably
Speaker 1: want to do is like find the closest possible parking
Speaker 1: space to the entrance of the parking lot that faces outwards,
Speaker 1: so that you don't have to back out of the
Speaker 1: space when you're leaving. It makes me think like if
Speaker 1: you were to call up someone who was really serious
Speaker 1: into this and say, hey, I was thinking about catching
Speaker 1: a movie, you'd get an answer like, cool, I've run
Speaker 1: the numbers. Uh. January seven, at one m p m.
Speaker 1: Is when we'll go. All the traffic lights they're gonna align.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to be playing, but that's
Speaker 1: why when we're gonna go. Yeah. And then from a
Speaker 1: from a money perspective, at a certain point, it sounds
Speaker 1: like your time could be better used in collecting aluminum cans.
Speaker 1: It comes down to that idea of of the people
Speaker 1: who will go to incredible lengths to get out of
Speaker 1: doing something and they end up expending way more energy
Speaker 1: and getting out of doing it than they would have
Speaker 1: been just done it. Yeah. Yeah, like mega couponors or
Speaker 1: something like that. So I don't know. I think maybe
Speaker 1: there are some people who do this out of you know,
Speaker 1: something about about pollution or saving money. But but I
Speaker 1: think in many cases it's just like a it's a
Speaker 1: cool thing to figure out. Yeah, like I was able
Speaker 1: to go fifty nine miles on a single gallon of gas,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, and you know
Speaker 1: not to Obviously, fuel economy is something that we are
Speaker 1: actually concerned about. It's just one of those things where
Speaker 1: there's there's always extremes, right, uh. Interesting, I mean, just
Speaker 1: remember all the stuff we engine that's reasonable and safe
Speaker 1: by all means. Do it. Sure, it's gonna help. It's
Speaker 1: gonna save you money, it's gonna save fuel, it's gonna
Speaker 1: help save just yeah, just don't turn your engine off
Speaker 1: while you're driving, and don't tailgate or tractor trailer. Right
Speaker 1: Wait until those those uh at least the start stop
Speaker 1: thing becomes a standard part of most vehicles, because then
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about handling all that manually.
Speaker 1: It'll be done for you. Um. So I was gonna
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some of the the stuff
Speaker 1: that goes into engineering better fuel economy, especially moving forward.
Speaker 1: Part of that is just coming up with new materials
Speaker 1: to build cars out of stuff that's more lightweight, because
Speaker 1: clearly the heavier vehicle is, the more work the engine
Speaker 1: has to do to move it, and therefore the more
Speaker 1: fuel it needs to consume in order to generate the
Speaker 1: power necessary to move that vehicle. So if you're able
Speaker 1: to make lighter vehicles, it takes less fuel to move them.
Speaker 1: Not not tough to figure out. The government. The United
Speaker 1: States government has put fuel economy standards at fifty four
Speaker 1: and a half off miles per gallon by which is
Speaker 1: pretty that's a pretty big jump from where we are
Speaker 1: right now. A lot of this is gonna be you know,
Speaker 1: will be helped by things like hybrid vehicles electric vehicles. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, you're talking about totally different set of standards there,
Speaker 1: but hybrid vehicles UH end up consuming far less fuel than,
Speaker 1: uh than a traditional gasoline only powered vehicle. UH. There's
Speaker 1: also the talk about using smaller turbocharged engines with a
Speaker 1: lot of electric accessories to take the load off of
Speaker 1: needing to burn more fuel, the idle stop features. We
Speaker 1: have already mentioned, lots of developments in transmissions, going to
Speaker 1: multi speed or continuously variable transmissions so that the engine
Speaker 1: has uh to make fewer big steps whenever you are
Speaker 1: putting increased or decreased demand upon the engine. So instead
Speaker 1: of it shifting, you know, instead of having five speeds,
Speaker 1: maybe it has a hundred speeds. It's just that they're
Speaker 1: all so so narrow that the engine doesn't have to
Speaker 1: do a lot of to switch from one to the next.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the looking at some other future
Speaker 1: fuel potential. There's still this idea that may come about
Speaker 1: and may become a real viable thing of fuel cell vehicles.
