Hypermiling in my GTD

[Dave the Cat]

With fuel prices becoming so low of date, maybe discussions about MPG has become a little less topical... however I came across the technique of Hypermiling and have been giving it a go over the last week.

My average commute of 43 miles, mainly against the traffic on M25 from J17-23 and A1M to J9 has gone up from about 47ish to 51ish in a manual GTD. 

I think Pulse and Glide, or Burn and Coast provides the biggest improvement.

I’m no engineer but I believe that these engines are more efficient under load than they are just maintaining a given speed. Therefore where possible and conditions permit (without bothering others) accelerate to just over 70 and then coast to about 60 in 6th then potentially change down and boost again for a few seconds, and repeat. You coast furthest in a high gear above 1000rpm, and obviously all this coasting in gear above tick over revs is free.

Also try to time as much of the costing to uphill sections and mainting the boost for downhills, just as you would if you were on a push bike. 

See http://www.hypermiler.co.uk/hypermiling/hypermiling-techniques

and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-efficient_driving#Pulse_and_Glide

This could all be complete rubbish, but it appears to work for me – be happy to hear any others experience or comments.

[fredgroves]

Hypermiling all sounds a little anal to me

The accelerate and coast thing seems to be how I drive my GTD on (moving) A roads and I get consistently better MPG from those sort of roads than blasting down the motorway - which whilst that kinda does make sense in terms of speed and drag, this is my first car where an A road is actually more fuel efficient!

[monkeyhanger]

When you put your foot down in the GTD, the mpg seems to dip noticeably more than any of the other 6 TDIs I’ve had, but it’s also quicker to recover when hard acceleration is followed by a period of low load cruising when you get up to your desired speed. The earlier PD units seemed to offer very similar mpg between trips whether you drove it like a nun or a nutter.