Acton Toyota | Gerdes School of Hypermiling
Posted by Justin Brun on Tue, May 24, 2011 @ 03:11 PM
On Sunday, May 15th at Kimball Farm in Westford, MA approximately 200 people gathered for an Acton Toyota of Littleton event that included an educational seminar presented by Wayne Gerdes. Gerdes provided attendees an informative and comprehensive presentation on how to drive their Toyota hybrid vehicles more fuel efficiently. This practice, coined by Wayne as “hypermiling”, utilizes various practices and techniques to achieve low fuel consumption that outperforms a vehicle’s EPA fuel economy rating.
To prove the effectiveness of Wayne’s hypermiling techniques, in 2008, CBS challenged Wayne to drive a Toyota Prius from Chicago to NYC, a distance of 805 miles, on a single tank of gas. Wayne succeeded and still had over a gallon of gasoline remaining in the tank.
Prior to Wayne’s presentation, nearly 30 individuals participated in a 24.3 mile vehicle rally competing to navigate the route while attaining the best possible fuel efficiency. The top Prius rally performance boasted a 99.9 mpg rating. This mpg rating translates to less than 1 quart of fuel consumption to drive the 24.3 mile course. Second place logged a very impressive 97.3 mpg figure. In total, 7 Prius drivers achieved an 80 mpg rating or better. The lowest Prius performance was still a very desirable 60.9 mpg.
For the rally, Acton Toyota challenged Wayne to test the limits of the Toyota Prius Plug-in on its course. Believe it or not, Wayne used only .04 gallons, or 5.12 fluid oz., of gasoline to successfully complete the 24.3 mile drive! When calculating the cost of electricity and gasoline Wayne used to power the car the total is less than $.40 combined. Yes, that is an inconceivable 40 cents.
Toyota has stated the range on the Prius Plug-in’s electric battery when fully charged is approximately 13 miles. However, Wayne’s demonstration is proof positive that with proper hypermiling driving techniques that distance is nearly double.
The event also included a $5,000 charitable scholarship donation to Ella Harvey of Littleton High School. Ella bested 30 other local area graduating senior high school students to receive the Acton Toyota of Littleton Scholarship. "We couldn't be happier to name Ella as the recipient of this scholarship. It's very gratifying for us to reward her for her environmental contributions and philanthropy with this donation," comments Mike Hills, General Manager of Acton Toyota. Next year, Ella will attend Victoria College, part of the University of Toronto, where she will concentrate on Public Health, Human Biology, and French.
Bill Lin, an attendee of the event commented afterward, “My wife and I attended Acton Toyota of Littleton’s hypermiling event featuring Wayne Gerdes with the highest expectations and were not disappointed. Even though we have been practicing some of the techniques Wayne and others pioneered we found a couple more skills that we would like to add to our fuel savings arsenal. The event T-shirt and reusable bags were a nice bonus.”
Lin concluded, “Thanks for this special event, Acton Toyota!”