Hypermilers are a different breed. Like racing drivers, they view elevation changes, acceleration and braking zones with millimetric precision, but instead of clipping apexes and shaving off milliseconds, they’re all about boosting cruising range and dropping fuel consumption. Case in point: One hypermiler just set a new coast-to-coast MPG Guinness World Record from behind the wheel of a current Toyota Prius, clocking an average fuel consumption of 93.158 mpg.
So, who gets 93.158 mpg out of a stock fifth-generation Toyota Prius, and how does one possibly maintain that average across an entire continent? That would be Wayne Gerdes, the man who invented the term “hypermiling” back in 2004. His steed of choice was a new Prius with 10,000 miles on the clock, and it was the LE trim which meant it got the low rolling resistance 17-inch wheels, a big deal for efficiency over the larger rollers on the XLE.
Gerdes kicked things off in Los Angeles with a drive to Lakewood, Calif., then from Lakewood to Flagstaff, Ariz. From there, Gerdes went by way of Fort Sumner, N.M., to Amarillo, Texas, where he finally had to stop for fuel. By this point, Gerdes had managed a cumulative 106.334 mpg, but a leg to Russell, Ark. slashed that figure to 98.023 mpg.
Fuel economy further fell on the leg to Knoxville, Tenn. with a cumulative average of 94.010 mpg, but the trip from Knoxville up to Winston-Salem, N.C., reverse course with a cumulative average of 94.993 mpg. Even with the last leg up to New York City Hall followed by a fuel stop in New Jersey, the record was as good as achieved with a total trip average of 93.158 mpg across 3,211.7 miles of America. As for further specifics of methodology, well, here’s what Gerdes said in a statement:
You can’t just go sight unseen into doing this. You have to have that plan. But you also have to be able to work on the fly. So, if things change, you have to switch up your plan. Reroute. Figure out what you’re going to be able to do to achieve that goal.
That’s…quite motivational. Anyway, 93.158 mpg coast-to-coast is shocking, but here’s an eyebrow-raising figure for those of us without much patience — on an exploratory drive averaging 68.1 mph prior to the record attempt, Geddes managed 58.1 mpg. No bullshit, no tricks, no crazy descents, just ridiculously good fuel economy.
The new Toyota Prius may be a whole lot better looking than prior models, but it doesn’t seem to have completely given up its aim efficiency in search of new appeal. While most of us can’t manage 93.158 mpg coast-to-coast, it’s ridiculously cool to know it’s possible.
(Photo credits: Toyota)
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
I’m Going To Turn This Prius Prime PHEV Into A Hot Hatch
-
The 2024 Toyota Prius Is Over $5,000 Cheaper Than A 2001 Prius, How Much Better Is It?
-
The New Toyota Prius PHEV Is Getting Its Own Racing Series. Here’s What We Know About It
-
The New 2023 Toyota Prius is Sleeker, Bigger, Quieter and More Powerful, So Why Am I Bummed Out?
-
The Beautiful 2023 Toyota Prius Configurator Is Out: How Would You Spec Yours?
Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage.
So right off thr bat I have to jump in here and make some corrections. Younmentioned that the 17″ wheels contributed to the lo mileage, and that is a bit of misnomer. Wheel size measured in circumference does affect mileage, but not how you have described. The ultra lo resistance tires fitted to the 17″ wheels are the real story. The wheels are narrower than standard wheels, and the tires are a harder compound with a 75% tread which is way less than standard 85%.
So Rolling resistance is calculated by measuring the total contact area of the tire. This is determined via the tire width, rubber hardness, and inflation pressure. Circumference has less impact on contact area than one may believe and this is due to tire inflation pressure. From a purely objective perspective a larger wheel will roll further with one rotation. Quite simply put larger wheels get better MPG, period, without exception.
Now a larger tire is typically wider as well and that makes for more resistance. Do me a favor and look up pictures of old war jeeps. Now look at how narrow the tires are. Today we use overkill racing tires at unbelievable widths on daily driver to increase brake response and help shorten stopping time. With ABS and wide tires we can actually safely stop a vehicle without runNing over spot. However if you want to beat 30 mpg you should not be looking at racing tires.
