With gas at 3.25-3.50 a gallon, it’s getting really expense to drive back and forth from work five days a week.  So, I decided to see how much gas I save by driving a certain way:  ninja driving.  According to maps.google.com, the trip is exactly 24.5 miles which is 49 miles round trip.  According to www.fueleconomy.gov, my car gets about 31 mpg highway, and 23 city.  It’s four cylinder, manual, Honda Accord Coupe.

According to the way of the ninja…driver, there are certain techniques one can use to maximize your fuel economy:  this is especially true for those of us who drive manuals.  For example, on relatively steep inclines, you either put the car out of gear or push in the clutch.   When getting off the highway or stopping for a red light, I also do this.  I use the car’s natural momentum and friction to get me to the light, yet slow me down enough to minimize wear on the brake pads.  However, there are two things that I think really help:  1) when I accelerate, I make sure I don’t get above 2000 rpms.  By doing this, my acceleration is slower, but accelerating too aggressively burns a lot of gas!  Acceleration and deceleration are the reasons why city driving burns up so much gas.  2)  I either go the speed limit or just five miles above it.  I keep it under 2k rpm as much as possible, but this isn’t possible for safe driving on highways: thus my five mph rule.  When it gets up to 65 or 70, I try my best to stay at the speed limit.

With this in mind, here are the results of my “ninja” driving.  I topped off my tank, set my trip meter to “0,” and I drove for about a week and a half on one tank of gas.  That doesn’t say much, but after filling up my tank with 13.119 gallons of gas and the trip meter at 437.8 miles, with ninja driving, I was able to get 33.17 mile per gallon!  Keep in mind this is a combined result!  The combined result of my car for “normal” driving is 26 mpg, but this assumes 50/50 highway/city driving.  I probably do 80/20, and so, my combined mpg should be closer to 30.5 mpg.  So, basically, I got an extra 2.6 miles per gallon.  On a 13 gallon tank, that’s an extra 33.8 miles!  If I’m buying a tank of gas every week and half, that’s 36 tanks of gas a year.  By ninja driving, I can go an extra 1216.8 miles at no additional gas costs -or- save $117.36 a year on gas (at 3.26 a gallon).  That’s nothing to sneeze at!

My new project is to see how much money per mile I spend to get to and from work by using a combination of the Metrolink and driving!  We’ll see how that turns out!