Want to double your fuel economy?

Without a doubt, there are many gimmicks and suggestions for improving your fuel economy, more-so now than ever due to the recent increase in US fuel prices. Some of the gimmicks and suggestions work great, some work only marginally, and others don't work at all. One that is guaranteed to double your fuel economy is carpooling (when compared to driving alone).



Roughly 99% of the cars I see on the freeway or on the road in general have only one person in the car. If you put another person in the car, you double the efficiency of the car, thus doubling your fuel economy. For example, let's take your average Toyota Corolla. We'll pick that car because right now I'm sitting on the bus in the express lane passing one that only has one driver in it. (Yes, that's right, I'm posting this using the free wi-fi that's available on the bus). If you have one person in that Toyota Corolla, the car is getting around 30 p-mpg (passenger-miles per gallon). Meaning you have one passenger multiplied by the miles per gallon. If you put just one more person in that car, the fuel economy jumps to 60 p-mpg because you now have 2 people multiplied by the miles per gallon (2x30 = 60). Put a third person in the car and you get 90 p-mpg, and so forth. Carpooling is the best thing you can do right now to lighten your wallet when it comes to fuel costs. And it's guaranteed to work, no gimmicks or tricks.

Now on to the reason for this post. The reason is that I found this awesome website that connects you to people that are traveling your same commute so you can easily find them and start cutting your fuel costs in half. It's called eRideShare. Go to www.erideshare.com for more information. Best of all, it's free! Happy motoring.

ps, pics of our trip back east are coming soon!

Bakfiets

I couldn't help but post this when I saw it on the news tonight. We've posted about the "bakfiets" (cargo bike) before: See here, and here. But this takes the cake because it's an Orem family doing it. They stopped driving their car for short errands and just take the bike instead... complete with child seats, seat belts, and a convertible roof for the rainy days! See here for the complete story.



They're a bit pricey, but Mad Dog Cycles in Orem can get them in apparently. Now I want one even more!

Miles per Dollar?

I heard a good suggestion the other day. That is to start thinking about fuel economy in economic terms, i.e. to think about it in "Miles Per Dollar" or, MPD. It's all too easy to just stick in that credit card on each fill-up and just kind of forget about how much you're actually getting for that money. Some people just pour that money down the drain (or out the tailpipe for that matter) without even thinking twice about how much it's costing them. To other people, they couldn't care less how much it's costing them no matter how high the cost.
Now for some examples using $3.00/gal fuel:

A 15mpg (insert nearly any SUV here) would do roughly 5 miles per dollar.
A 22mpg Audi A4 (which I used to own and loved) would do roughly 7 miles per dollar.
A 25mpg (insert nearly any regular sedan here) - 8 miles per dollar
A 30mpg Honda Civic - 10 miles per dollar
A 45mpg Jetta TDI still only allows you 15 miles per dollar

So next time you're driving down the road in an "economical" car (e.g. Toyota Camry) doing 25mpg, just count mile posts! Every 8th mile post you pass, pull a $1 bill out of your pocket. For you locals, a normal round-trip drive from Provo to SLC (45 miles) costs over $10 in that "economical" 25mpg car! If you drive around town frequently, just try zeroing the tripmeter in your car at the beginning of the day and see where it ends up at the end of the day. You may be surprised. Let's just be glad we don't have the $6+/gallon fuel that other parts of the world have.

Remember, gas prices go up in the Spring! :-)

What do you get when...?

What do you get when you combine the following in a German Engineer's stirring pot:

Air
An alternative fuel (biodiesel, BTL, synfuel, etc)
2.2L of sparkplug-free engine displacement
Two turbochargers
A splash of urea
A 7-speed transmission
4 wheels (with all-wheel drive)
And a few other bits and bobs

????

Short answer: Gina's future "mom car," the Mercedes Benz GLK.

Long answer: You get an engine that pulls like a train, has cleaner exhaust than L.A.'s air, has dual stage turbochargers (so you can still have fun), and is quieter than any diesel you've ever heard. And you get that engine with a 7-speed transmission put into a body with all-wheel drive that will tow toys, lug the kids/bikes/dog/skis/etc around, (or if you're the typical American it'll just be lugging you around alone) while already beating the fuel economy standards of the year 2020 (35mpg). The best part? It comes out this fall, so start saving your Benjamins, you'll need about 380 of them, give or take.