It is important to get the details accurate here, because others are hanging on every word. Go find some narrow spare wheels, and find some silly narrow tires. Your braking time will suck and you will peel out around every corner, but your MPG will increase dramatically. I get around 30mpg in my 1989 Jeep wrangler that rides on 33″ tires…
This was a rare disappointing article from this site that lacked detail on his approach, advice for keyboard hypermilers, or anything else. Was it speed, route selection, or something else. Compare this to any number of Cannonball articles with great detail about fuel tanks, electronic countermeasures, and outrunning the cops. (Well, now that I look, it seems like the Autopian mostly avoids covering Cannonball, which I applaud. I was thinking of the old lighting site.)
I agree; I was looking for substance and instead got the title rehashed three times.
Fuel cost hypermiling: 3211 miles / 93.158 mpg x $4/gallon = $137.90
Fuel cost normal: 3211 miles / 58.1 mpg x $4/gallon = $221.07
Worth it if your time is worthless.
Or if there’s a guy on the other end of the continent with a plaque that says you’re officially amazing.
Or because you think it’s fun.
Tire cost burnouts: $500
Distance travelled: Maybe a half mile or much less
Fuel cost: Maybe a few dollars
Worth it if you like to breathe tire smoke or like to annoy others.
Worth it if you have no where to go.
I am amazed by the lack of janky add ons like wheel discs or coroplast aerodymanics
Zoom in on the close-up to see the Fuel Shark.
I was averaging 55mpg out of each tank in a new Corolla hybrid without trying, so 58 sounds easy in the better Prius. To get 93, though, he had to have been a major AH to everyone else on the road.
Agreed
I haven’t found an exact route, for the first section he spend a lot of time on the separate route 66 and frontage roads alongside I-40, plus used the slow climb lane with trucks. It does say 50-60mph on interstates, which is pretty slow but not quite “rolling hazard” speeds. Having to stick to interstates is what drove the average down in the later legs.
So if the 58mpg run was done at 68 mph, just how much of a low-speed hazard to everyone else on the road was he making himself on the 93mpg run?
There are a lot of variables – I’m curious how he managed A/C usage, weather conditions, and tire pressure in each scenario, as well. Each of those could make a fairly dramatic difference, on top of what we could assume is a ~15% drag loss between 55mph and 70mph.
The difference in drag between 55mph and 70mph is certainly more than 15%, drag increases exponentially with speed, not even close to linear.
I’d be shocked if Toyota doesn’t jump on this for marketing. Like with the Million Mile 4.7 Tundra, I see a nice reward from Toyota Corporate in Wayne’s future. Really is a staggering improvement over the 56mpg highway, 57 city rating the Prius gets from the EPA.
After owning a minivan, it’s drivers like this that would make me not want to drive a Prius. Wouldn’t matter that I’m going to try to let all 200 horses out the barn, other drivers will remember the Prius going 50 in a 70 when I’m trying to merge.
I presume this isn’t a Prius Prime. I can tell you that I routinely match or beat that fuel economy in my C-Max Energi by making full use of the plug in capability.
On my last tank, I averaged 2.1L/100km… which is about 112mpg using US gallons.
And without too much effort, someone in a Prius Prime, Tesla Model 3 or Chevy Bolt could beat that.
So while 93mpg would be/was mind-blowing back in the 2000s, these days lots of BEV/plug-in hybrid owners routinely get that or better without having to put in nearly as much effort as this guy did.
Time for questions- you averaged 112mpg. How long was your average trip? Did you plug in when stopped? Is that 112mpg over a few weeks of 30-40mi days where you are mainly electric? My jeep 4xe averages low 40s, but i know thats not real world long distamce since it mainly goes 30ish mi/day, making it mainly electric. Its easy to say that you can break it easily, but can you do it and keep it up for over 3000 miles? Over the high peaks? At sea level, and 10,000ft elevation? Through high heat and humidity? Factoring traffic? There are factors at play here, and that car was fully stock. Not sure on the effort here.
