I have been driving for about a month now without any regard for gas mileage. I need a baseline to show the difference between typical driving and the tips I am going to show. This morning I reset the average fuel consumption from the on board computer in my Mini Cooper. I will drive it for three days and record the mileage. To make sure I don’t drive in any unusual manner I am taking a basic highway route to and from work. When the highway is two lanes (each way) I will settle in the left lane and follow at a reasonable distance the car in front of me. When there are more than two lanes I will settle into the lane one to the right of the far left lane. Again, just following the cars in front of me. I will maintain a speed within 10 miles per hour of the speed limit (plus or minus) during all driving.
After the three days I will record the results and then spend three days driving with just my first mileage technique. I will add one technique at a time with three days of record driving for each. The tips will build on each other. It is going to take time to get all the tips down with three days of driving, so the final article will probably come out in the February edition of my column.
