Greetings,

Okay, so I nurse 180 mile tank at around 53 MPG finally!!! Then drive 6 miles in the city catching 8 reds on an uphill incline and drop my MPG to 46 MPG (according to the readout) for 7 minutes of time. Now, 200 miles later, of pure freeway driving where the I-MPG reads average of 75 MPG (everytime I look at it, nearly constantly)... and I've only made up to 48.5 MPG. I also had 3 coworkers in the car with me.

It it really possible to be at 53 MPG and have a few (minor) accelerations drop you by 8 MPG and require 200+ miles of perfect hypermiling to make it back up? Perhaps the readout isn't really very accurate? Because, by that logice, if I did it 10 times or so, I'd be on an empty tank but that doesn't happen.

Whey is it so *easy* to lose many MPG just by catching even 1 red, and it is nearly impossible to make it back up?

Apart from that incident, I can maintain my 53 MPG going up hill and through stop signs, in stop-and-go traffic, and light city driving ( ~2 miles from freeway to home/work) for 180 miles. I think I'm otherwise getting the hang of it.

Thanks,
Shawn