Our very own! Congratulations to these talented GreenHybrid members.
Quote:
2 days, 1,400 miles, 110 mpg 1 tank!
The men -- Kroushl of McCandless, Bassage of Walton, W.Va.,, Wayne Gerdes of Chicago, Rick Reece of Greenville, S.C., and Bob Barlow from Fredericksburg, Va. -- drove continuously, stopping only to switch drivers every four hours like a NASCAR crew.
The hybrid society is growing, but most probably won't achieve the hypermile status these hard-core hybrid owners have.
I'll say ... Congratulations! I bow to you passionate hybrid owners. Impressive no matter what you drive! Now give me a biodiesel powered hybrid and watch your record fall!
A couple of fact fixes on that otherwise excellent article:
The
reporter was calling us on the hour the final hours of the marathon
and the 110 mpg figure came from our best guess based on Dan's
current performance a couple hours before it ended. He did indeed
slip some towards the end as he started running on fumes before the
car did, but to say he 'punched it' could be better expressed as
instead of driving at a 120 mpg clip he slipped to something around
110 for a while, which kept us from beating that 110 figure for an
overall average. I don't think his foot is capable of punching an
accelerator. We ended up averaging 109.3 mpg.
The police officer did not pull Bob over for going too slow,
necessarily. All we know is the following exchange:
cop: Are you all right, sir?
Bob: I was until you pulled me over. I had a nice glide going.
Cop: What are you doing?
Bob: Haven't you paid attention to the news? We're trying to set a
world record here for fuel economy.
Cop: (Noticing all the extra instrumentation in the car) No, I
hadn't heard about it.
Bob: (picking up pen and data sheet) Well we are, and I've got to
record every stop at a red light, and now your red lights mean I have
to record another one.
Cop: OK, then. I saw you going by a few times already and just
wanted to check on you.
What made the above even more entertaining when Bob related it to me
over the phone later in the shift was that he then divulged that he
recently left his drivers license behind on a trip to Italy and did
not have it with him. Oh, and it was probably more like 3am than 2
am, as I handed the car over to Bob at 2am.
And the actual percent of time over the entire run that we used the
ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) was 27% as indicated on the SuperMID
instrumentation Dan installed.
Thanks for all the applause, folks. What really helped make it all so magical was knowing people were following our progress all over the country and world. One definite improvement for the next effort would be better online communication of up to the date status reports, comments from participants, etc... I'm thinking we should have had a dedicated person just handling that end of things. As it was the drivers were also the support crew, and we found ourselves striving to keep up with the various forums we participate in while trying to squeeze in a nap here or there and dealing with an absurdly lousy internet connection.
The HBO special will focus on climate change, and we'll probably end up being just a few minutes of it, but you'd never know that from all the hours of footage they shot. It's supposed to air sometime next spring, and they're supposed to give us a heads up and possibly a "screener" in advance, I'm told. I think that means an advance copy of either the entire special or the part we're in.
If the topic is climate change they will likely only give you about 30 seconds. However, maybe if this gets big they could use some footage and interviews and stuff and build a show around it.
Hybrid drivers complete run for mileage mark
Re: Hybrid drivers complete run for mileage mark
