A mild attempt at hypermiling my 1995 BMW 540i

shawnbaden — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:24:38 +0000

For those of you that don’t know, hypermiling means to drive with the sole purpose of achieving the maximum MPG possible (safety permitting of course). To satisfy my curiosity, the past week I’ve made an attempt at hypermiling with my 1995 BMW 540i. Crazy huh? I simply employed some basic techniques such as depressing the accelerator as little as possible (a maximum of 1 inch was the guideline I tried to follow), coasting whenever possible, and using the cruise control a lot. I also kept my trips consistent as best I could – just to work and back, no freeway miles. The results? Unfortunately I didn’t take a very good measurement of my MPG before trying this but the best I remember from my on-board computer is 16.3 MPG. I suspect a more accurate figure would be 15 MPG. The first day of hypermiling turned in a solid 20.5 MPG thanks to being very focused. The next couple days I dropped to 19.5 MPG. And finally after getting a a bit more aggressive I ended the week at 19.1 MPG. Nothing scientific but about a 20% increase.

So what’s my verdict? First of all, having an instantaneous MPG gauge and on-board computer to calculate ongoing MPG is almost a must because you need the constant feedback to know what’s working and by how much. I tried some of the techniques in my wife’s 1999 Honda CR-V but missed the MPG readings. Another thing is that I suspect an automatic would make things much easier – rowing through 6 gears, shifting at 1500 RPM is a lot of rowing. I found accelerating slowly in the CR-V much easier. Lastly, driving slow isn’t much fun. I don’t see myself becoming a hypermiler but I will employ the techniques to some extent.

For more information and techniques, check out hypermiling.com.

Shawn Baden » E34

A mild attempt at hypermiling my 1995 BMW 540i