I confess, I used to drive fast and figured what everyone else was saving allowed that much more for me to have. I'm sorry.

After driving my 4 Runner for 6000 miles and averaging 15.6 mpg (I tow but never get over 16.5) I decided to "test" it. I drove it last night to Home Depot on a 40 mile round trip route. It's a route I can get around 40 mpg with the TCH. I drove slow. Not only slow, but I tried my best to put no more pressure on the throttle than necessary to obtain the speed I wanted. I drove 50 on the first and last 5 miles of the rural road and 65 (on a 70 miles per hour interstate) and couldn't believe when I got home I had 21 mpg on the trip. This is with the V8 Sport edition. I honestly didn't expect more than 17 as that would have been better than what I had ever seen.

This is starting a whole new page in my quest towards the ultimate FE.

The methods hybrid drivers use to increase FE don't simply apply to hybrids, they apply to all vehicles. It's just that most vehicles don't give you the feedback of hybrids. I have an instantaneous mpg gauge, a gauge that measures mpg since fill up and if I had the NAV system I'd also have something that would give me a minute by minute breakdown of mileage. If all cars had this I think overall FE would go up.

They (whoever they are) have said for decades that slowing down on the highway will significantly increase fuel efficiency. It's just that when you don't get the instant feedback impatience wins out.

This is one of the best additional features of the hybrids, a biofeedback device that validates the driver's good efforts. After 40 yrs of driving I've changed in the same way Joe has by paying attention more to factors that increase FE - not just poking along.

I took a V6 Solara Convertible out for a test and used some of the hypermiling techniques around a local neighborhood and found the trip computer reading 50-80 mpg at points.

Lifetime fuel usage: 2.1 GPC ( 1.99 recent )