VW and TDI marketing

VW has kind of lacked on the marketing for TDI's (diesel engines) in my opinion, but then again I can kind of understand why... They don't need to advertise when most TDI's are sold before they even reach the lot and used ones hold their value so well. Why advertise when more people are trying to buy a TDI than there are TDI's available? Well, they are finally upping the production of TDI engines in multiple models in the near future and more specifically the new Jetta TDI wagen (dubbed the Sportwagen) is set to appear on US roads this fall! So, with the increase in TDI production, they have a reason to start marketing it. I can't wait, if only I could afford one!

And here is the web page that sparked this post And that's right, a true 40-50mpg out of a car that literally hauls! Not to mention it is cleaner than nearly all other cars currently on the road today.

Biodiesel report

I figure that after 9 1/2 months of having the "ole oil burner" aka "The Jetta" in her new home in SLC that it was time for an update on how she's running. As stated in an earlier post, we found the Jetta on Craigslist after months of searching for a cheap, TDI that I could run on biodiesel. It also took a few months convincing Gina that getting one new car and selling our other two would be worth it. After getting it home, the first few tanks were a B20 blend of biodiesel (20% biodiesel 80% regular diesel) to kind of ease into the whole biodiesel thing. The car had nearly 100,000 miles on it and biodiesel really cleans out the system, so it's not a good thing to make the switch very fast. The weather started to get cold and we had to continue to run B20 until the spring time because a higher percentage of biodiesel would have a problem with the cold weather. So B20 it was throughout the winter, and I was still 80% tied to foreign oil. But, glorious spring time came around and I topped off with B100 (100% biodiesel) from Cardwell Distributing.

It smelled a little vegetable oil-like and not like a fuel at all (which was nice compared to the oily smell of regular diesel), so I pumped it in and drove away happy on a mixture of 100% soy and canola-based biodiesel from Idaho and Colorado. The car immediately quieted down a significant amount and the exhaust was devoid of it's normal slightly pungent diesel aroma in favor of the new cooked vegetable oil fragrance. And it was about $0.05 cheaper than regular diesel at the time to boot!

I can now report that after 21,000 miles on either B20 or B100, the Jetta is still going strong and just ticked over to 120,000 miles. I have performed the regular maintenance with a filter change here and there, an oil change (which only needs to be done ever 15,000 miles BTW), and a timing belt job and that's about it. During this last tank, the weather was extra hot (think A/C on all the time) and we did almost exclusively city driving and we got a horrible 39 MPG. It was the first time we have dipped below the 40 MPG mark, so it was a sad day. On the flip side, here's a shot of our fuel mileage record:



Yep, that's a 53 MPG in the middle there. That was on the way to Durango and back on one tank. Diesels really excel at the freeway driving, so the times where the mileage was high were times when we did a lot of freeway driving. The times when it was low was city driving (which we do more of anyway). What drives me nuts though is the stupid EPA. Just look at these numbers, eek!



Can you believe that? That's the EPA trying to say that my car is supposed to get 38 MPG combined and I actually get about 43 MPG! How can they do that?! The one that irks me the most is the freeway rating. They say the car gets 44 MPG on the freeway, I have never gotten below 50MPG on the freeway and I run a renewable fuel instead of gasoline! I don't understand the EPA sometimes, it's ridiculous. At least they revised the bloated numbers to better reflect the mileage that hybrids get (believe it or not, hybrids do NOT get 60 MPG as Toyota claimed). A prius for example gets a little better mileage than the TDI in the city, but gets worse mileage on the freeway. Hybrid technology is great though, don't get me wrong, although it would be nice if they could run a renewable fuel and still get the same mileage numbers. Can't wait until Europe brings over the diesel-hybrids to replace all the gasoline ones, can you say true 60 MPG combined mileage?

No bus route

I've heard many excuses for not riding mass transit, but the one I hear the most is that there is not a convenient bus route that matches where the person wants to go. I thought this was the case for me personally for a long time until I discovered deadheading buses. Imagine the typical US city with a downtown in the center (generally) surrounded by suburbs. Buses run in the morning carrying the throng of people from the suburbs to the city center. Because there are fewer people going away from the city center in the morning, they run empty (what is called a "dead head run") from the city center back to the suburbs to then pick up another load of passengers. Any bus scheduler will tell you that it is almost impossible to avoid some dead head runs, but the good news is that most bus companies will still let riders travel on the dead heading buses. In my example, I travel from near the city center against the majority of traffic. I never thought there was a fast bus that traveled in that direction so I would either drive or wake up obscenely early to ride my bike or take the combination of TRAX and the 811.

