Hypermiling is the name that has been given to a new collection of driving strategies, all designed to greatly increase gas mileage. While it has been argued that by some that these are great, fuel efficient tricks that everyone should be doing, some would argue that they’re impractical, dangerous, and in a couple cases, illegal. Some of these strategies involve overinflating tires, riding the ridge of the road, potential parking, decreasing the overall weight of the car, and drafting behind semi trucks.
The first trick involves over-inflating the car’s tires. By doing this, the driver intends to decrease the friction between the ground and the car’s tires by decreasing the amount of contact the tires have. The less friction there is, the
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It involves riding along the “ridges” outside of the grooves formed by tires wearing down the road over time. It follows the same idea as overinflating tires, decreasing the friction between the road and the tires, but without the potential danger of over inflation. This method is safer, and easy for all drivers to do, even if they aren’t dedicated hypermilers.
The third tip hypermilers have is to utilize potential parking. This is the term given to parking your car in an area like a parking lot on an inclined plane. They use the gravitational potential energy from the height to allow their car to roll forward with the engine off when they wish to leave. Not only is this unsafe when other vehicles are around, it could be illegal as well, as the driver is unable to use their brakes with the car’s engine off.
Another technique is as simple as reducing the car’s overall weight. The amount of work the car does depends on how much weight the car has. The equation for work is force exerted multiplied by distance traveled. The weight determines how high the force is, with more weight yielding a larger force. So, if the car has less weight, less force is exerted, meaning the car does less work, decreasing the amount of fuel used. Weight can be reduced by taking out any unnecessary junk from the car, and can be done by everyone who drives, making it a very easy strategy to