Hypermiling secrets to extend your fuel efficiency

Welcome to the latest edition of Rev, Lyft’s guide to the ideas, people, and technologies driving the transportation revolution.?

Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, U.S. automakers have been required to meet fuel efficiency minimums set by the government — designed to improve the country’s energy security, economy, and the environment. In more recent years, top officials including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have openly stressed the importance of improving vehicle fuel efficiency as a means of combating climate change.?

But progress doesn’t only come from making new, more efficient gas-powered vehicles. Enter the hypermilers, people who make a hobby — a quest, really — of extending the fuel efficiency of existing cars far beyond the advertised specs. Read on to learn how they do it, and tips you can use to bump up your own ride’s MPG.?

In this issue:

• Tricks from hypermilers to help you use less gas
• The top 10 most popular cars on the Lyft platform
• The key to increasing the number of EVs on the road?

The following is republished from one5c, a biweekly climate action newsletter. You can subscribe here.?

Hypermiling is the pursuit of getting more miles per unit of energy than a vehicle ordinarily delivers. Hypermilers compete with one another to see who can extract the most distance out of a full tank or battery, often going to extreme lengths to break records. A regular person shouldn’t try to match those pros, but some of their base-level techniques can help anyone increase their vehicle’s efficiency by up to 20 percent. As they say, your mileage may vary. (Sorry, had to).

This level of savings could have a staggering impact. In the U.S., our vehicles burn around 135 billion gallons of gasoline per year. If we could cut that by 20 percent, we’d save 27 billion gallons, which produces around 240 million metric tons of planet-warming CO2. On an individual level, too, the savings would be substantial: If you drove only 10 percent more efficiently in an average 36-mile-per-gallon vehicle, you’d save nearly 40 gallons of gas in a year.

One oft-overlooked area? Tire pressure. “Tire pressures are so important,” says Kevin Booker, a hypermiler who, together with teammates, won a Guinness World Record for lowest energy consumption while driving a Ford Mustang Mach-E across Great Britain from top to bottom. “So many people don’t check them.” Sure, it may be a pain to navigate the quarter-hungry machine at the gas station, but it’s worth it. A drop in pressure of a single psi can increase your rolling resistance by more than a full percentage point.?

That’s just one example. When you optimize for fuel efficiency, it changes how you approach everything about your car —?from the trunk to traffic lights.?

Read more tips from the hypermiling experts here.?

Rideshare is saving the sedan

Two decades ago, sedans “used to rule the road,” says Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds. Every highway and byway, it seemed, were filled with Ford Tauruses, Toyota Camrys, and Honda Civics. In the mid-2000s, though, larger cars began to take over. Trucks. SUVs. Crossover vehicles. By 2021, eight of the ten most popular cars were SUVs or trucks.?

But there’s still one group of drivers that love sedans — those who drive with Lyft. In fact, sedans represent nine of the top ten vehicles used by rideshare drivers on the Lyft platform (determined by their percentage of the total miles for all vehicle types driven on Lyft). The Camry is the most popular, but old chestnuts like the Altima, Sentra, and Elantra all make an appearance on the list as well.?

"Drivers who use Lyft overwhelmingly prefer sedans, which makes sense, given the fact that they get better gas mileage,” says Britt Mott, Lyft’s Head of Driver Education, Success and Product Operations.

Read more about diverging trends in driver preferences here.

This is the key to getting more EVs on the road

EVs hit a new sales record in the U.S. last year, up 65% from the year before to make up 5.8% of total cars sold. Still, that number needs to get a lot higher to hit our climate goals.?

One thing holding back prospective buyers? Range anxiety. Drivers are still nervous about running out of juice while on the go. In a new video, Rev’s editor-in-chief Jason Tanz explains various ways we can conquer these fears and get more people driving EVs. Watch it above.?

That’s all for this week! Thanks for subscribing.?

Ride smart, ride safe,

— Rev staff

This content provided in this newsletter is for informational purposes only. Lyft makes no representations as to the accuracy and completeness of information provided in this newsletter, and unless otherwise stated, Lyft is not affiliated with any businesses or organizations mentioned above.