Kottke on Hypermiling, a series of techniques/tricks that raise fuel economy to double or triple the EPA ratings:
Competition, even with yourself, can be a powerful motivator. I’m not convinced, however, that FCDs would improve gas mileage across the board. There are other games you can play with the display — the how-much-gas-can-I-waste game or the how-close-can-I-get-to-18-MPG game — that don’t have much to do with conserving fuel consumption. Still, next time I’m in a car with a mileage display, I’ll be trying out some of Gerdes less intensive driving techniques, including the ones he shares on this Sierra Club podcast (Gerdes’ interview is about 2/3 of the way through).
What if the display showed dollars per mile? I bet it would be hard to resist competing to raise your fuel economy.
Apropos of that, my local NPR affiliate had a piece on hybrids, with some guests from GM, a journalist/skeptic, and a serious hybrid enthusiast/zealot. It will be interesting to see what’s available in the next 5 years. I think the simple hybrid that offers full electric power with plugin capability and a small internal combustion powerplant to charge the batteries when you exceed the cruising range offers a lot of promise. Assume that most of that driving will be out of cities where the air is less likely to be polluted anyway, and that the plant (could be natural gas, gasoline, ethanol, biodiesel) runs very clean as well as being very small, and it could be a real contender.
All were in agreement — well, the GM guy didn’t weigh in that I could hear — that increased CAFE standards were a must, and there was even a call for an EU-style petroleum tax: can you see gas at $5/gallon, when it’s cheap?