If anyone is familiar with the 811, you know what it's like. It's a 93 series bus generally, which means that it tops out at 55 mph on the freeway and wasn't even built for the freeway to begin with. It's generally packed with people (most of which wouldn't be riding it if they knew of other options) and stops every few yards as it lumbers along it's route. Not to mention that air seems to seep right through the windows as well as through the floor and doors... and roof and everywhere. This provides the opportunity to get the sauna feeling in the summer and the ice cream isle feeling in the winter. I thought the above were my only options that I could ride until I saw a dead heading bus one day completely empty. You can imagine the situation... me, standing on the 811 (because there's no where to sit) huddled next to the most pleasant people in the world and as I gaze out the window at the mountains, I see a nice commuter bus (see pic below) cruising by completely empty! So I said to myself, "Self, I REALLY need to be on that bus!" I emailed UTA that day and they informed me that I could ride those dead heading buses. The next day I caught one.

I was hooked! It was just as fast as driving because the bus makes no stops until it gets back out to the suburbs (or Orem in my case). It's a straight shot at 75 MPH from Salt Lake City to Orem and it is amazing. It affords me about 40 minutes extra studying time, reading time, or SLEEPING time. Hello, who wouldn't want to catch an extra 40 minute nap to and from work? So I ride a dead heading bus (there are many of them) nearly every day and going to work is so much more enjoyable now!

If you think you can't ride the bus because there is no route available to you, it may be worth contacting your local transit authority and asking them if there is a dead heading bus that may fit your schedule. I have been emailing UTA once every few months asking them to advertise the dead heading buses, so I hope they do one day. I hope they don't change the route that they run, but at least advertise them!

Most people however can ride the normal express buses (VERY fast options=Bus# 801-810) easily. In addition, many large companies will offer cheap bus passes to their employees which makes the commute drastically cheaper than driving and just as fast with nearly front door service in downtown SLC. Even if your company doesn't give you a cheap pass, a monthly express bus pass (including TRAX and all other buses) is $107. With just a little arithmetic and gas at $3/gallon, that means you would only need to make about 11 trips from Orem to SLC and back to break even on a monthly pass (assuming you get 25mpg). Many people make more than 11 trips to SLC and back in a month, so it's quite cheap. Not to mention less wear and tear on the car and the ability to arrive at work much more relaxed.

oh yeah, and if you're looking for pics of our Bald Mountain hike (cause I know you are...), they can be found at The Bradlee Duncans

Fort Lewis College Race

We had a great time in Durango even though the trip was super short. We left on Friday, got in late Friday night, hit the sack, got up and raced the team time trial, then the crit, then drove home. It was a lot of fun though, and although I didn't race super well, we had some big mile marks with the car... First off, we passed the 111,111 mile mark on the odometer.







Next up was that we broke 50 MPG average for the whole trip - 53.1 MPG to be exact, which works out to 803.3 miles on one tank! Aren't TDI's amazing. We went from SLC to Durango and back to SLC on one tank of diesel fuel.





Next up was that it was a really fun race, although the TTT was longer than normal at about 20 miles. Later that day was the crit, and lucky enough for me, it rained and even started snowing during my group's race! Needless to say, I got a bit dirty. I finished with the pack, but count that a good finish because there was a short little hill on the course that was an all out sprint up on every lap (every 0.5 miles) for 45 minutes straight. That kicked my butt, but I hung in there. The break away group of 3 got away about half way through and stayed away the rest of the time. They ended up nearly lapping the rest of us. It was a great time though, and we (the U of U team) will probably have a pretty good chance at going to the National Finals race in a couple of weeks. We'll see how we do at Conference Championships though, it's this coming weekend.

Finally, some diesel advertising!

