Vincent Keene wrote:
JamesShort wrote:
...drag force increases with velocity of the car squared.
James you are such a geek!
That's how I roll
. Back when I was a freshman in college I used to drive to and from Durham and Concord pretty frequently (my then girlfriend, now wife was still a senior in highschool). Plus my mom would buy me beer (hey weren't we talking about criminals somewhere?
). Given my work study job paid crap, I started experimenting with driving speed. The route was exactly 120 miles and it was all highway 85 so it was easy to have a 'control'. Anyway, I had my 98 DX civic coupe back then (no cruise control) but when I would drive 80-82mph the whole time ( I would always have the A/C on the same temp/fan speed), I'd get a very consistent 35-36mpg. Scale back to 65mph?....shot up to 40+ mpg. That's a 14% increase in economy and I'd get there in 1:50 vs 1:30.
I did it so many times that I didn't think it was a fluke (granted my overall fuel economy started slipping because I started using Sam's Club gas
).
With the WRX I noticed a similar difference between 65mph and 80 mph on highway trips (28mph at 80mph and 30-31mpg at 65mph). Obviously it was not as pronounced since the WRX had some torque at low rpms. In the Honda at 80mph, you come to even a 3% grade, you are almost flooring it to keep the velocity steady
.
Haven't really done any road trips in my SI. Probably NCAC will be the first time to give it a try.
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