Jul 4th, 2008
The 5% Plan: Closing In On Conclusions
If you are wondering where the incredible Kyle of Rather-Be-Shopping and his regular feature is today, he’s taking a few days off to enjoy the July 4th holiday and do stuff with his family. He’ll be back next week!
I’m continuing to work on reducing my gasoline use. As you may recall, my goal–5% less gasoline use from my baseline of 10.5 gallons per week–means keeping my consumption at or below 9.98 gallons from Sunday through Saturday. Given the 24.8 miles per gallon that I calculated during my “baseline week”, I estimate that I need to drive 247.7 miles per less each week in order to meet that goal.
This past week my total mileage was 225.7, well (8.9%) below the 247.7 mile goal. My per gallon mileage appeared a bit worse, at 24.27 miles per gallon, so I estimate my total gas used for this week as 9.3 gallons, meaning for the second time in five weeks I’ve been able to meet my goal.
Averaging out the five weeks, I’ve driven 245.1 miles per week, using approximately 9.91 gallons of gas for a calculated 24.74 miles per gallon; that means that while I’ve met my goal only 40% of the weeks I’ve monitored it, my average for all of the weeks is meeting my 5% target.
It’s clear that the only way for me to make even this small dent in my gasoline use is to drive less. All of the other tips–keeping tires inflated properly, not idling for large periods of time, maximizing right turns, finding the most efficient routes, and driving the speed limit–were things I was already doing. So I’m down to the most drastic, but most efficient tactic: just drive less.
We’ll continue to monitor this and see if I can figure out any other ways to get my gasoline use down!
