Hypermiling on My 2007 Ninja 250R
I recently learned about hypermiling, a collection of driving techniques for increasing the mileage you get in your car and wondered what it would do for the mileage on my 2007 Ninja 250R which already gets great mileage.
On this last tank, I didn’t do any hypermiling techniques for the first 100 miles but used them for the second 100 miles. After 206 miles, it took 3.04 gallons of gas (at over $4./gal!) to fill it up. That comes out to 67.7 mpg. That seemed like an improvement over what I usually get which has been around 65 mpg for the same type of city and island driving. The next tank will be a better test. I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t come in over 70 mpg.
There are several places along the normal routes I take that are perfect for coasting. Coasting cuts the RPM down to the idle speed rather than the 3-5K RPM which register on the tachometer when I’m in gear. I am also getting better at coasting into traffic lights. On the three-mile trip into town, I estimate that I can coast for over a mile of it. There are also several opportunities for coasting on the way back.
I don’t do things like turn off the engine to coast or at traffic lights. I mostly just coast when there’s a nice stretch of downhill in front of me and it’s safe to do it.
I’m also trying it on my truck which gets terrible mileage. It will be a while before I know what those results are.
UPDATE 6-20-2008: I just put some gas in my 250 Ninja after traveling 225 miles, mostly on the island and in the city which is not where it gets the best mileage. It only took 2.7 gallons to fill it which comes out to just over 83 mpg which is by far the best mileage I’ve ever gotten on it. I usually get 65-70 around here.
This past weekend I took a trip in my truck and clocked just under 23 mpg. Much of the trip was through the mountains where I would not expect to get very good mileage with all the uphill stretches. Of course, there’s a lot of downhill as well but in the mountains I didn’t coast in neutral although I did coast. I prefer to let the transmission do the braking rather wearing my brakes out on long downhill stretches. I did check my tires before I left and since one was quite low, I’m sure that helped as well. I just didn’t push it and tried to keep the RPMs below 2000 no matter how fast I was going. The best mileage I’ve ever seen in the truck before was 20 mpg.
So implementing the most basic hypermiling techniques seemes to have added about 15% to my truck mileage and about 23% to my Ninja 250 mileage, under the driving conditions I experienced on my most recent tanks of gas.
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