Quote:
Originally Posted by strat61caster
Shift points have much less to do with fuel economy than how much time you spend accelerating, slowing down and idling and how you perform those tasks. Even a Prius gets shit mileage when you treat the pedals like on off switches.
You can redline in every gear to get up to the desired speed but if you drop it into a high gear and set the cruise control with the rpms <3,000 over a long period you'll get great fuel economy.
Since you're constrained to city driving it's going to be tough, you need to be very smooth with your foot inputs, accelerate briskly but not quickly, it's better to get to cruising speed sooner rather than later as you're wasting gas stretching out the acceleration time. I've heard before that you should pretend that there's an egg between your foot and the pedals, the metaphor is a little silly but it gets the point across: gentleness.
The biggest gains will be slowing down, coast in gear as much as possible, anticipate traffic as far in advance as you can and minimize your brake usage, downshift through to second to get maximum coasting in gear. By doing this the fuel injectors shut off meaning you're burning basically no fuel.
I'm sure you've figured out the obvious tips, not zipping between lanes doing 5+ kmh over the limit and all that, you can try drafting as well but at city speeds (<55km/h) the gains are small compared to 100+km/h on the freeways.
Good luck and honestly you aren't doing so poorly that I'd worry something is wrong with the car, sounds like you spend a lot of time idling and that's just a consequence of your situation, anything you drive will fall short of the average expectations (the 28mpg mixed vs ~21 mpg city)
|
I will idle less, that's my next test. I think the car starter is taking my gas away lol (I'm in Canada).
I don't understand what you mean by accelerate briskly but not quickly. You are saying to accelerate kind of quickly or not?
How should I coast?