There is increasing awareness to saving gas while driving or when using your car due to rising gas prices, and hypermiling is now in the spotlight as a means of achieving that. With so many different methods to reach your objective of saving gas, why should hypermiling techniques now receive so much attention and what is so special about it?

To be exact, hypermiling is actually doing things to reduce expenditure on gas used by your automobile, but really doing it to levels so far that many might start calling you Scrooge. For example, turning off your engine when going down slopes or making turns. Of course, the latter would require one to be driving at a high enough speed to make the turn without having to step on the gas pedal, much less switching the engine off. Some of these techniques can be quite risky, and might not be advisable for most of the population, especially those who are not confident behind the wheel.

Wayne Gerdes, the originator of the term hypermiling, also promotes other methods which help in saving gas, such as keeping to the speed limit, cruising and of course, making sure that your tires are inflated properly and not bald, which might lead to a higher consumption of gas during your travels. There are also other peculiar techniques which he preaches, but they will not be discussed here as some of them are questionable and hard to understand. Certainly, if they contribute to saving gas, they would definitely be useful, but do they help enough to be worth the effort implementing them?

At the end of the day, the best and most effective ways to saving gas is definitely using the car less often or simply not overexerting the use of it in ways that would lead to spending more to top up the tank regularly. There are perhaps certain hypermiling techniques which can be employed by everyone, but desperate measures should only be called upon during desperate times, and for now, there are more rational ideas which can be depended upon when one desires to save money through spending less on gas.