Lets go.numbers, even though youre now going EV vs traditional hybrid. The prius drove over 3100 miles in 132 hours. A chevy bolt has roughly a 230 mile range. On a level 2 charger, it takes 9.5 hours to charge. Youll spend nearly that time just stopped charging- over 120 hours. So congratulations, you did it in twice the time i guess? But again, now we are on theoreticals vs real world since the bolt may get reduced range from environmental factors. The prius prime suffers from the same slow charge time. The M3 can charge faster, at 8-12 hours on a level 2 charger and a longer range. Hope you have a good supercharger map.
Not trying to be a dick, but yeah. The daily commute you go on does not compare at all to this drive. I doubt youd come within 30mpg of that 112 if you tried this trip in a cmax, barring constamt charge stops.
Heres his thread on it- https://www.cleanmpg.com/community/index.php?threads/57313/
What does Level 2 charging have to do with it?
If we are looking for the highest efficiency without making the trip slower than this Prius, pretty much every single BEV has DCFC that is fast enough to make the trip at higher efficiency in half the time. The Bolt would take ~65 hours at an average driving speed of 60mph and 13 stops of 1 hour.
A Lucid Air Pure would take ~47 hours at an average driving speed of 70mph and 7 stops of 30 minutes. Or if being more conservative, 7 stops of an hour gives 50 hours.
Wow, that’s 132 hours of actual driving?! This guy must have the laid back mindset of a tortoise. That’s an average of under 25 mph! I don’t think I could survive a day like that without falling asleep at the wheel and crashing. I did 3501 miles in 49.5 total hours, though I only averaged 25 mpg.
“Time for questions- you averaged 112mpg. How long was your average trip?”
I didn’t measure that. This is merely a calculation of the MPGs I got on the kilometers accumulated between my last fillup and the previous one. And the time period was over a month. So my daily commute is about 30 min to work and another 30 min back… taking it easy. And in doing so, I have just enough range to do that in EV mode on a daily basis.
Also mixed in with that would be shorter trips to the local grocery store and such… which were also done in EV mode.
And once a week, I visit my GF who is 125km away. So that would be a 1-1.5 hour drive in each direction. So for that weekly trip, the first 30-40km is done in EV mode in both directions and then I’m in hybrid mode
“Did you plug in when stopped?”
I would plug in after 9pm on week days and anytime during the weekend which is when I pay the lowest electricity rate.
“Is that 112mpg over a few weeks of 30-40mi days where you are mainly electric?””
It was over a 1 month period. I’d say that on a typical week, 5/7 days are all or almost all electric.
“. Its easy to say that you can break it easily, but can you do it and keep it up for over 3000 miles?”
If you give me enough time and frequent plugging in, absolutely. Now having looked at that link, the record involved “3,211.7 miles over 5.5 driving days”
So if that was the challenge, then I think I abolutely would be able to beat it if I plugged in at every opportunity.
If I wasn’t allowed to plug in, then it would be a much bigger challenge. I likely wouldn’t be able to win in that case because then the extra weight from the bigger battery and extra equipment that enables the plug-in capability actually becomes a liability.
But then that would be like asking someone to enter a fight with one arm tied behind their back. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to use the full technological capability (like the ability to plug in) to make a record?
“Not trying to be a dick,”
Don’t worry… that’s not the impression I get. You’re just making an “is this a real apples vs apples” argument.
“The daily commute you go on does not compare at all to this drive. I doubt youd come within 30mpg of that 112 if you tried this trip in a cmax, barring constamt charge stops.”
No argument there. However, I know that without even trying hard and my battery depleted, I can still easily get 52mpg (US gallons). Putting some effort into it and driving at more optimal speeds and being more aggressive with the hypermiling techniques, I already have gotten over 70mpg.
If I were to seriously try to beat that record, the key would be being able to plug in, keeping my speed down and religously drafting other vehicles at higher speeds because the aerodynamics of the C-Max is greatly inferior to the Prius… not just in terms of the drag coefficient, but also the greater surface area the wind is hitting because it’s a bigger and taller vehicle.
