All of us share some type of an obsession with improving mileage, some more than others.
I wonder what the true hybrid differential is?
I know a few are getting >40 MPG and others >45 MPG, etc. due to a series of techniques.
We all know that the gas Camry gets ~ +/- 25 MPG.
I wonder what mileage a gas Camry would get if an owner were to go through some of the tactics like the hybrid owners.
Sure, some of the tactics are hybrid only, but if a gas Camry driver accelerates slowly, cruises to stops, pulses and glides on the highway, inflates tires to 38 PSI, etc. it stands to reason that his mileage similarly increase.
Who knows, he might get 30 MPG or more.
Does anyone know of any gas Camry owners who are (similarly) mileage obsessed? What are their stats?

 

I saw one guy on CleanMPG who has a '99 and just started hypermiling and was getting 27-28. I'm sure with time he will get higher.

I've found reading over there that many of the people use a scanguage to aid them and it works quite well. I'm sure that anyone who gets obsessed with it and makes a conscious effort can get better than the EPA ratings.

 

Hypermiling could be cool, if you live somewhere in a boonies, so to begin with, you can't do this all the time or anyplace you want, in some states you could rightfully get a ticket and wipe out few months of gas savings right there. Some of the things are right down dangerous, like drafting behind the truck or driving much slower than rest of the traffic, so causing accident could really ruin few years of saving gas, if you get out of it alive that is. Either way, no matter what you're going to do, going from let's say 25 MPG to 30 would be the best you could do, would be my guess. I kept track of MPG on my older Honda Accord, in the long run, no matter what I did, my average was between 25 and 30 on a freeways and empty roads, I could never get more than 30MPG, which surprised me, because I was expecting more difference between driving steady 80 MPH on a highway and lets say cruising along Blue Ridge Parkway at 45MPH. Of course, I never tried anything radical, but IMO some of the hypermiling tricks are just plain stupid or impractical, even if they do work.
I do commute to work daily, mostly in traffic and I do get about 40MPG in my TCH, without even thinking about it and you just reminded me, I didn't check my tire pressure for at least 8 months, I think I should do that soon. You really don't get to see real advantage of hybrid until you start driving in heavy traffic, here my old Accord could not do anything better than 20 MPG and there are no tricks, if you crawl at 2 MPH for 1 hour often, you would see what I'm talking about.

 

I am positive there is a user with a TCH and an XLE Camry for his wife. I am sure he will chime in on here soon. He would be the one to ask.

Update:

his handle is SchmidtJ
07 TCH & 07 XLE V-6

 

Sure, but I'm not intersested in the extremes, but rather how a gas car would perform using similar tactics to the 'normal' folk here.
Simply put, I wonder how an apples to apples comparison would do and if it could yield a true hybrid differential.

 

I don't own a Camry (or a hybrid for that matter) but I do own a non-hybrid Honda Civic and recently started driving conservatively. I do not do any advance hypermiling techniques like shutting down the engine while coasting, etc. and I manage between 41 and 43 MPG combined. I drive about 60% highway and 40% city on each tank with 95% of my driving to and from work (roughly 85 miles round trip). Driving the car aggresively, I would average between 29-32 along the same route so I estimate roughly a 25-30% increase in fuel economy by driving with fuel economy in mind. These are calculated MPG by the way since the normal Civic doesn't have a fuel mileage indicator.

In my wife's Nissan Quest minivan, she averages 18 MPG (per the display) while I average 22-23 MPG. I think low to mid-30's with a normal Camry is possible.

 

Hypermiling doesn't require that you use every trick in the book. You can try to implement as many or as little of them as you want. People speak of it as if it's a bad illegal thing. Did you know that one of the most basic thing in "hypermiling tricks" is to slow down to the speed limit or even just below? Also using your breaks less and costing more.

Pete you mentioned that driving much slower than traffic could be dangerous.....maybe if a MAJORITY of the people didn't break the law it wouldn't so dangerous. Since I got my TCH I am almost always +\- 5mph of the speed limit if not right at it.

I think the comparison would have to be to see whether a regular version could get the same% or better over the EPA numbers than the Hybrid. I wouldn't expect them to get as high of numbers though.

FWIW I am no hypermiling expert but I think I have a much greater grasp of the idea than some. It's all relative though.

 

What year is you Civic and is it manual?

 

As much disdain as there is for the EPA mileage estimates, I think they provide the answer that is being sought. Their results are actually much more reflective of real world results over the last couple years.

The key point is that since the EPA uses a standard testing method for all vehicles, their ratings are a good comparison across the different configurations, despite how they compare to real-world results.

 

I travel a lot for work, and in my Avis profile, I list a preference for a Camry. I rent a lot of LE and XLE models as the TCH is not avaliable except in the big metro areas.

I drive the rentals with the same techniques (as much as practicle) that I use on my own TCH and my estimate is that under the same conditions as my commute I can get approximately 26 MPG on a V6 under those conditions and approximately 30 on an LE 4 cylinder. The mix is about 30% city and 70 percent rural two-lane highway.

There are some disadvantages that the rented vehicles have. I am not driving with the road profiles that I developed for my commute, so my anticipation is not as good. Also, extended coasts are not as practicle. I do not know the routes as well, and cannot take any advantage of the terrain or road characteristics.