Wayne Gerdes: Ease on Down the Road:

[Kit Sober]

Ease on Down the Road: Fuel-Efficient Drivers Driving for a Good Cause

Unlike most hypermilers, the world's most fuel-efficient driver doesn't own a hybrid. Wayne sold his own Insight two years ago and bought a 2005 Accord (he wanted the power mirrors, heated leather seats and state-of-the-art navigation system). He uses the Accord for the two-hour commute to his job as an operator at a nuclear power plant. His wife drives an Acura MDX, a seven-seater with a 3.5-liter V-6 engine that bills itself as the Driver's SUV. Wayne also owns a Ford Ranger pickup, which he used to haul equipment when he had a landscaping business on the side.

The morning after I arrive, we pile into the truck for a supermarket run. Wayne starts it by releasing the emergency brake and shifting into neutral before jumping out and pushing the 3,300-pound vehicle down his sloping driveway with the engine off. He jumps in and, without braking, turns right, swerves around a dead skunk, then takes a left turn–again, no brakes–to a stop sign. Ahead, the light is red. "This is a long light," he says. "I'm screwed. We have to throw it away."

"Throw it away" is how Wayne describes what most of us do with gasoline. We throw it away when we accelerate fast, turn on the AC, leave heavy stuff in the trunk, drive with a roof rack, don’t change the oil, underinflate the tires, roll down the windows, or speed, brake or idle. Wayne hates to throw anything away.

Even parking isn't routine with Wayne, as I learn when he chooses an isolated spot in the mall parking lot. "This is potential parking with a face-out," he says. Potential parking, he says, is when you park in a lot's highest point. That lets you rely on gravity, not the engine, to get going. A face-out is what it sounds like: facing out into the open lot. This lets a driver avoid backing up, braking, then moving forward. "Nobody uses it," he says, "but they darn well should."

Driving out, we come to the top of a small hill. Wayne says he's doing a forced auto stop, putting the car in neutral, turning off the engine and gliding. It's illegal in some places–you can lose your power brakes and steering–but it's a favorite hypermiling trick.

On the way home, a woman in a gray sedan zips around us to catch a green light, but she’s too late and has to slam on the brakes. "That made no sense," Wayne says. "She's sitting there with the car running and she's going to tear out of here." And that's what she does. (One study found that fast starts and hard stops cut travel time by just 4 percent–75 seconds on a half-hour trip.)

As we approach his subdivision, Wayne coasts down to 30 mph, then to 25, letting inertia do the brakes' job. Three cars are bunched behind him, and a guy in a Ford Explorer honks. "They can honk all day," Wayne says.

Wayne's driving obsession began after 9/11. Before then, he drove 75 miles per hour in the left-hand lane. In the wake of the attacks, he vowed to limit his reliance on Middle Eastern oil. As Wayne sees it, Al Qaeda got its operating funds from Western consumers buying Saudi oil: "If Osama bin Laden didn’t have money to burn, he wouldn’t have been able to do what he did. There was a direct relationship between our addiction to oil and the World Trade Center."

Wayne believes that if we all boosted our fuel economy by 25 percent (less than the 50 percent improvement he gets), we could halve the amount of Middle Eastern oil we import for our cars. That would be a boon to a broader economy and a step against global warming. "I'm not doing this just for myself," he says. "I'm doing this for my country and the world."

In 2002 Wayne bought a Toyota Corolla to replace his 1999 Nissan truck. Online he saw "guys in Priuses bragging about 44 mpg, and I was doing better in a Corolla." But it was his wife's SUV, with its fuel-consumption display showing mpg in real time, that inspired Wayne's zeal for fuel economy. He could see how little things–slight movements of his foot, uphill accelerations–affected fuel efficiency. He learned to wring 30 mpg from the MDX; most people get 18. If consumption displays were required in all cars sold in America, he decided, fuel use would drop by 20 percent.

On the road to Madison, I ask Wayne what it takes to be a hypermiler. "Foot control, hand-eye coordination and anticipation," he says. Like an athlete, Wayne senses action on the field–in his case, the road–before it unfolds.

Minutes later, he exclaims, "I forgot my ice vest." The vest, which he wears at work, is his secret weapon. "You can drive at 95 degrees with an ice vest, and it doesn't feel like 95." He expects his car to be warm during the challenge: "No electricity, no air, no fans."

The two dozen competitors begin driving the Hybridfest MPG Challenge course at about 9 a.m. Wayne expects his most serious rival will be Randall Burkhalter, the only driver ever to break one of Wayne's mpg records. The two met online at websites like cleanmpg.com and greenhybrid.com. After Burkhalter finishes his run, the best of the day at a 108.5 mpg average, Wayne congratulates him, calling him top dog.

Then a shout comes from the crowd. There's a new front-runner: 17-year-old Justin Fons, clocking 117.2 mpg. Justin says his father taught him to drive, but "the person I learned to drive efficiently from is Wayne Gerdes."

By the time Wayne finishes, it's after 5 p.m. With his head sticking out the window (his breath fogged the windshield, and he won't use the defroster), he honks to get a judge's attention. His fuel-consumption display reads 150 mpg–the highest possible. Then the car's owner switches the display to show liters per 100 kilometers (a higher limit). The reading: 180.91 mpg.

At that night's awards dinner, Wayne gets a subscription to Green Car Journal and a $25 gas card. For all we know, he's still using it.

From Reader's Digest - April 2008

Thought you would like this.

The last time I filled up I found I got 27 mpg instead of the car's normal of 21. Then I found this article in a Reader's Digest in the doctor's office yesterday that explained my increased mpg because I have been driving slower and always try to stay off the brakes and drive gently.

Wayne Gerdes sounds like a nice guy.

Hope you like it.