The other day one of our senior members who has proven himself to be one of the best hypermilers in the world stated that an effort should be made to back into a garage to somehow save gas. I've been thinking about this for a couple of days and I can not see for the life of me how backing in to a garage saves any gas. In fact I'm quite certain that in my case backing in would increase fuel consumption slightly.

Currently I cut my car off a mile from home and coast into my garage nose first, ICE off. This takes zero gas. Leaving the garage is easy as I live on a lightly traveled road. To back out I put in in R, start the car and back a short distance in my driveway. Once the car is in the road I put it in a forward gear and start driving.

If I were to back in I'd need to restart the car before putting it away. Backing in is also slightly harder so I'd use a tiny bit more gas puting the car away. Pulling out would be faster because the car would alread be facing the proper direction.

Because backing into a garage is more difficult than backing out of a garage I'd say slightly more gas would be used backing into a garage.