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MPG: How to Beat the Hybrids

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Hybrid Gas/Electric or Conventional Vehicle, Which is Right For You?

The question could also be posed as "Short Term Thinking or Long Term Savings" which is right for you?

With gas prices reaching for the stratosphere, better mileage is a must. But, is a hybrid the answer?

Increasing gas mileage is a primary mode for saving money. When gas was a buck a gallon, commuting 40 miles a day in a car that got 20 miles per gallon wasn’t a really big deal.  Now, with gas averaging between $3.00 and $4.00 per gallon, driving the same distance has taken us from $10.00 per week to as much as $40.00 a week and from $40.00 a month, four weeks at $10.00 per week, to as much as $160.00 per month and yearly from $480.00 to over $1900.00.

Before we rush out and buy a new car, one that we’ll pay a premium for solely because of it’s MPG rating, let’s look at the bigger picture.

In a conventional car you have an engine and drive train and an established cost per mile for maintenance. In a hybrid you have the same basic costs, plus batteries, regenerative charging systems, switches, more computer requirements, more required charging capacity, plus the car weighs more, probably has less space, costs more for repairs on an hourly basis, takes more hours to do the repairs and has no long established cost per mile maintenance figures that you can check for MPD (miles per dollar).

Weight is a factor in MPG, MPD, maintenance and performance. The heavier the car the faster the brakes and other drive train parts wear out , the more often they need to be replaced and the slower the car accelerates. Everything wears out, and once the car is out of warranty and the batteries fail, the regenerative charging system needs repair, or if any of the switches, computer or other hi-tech systems need repair or replacement, the price for repairs can get ugly, real ugly and possibly cost more than the resale value of the car.

So what now? There are ways to increase fuel economy without courting bankruptcy. First, you need to retrain yourself to drive like you want to save on fuel and not like the most important thing in life is to be the first to the next stop light. Stop light Gran Prix can be a hard habit to break, but you can do it if you want to. Is 75 MPH fast enough on the freeway?  Probably, and you’ll get a lot better MPG and MPD than you will at 85 or 90.  Speeding tickets can have a very negative impact on your MPD and they have a direct connection to your insurance rates.  All of which translates to money, money, money. 

Next, if you have a car that was built after 1996, it’s OBDll (on board computer, type 2) compliant, the computer hasn’t been rechipped for speed, and you’ve purchased the right system, once you’ve done the initial installation of the gas saving device(s) you can get improved mileage and let the computer make all the changes for you. If you have an early non-computer car with carburetion, and not fuel injection, a good quality system that can save you money will also work, but you have to manually rejet the carburetor and reset the timing. Selecting the right system is where you have to do your homework concerning what really works, what’s hype, deceptive advertising and outright scams.

There are some websites that profess to have tested and rated the available fuel saving devices. If you hover over the links they provide, unless the link is "cloaked," you’ll find the site is nothing more than an affiliate and, if you know how to check, you’ll find the higher rated links are also those that pay a higher affiliate commission.

Saving fuel is a hot topic. Some items are worth the price and a lot more aren’t. Price is also not the determining factor.  Some very expensive items give very little or no gains, and others that are a fraction of the cost provide more.  The information you need to seek out should come from someone who’s been there and done that, and not for just a few months since it’s been a hot item. The information should be time tested, proven and from a reliable and long established source. One system on the market is based on over seventy years of proven use.  A good looking woman, or man, is appealing to the eye but that doesn’t mean they know anything about fuel economy. More information can be accessed by searching the Internet for Larry R. Miller, AKA Mileageman1.com

You can beat the hybrids on MPG, but you have to have the right stuff to do it and it can’t cost more than what you’ll save long term.

 

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About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

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