Well, when I came across this site, I just had to post it. In my opinion, the only reason diesels have not taken off in the US is because we rely so heavily on what we're fed by the media in this country. The advertising (about diesels) that comes from manufacturers of diesel cars is nearly non-existent which does not help the situation. The US public is not informed about the cleanliness, power, longevity, and sheer fun of driving an economical diesel-engined car. When compared to gasoline engines, you can look at diesels in two different lights. The first is that because they get 30-50% better fuel economy, you will immediately use 30-50% less fuel while maintaining the same power and torque as a gasoline car. The second way to look at it is that you get 30-50% more power from a diesel engine that gets the same mileage as a gasoline engine. Either way you look at it, it's beneficial to drive a diesel car. Then throw BIODIESEL into the mix and you have a very powerful car that is also running off of a completely renewable, green energy source. There's a statistic that has been quoted stating that if only one in three light trucks (i.e. sport utilities and light-duty pickups) had a diesel engine, we could stop importing oil completely from Saudi Arabia!! Why doesn't the American public realize this? I don't know. In part I think it is because the car manufacturers don't advertise or push the technology enough. The other part is that other technologies (e.g. hybrid) have been put in the limelight and have been falsely praised. They do not get near the MPG that they're rated at (whereas diesels always do) and they're so complex that they're expensive to purchase and build.

It would be so simple for the US manufacturers to start putting more diesels in the cars offered here. In fact, most US manufacturers already offer diesel engines in the same cars in other countries, just not here! The rest of the world is driving around in SUV's that are getting 25 MPG and cars that get over 50 MPG thanks to diesel engines which are not offered here. Everybody says we're addicted to oil, but we are offered no alternatives in this country.

Finally, auto manufacturers are beginning to see the value of diesel technology (just as Europe has for decades) and we're getting some diesel technology offered to us. Many manufacturers are releasing diesel engines in certain models in 2008 that are as clean as gasoline engines! Thanks to brands like Mercedes Benz, VW, and Audi, this is becoming a reality in the US.

Finally got a VW TDI!!

Gina and I finally got a Volkswagen TDI. To be more specific, we got a black Jetta GLS 1.9L TDI. We have been looking for one that we could afford for quite some time now. The problem is the TDI engined cars are hard to find around here, so I mostly looked on ebay, autotrader, and some automotive forums. Finally I decided to just look around on a few of the Craigslist sites for the larger cities. When I checked Dallas I found one that had just been posted only minutes earlier. We quickly called on it and the guy couldn't believe we were so fast! We took the necessary precautions and finally sent him the money, then we had to figure out how to get it home. Shipping it would have cost quite a bit, and after we looked into plane tickets, we found that they were about the same price as shipping it. Gina and I needed a good excuse for a getaway for our 3rd year anniversary too, so that's what we did. We flew to Dallas, picked up the car and drove it 1266 miles home to Salt Lake City. When we got there, I checked the car out with my VAG-COM and laptop and everything checked out. The seller split the cost on a timing belt change with me, so that saved us a bunch in repair costs because it hadn't been done until I told him to do it. I checked the timing with the computer and it was perfect and there were no fault codes. We got in the car and drove away after the final inspection. Filled up at the nearest station and we were on our way.

We drove immediately to the other side (West) of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and got a hotel. At 5am the next morning we were off to visit Polly (Gina's Aunt) who lives in Lubbock, TX. After the roughly 300 miles to Lubbock, we still had half a tank left, but I was just dying to see what kind of gas mileage we were getting. First half tank was 44MPG. After lunch and a visit with Polly and JoAnn, we were off to Santa Fe. We got to Santa Fe with just a little daylight left so we went into the old town and ate and window shopped a bit, then it was off to our B&B outside the city. It was called Hacienda las Barrancas and it was absolutely beautiful. The stars were amazing as it was a clear night so we sat outside for a bit, then built a fire in our room and went to bed. The next morning we weren't to eager to leave after the wonderful breakfast and great hospitality. We hung out on the property for a while which has amazing views at the end of some short walks. Then it was back in the car to go home. We didn't need to fill up again until Cortez, Colorado. Checking the MPG there, it turns out we averaged about 47 MPG for that tank (mostly 80-85mph).

We hit some crazy hailstorm in Moab but after that it was smooth sailing. The car drove great and feels really solid. It should cut our fuel bill in half, so we are pretty excited. Ahh, the beauty and engineering of a diesel engine! Oh yeah, and it's more fun to drive than the Audi!