Also the stock tires the C-Max comes with are fat 225/50R17 tires that would also be a disadvanage
You mean Chevy Volt, right?
No, I mean my Ford C-Max Energi… which is also a plug in hybrid and a typical EV range of 30-40km.
Sorry, I meant that Chevy Bolts are full EVs, and Chevy Volts are PHEVs. I get it.
My volt would show my average mileage as 199+ during my 35 mile commute and the lifetime average was 263 when I sold it at 87k miles but on a trip to Colorado it only managed 43mpg on the way there and 46 on the trip home.
It would be interesting to know his techniques.
Like, did he choose well-paved roads that would have lower rolling resistance? Did he choose a route that minimized steep grades? Did he do it during a hot spell that would marginally reduce air density?
I would love to know that as well. I would assume windows up and no AC.
I read up on it and use some of the techniques myself. Some of them are:
-keep your speed as low as safely possible
-draft other vehicles
-feather the throttle to keep it in EV mode as long as possible
-use the pulse-and-glide technique
-look far down the road and take advantage of the downward side of hills for regen… and use the collected electricity to get up the next hill
-no HVAC, lights, radio or anything else. Keep everything off
-keep the windows closed
-avoid any idling whether you’re standing still or while coasting or slowing down
-When braking, brake gently so you’re only slowing down through ‘regen’ rather than the real brakes
-When accellerating, accellerate gently so you stay in electric mode.
-use momentum to your advantage.
-Check the weather and avoid rain or windy days
-Drive during the day so you won’t need to turn on the lights.
And that’s off the top of my head. I’m sure there are at least a few techniques I’m forgetting.
I’ve been curious to do the math on Pulse and Glide with ICE vs HEV vs PHEV vs BEV.
ICE and HEV it has absolutely been shown to be beneficial, but also wonder if it depends on engine type, series vs parallel, and where the peak efficiency bands are. My understanding is that using the engine at its most efficient, minimizes both engine and cumulative drivetrain losses from the clutch/torque converter/e-torque converter back to the engine.
For the PHEV and BEV, when the car is running full electric, it doesn’t necessarily follow that pulse and glide would be any more efficient than the motor outputting just enough power to keep the same average speed.
Anecdotally and not really measured beyond checking the live mpg readout and calculating the miles per tank, but for the Corolla hybrid I had as a loaner, it seemed like casual (not holding up other people or varying speed too dramatically) P&G wasn’t as effective as it is in ICE. What seemed to work similarly is minimal throttle input to maintain the selected speed, which is my go to, anyway. Thinking of this crap was the only thing that made that car remotely OK to drive.
It probably depends. I suspect for highway trips in the Volt there’s an optimal steady speed since the ICE is coupled directly to the output. Around town, I’ve found that time spent at highway speed (and resistive heater usage in winter) is by far the biggest factor in range and there’s not a huge difference between stomping the accelerator at every light and gently accelerating.
“I’ve been curious to do the math on Pulse and Glide with ICE vs HEV vs PHEV vs BEV.”
Pulse and Glide works regardless of powertrain. But with hybirds and plug in hybrids, there are additional factors surrounding recapturing energy when slowing and when going down hill, deciding whether it’s better to coast and let your speed rise (wasting energy to wind resistance) or keeping your speed down through some regen.
And I’ve read that pulse and glide even works well on BEVs though I’ve never tested it myself.
Yeah it would’ve been nice if some details were included. What aftermarket equipment did he use, if anything (ScanGauge, obviously from the fender sticker), did he overinflate the tires, how fast did he actually drive, etc.
When hypermiling first became a thing, one of the common techniques was to draft a semi by following it at a very unsafe distance. I’d be curious to know how much of that was done on this run.
I’ve played around with drafting semis in my insight, and while my average mpg is over oil change periods, even drafting a semi for 20 miles saw a nearly half mpg increase over the 4000 miles I had in that average.
Impressive, beats the 82 mpg I got out of a 1989 Golf Mk2, naturally aspirated diesel. The key is to keep it steady and stay at an economic speed. Some extra air in the tires maybe…but that’s it.