Speaker 1: Right now, fuel cell vehicles are there, are there are some.
Speaker 1: There are quite a few depending upon certain industries, but
Speaker 1: very few for consumer uh uses because we don't have
Speaker 1: a hydrogen fuel infrastructure out there, so it's really hard
Speaker 1: to refuel. You know, fuel cell ends up combining hydrogen
Speaker 1: and oxygen. Well, there are multiple different types of fuel cells,
Speaker 1: but the kind we usually talk about with cars uses
Speaker 1: hydrogen and oxygen. There's an electrochemical reaction where you harness
Speaker 1: the electricity given off and then your output is electricity, heat,
Speaker 1: and water. So that's what you generate. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about generating other greenhouse gases
Speaker 1: besides water. Vapor which is a greenhouse gas and a
Speaker 1: powerful one, but also can go right into the water cycle.
Speaker 1: But there's potential for that to actually come of age
Speaker 1: in the next few years. That's gonna take a lot
Speaker 1: of work. I mean, you're talking about building out an
Speaker 1: entire infrastructure to support a fleet of vehicles for a
Speaker 1: nation as large as the United States. That's a multibillion
Speaker 1: dollar effort you're talking about. But it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it won't happen. It just means that it's very expensive
Speaker 1: and it's going to be Uh. It's it's not gonna
Speaker 1: be an easy, easy road to go down. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: about the pun I didn't intended when I started. A
Speaker 1: little sorry. There's also the development maybe we go back
Speaker 1: to using more diesel vehicles that are running on biofuels. Uh.
Speaker 1: We do use some biofuel in gasoline powered vehicles, ethanol,
Speaker 1: for example, but bio diesel is something that could also
Speaker 1: be uh an alternative. It may not mean that everyone
Speaker 1: will be driving it, but it might become a viable option,
Speaker 1: or algae powered cars. Yeah sure, yeah, no, it's switch
Speaker 1: grass powered cars, you know, this kind of idea. And
Speaker 1: also just improvements in aerodynamic design cutting down on air
Speaker 1: resistance can really help on fuel economy as well. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's not something you can do with your vehicle once
Speaker 1: you bought it at you just want to add as
Speaker 1: many spoilers as possible. Also, paint your vehicle read because
Speaker 1: everyone knows the red ones go faster. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: those are your general approaches. Like there may be something,
Speaker 1: you know, monumental that gets developed over the next few
Speaker 1: years that really affects fuel economy, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: we're looking at small incremental improvements that can be seriously
Speaker 1: boosted by consumer behavior. So this is something that you
Speaker 1: really can have a personal effect on that that's going
Speaker 1: to you're you'll see it reflected in things like how
Speaker 1: much money you're spending per month on fuel. So it's
Speaker 1: a good thing to to talk about. You guys, have
Speaker 1: anything else you want to add about fuel economy. I
Speaker 1: predict to the cars of the future will be powered
Speaker 1: by winged pegasy is that that draw them with leather straps? Excellent?
Speaker 1: I look forward to that. On a molecular level, I
Speaker 1: completely agree with you, molecular Pegass. I was totally down
Speaker 1: with Mr Fusion, but I guess I'm outvoted Pegasus. It
Speaker 1: is all right. So guys, if you agree with Joe's
Speaker 1: assertion that soon mythological creatures will power all of our vehicles,
Speaker 1: let us know so I can put you on a list.
Speaker 1: I didn't say all, Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. Don't
Speaker 1: mean to put words Toro. Alright, So guys, if you
Speaker 1: have anything you would like to add to this conversation,
Speaker 1: go to f w thinking dot com. That is the
Speaker 1: website where you're gonna find all of forward thinking. We've
Speaker 1: got videos, we've got blog posts, we've got podcasts, we've
Speaker 1: got articles. We've got a lot of great stuff there
Speaker 1: that you can need to check out, and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. We're more on this
Speaker 1: topic in the future of technology. This is forward thinking
Speaker 1: dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places.