Hypermiling - a growing phenomenon

Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cars, Smart

This is all about the fight against excessive consumption. I’ve been against the whole insane US car manufacturing mindset for years, and now the Big Three are in collapse - like it wasn’t obvious this was coming.

In 2008, the word hypermiling was selected as the word of the year by New Oxford American Dictionary.

I recently bought a Smart ForTwo CDI out of desperation. I wanted to convert our seven seater Mercedes 300TD to run on 100% SVO, B100 and fossil diesel. To do it properly would have cost around £1,500. But the costs of obtaining B100 in the UK is so punitive, thanks to no tax breaks, it’s hardly worth all the effort. B100 in Germany, for example, is zero rated for tax. UK politics just doesn’t get it.

So I kept my eyes open for the most fuel efficient car made since 1999 (mass produced) - the ForTwo CDI. Never imported RHD into the UK as the UK had punitive taxation for diesel engines (are you getting a sense of sluggish politics in the UK) so it had to be a private import.

Rare as hen’s teeth. They mostly exchange owners through word of mouth. With luck and a hefty dealers premium I found an early 2000 (G1 or first generation) one on Autotrader and nabbed it. I’ve since learnt much more about the ForTwo.

The good thing about these early G1 ForTwos is that they have few extras; no power steering, no aircon, thin tyres, not much sound insulation which makes for a car weighing less than 730kg. Still a porker by DIY hypermiler standard’s, but given its Tridion safety cell, this is not too bad.

As it was registered before the DVLA cut-off point for CO2 emissions VED banding, I still have to pay the sub-1500cc tax, when the same make and model registered one year later is VED free. The banding is there to stop older cars getting caned in the VED banding, but DVLA hasn’t twigged that some cars were way ahead of the 4x4 gas guzzler trend. I’ve written to my MP about this, and he has written to The HM Treasury.

Meanwhile, mostly outside Barmy Blighty, these micro cars and hypermiling have really caught on. A fairly recent site is Spirit Monitor. I’ve switched from Ecomodder to Spirit Monitor as the interface is better and I don’t have to deal with US gallons and bonkers EPA figures. Smart cars aren’t even recognised by the EPA…

I know that it is possible to achieve the magic 100mpg (2.824 litres/100km) in the ForTwo CDI and in mainland Europe the ‘three litre class’ is a club reserved for cars bettering a combined 3 litres/100km (94.16mpg).

I was amazed to find such a thriving ‘3 litre’ community from when I last looked into this just over 18 months ago. My ‘club’ is the G1 ForTwo CDI. I thought my combined 68.2mpg (4.14 litres/100km) was not bad considering the town traffic and motorway trips I do with little constant 55mph travel. Indeed the average for the 245 cars in this club is 69.5mpg.

It’s also very useful that my input data is post processed to extract CO2 emissions estimations from all my driving. My CO2 emissions are 109g/km, which for real-world driving is remarkable for a nine year old car. I can only better this accuracy with a fuel flow meter and GPS. I’ll get there.

However, most impressive are the top 20 or so getting over 80mpg combined with the top five achieving over 90mpg. A number of these G1 ForTwo CDIs have gone way past the 100,000km mark too. Have a look.

I keep a rolling record of my Smart’s fuel consumption, mainly to see how my hypermiling techniques are improving. I’m currently hitting an average