I had the 84 version of that in Jetta form amazing mileage but trying to merge onto LA freeways was fun
This man has discipline and patience.
Just imagine the result using a Honda Insight 1.0.
Honestly his numbers are damn good. I can eek some 96mpg trips out of mine but its not easy. Cant imagine doing that coast to coast.
Why no route? I gotta believe this was NOT and Interstate thing, but a 55-mph state-road run through one-horse towns without stop-controlled intersections.
Someone else linked the forum post: https://www.cleanmpg.com/community/index.php?threads/57313/
It says an average of 580 miles a day of driving, which if he drove 12hrs a day would get an average of 48mph. Which generally fits with a mix of interstates and state highways.
What was his average speed?
Far, far less than his MPG for sure.
Under 25 mph if the number of 5.5 days (132 hours) of actual drive time is correct! Sounds like a torture method the CIA could employ at one of their black sites.
Hmm. At that speed, I wonder why not use a Model T.
Did it say that he was driving 24 hours a day?
It looked like the actual journey took a lot longer and it was 5.5 days worth of time that he spent driving. No idea if that’s a fairly exact number, rough estimate, how long he drove each day, or at what times. It might have been specified somewhere in the thread, but I didn’t read it all that intently as I was scanning just for the drive time to figure average speed.
How many bullet holes are in the back of this Prius?
None. Speeders are all talk.
You didn’t have to be a speeder to get annoyed at this guy.
Why, what do you think he’s doing that’s so annoying?
Driving very slowly to maximize fuel mileage. Elsewhere in the comments it says he averaged 25mph all the way across the country.
I’m sure I could Forest Gump my way across the country given unlimited time.
That doesn’t make it a viable alternative.
Here’s what he says:
“As usual, the rash of, “What was your average speed” lights up the Social Media pages after a drive like this. Here are some basic targets I used for readers to digest.
The route covered 3,211 miles in 5.5 days of driving or just over 580-miles per day.
The following is a rough estimate given each of the documentation stops averaged well over an hour to complete.
Interstates: 50 to 60 mph <– This is where I said goodbye to 100 mpg somewhere in Arkansas on the 40 IIRC
State Highways: 40 to 55 mph
County and state roads: 35 to 50 mph
Towns and cities: 25 to 40 mph
Climbing mountains with truck climbing lanes: 20 to 35 mph
During overnight hours with no traffic, I dropped down another 10 mph on the county and state roads
Off-road: 10 to 15 mph"
What's so annoying about this? He followed the laws including minimum speed limits which is why his MPG dropped.
So his primary technique was to drive incredibly slowly, which is what I expected. In addition to the numerous eco driving techniques, some of which he likely created.
This IS a big achievement especially what must be master meditation monk like patience, he certainly had plenty of time to practice.
The person who said 25mph did their math based on the guy driving 24 hours a day.
I drive that Knoxville to Winston Salem leg many, many times a year, but shifted roughly an hour east (I stay in NC). Being smart about how I come down out of the Appalachians has an appreciable impact on my fuel economy vs the way up, which is either bad or worse. I’m not giving up my Blackwing dreams, but there’s absolutely an appeal to gas once a month, or once apiece for my many trips across the state.
Thomas, what was his avg. speed on these different legs across America?
I’m thinking he likely was using highways whererver possible for lower total legal speed limits (avg. of 55 mph) and then using the minimum highway speed possible, so 40 mph?
uhh, non-interstate highways don’t have minimum speed limits anywhere that I know of.
Where I’m at they don’t. I would take my electric trike on them between 30-50 mph, typically 35-55 mph speed limits. About 4,000 MPGe at 30 mph with some pedaling effort.
Huh that is interesting. I know for interstates with 65 mph the minimum posted speed is 45 mph.
I looked it up and the federal dot website agrees with you, well it states that minimum speed limits may be created for highways at the state level and I can’t recall seeing a mimimum speed posted on any highways w/50 unique states I wouldnt be surprised if some state legislature has a mimimum highway speed.
I think I must have made the assumption that (nationally in the US) there was likewise a minimum speed for highways (at 40 mph) too.