Does your Spouse support your hypermiling?

[low&slow]

I have been riding my motorcycle a lot more and driving less. My wife has needed to use my car a fair amount recently as I did some maintenance on her SUV or I needed to use the SUV for the extra carrying capacity . Her driving my car knocked my tankfill average in my Jag from around 28- 30 mpg to 24- 26 mpg tankfills. This was with me doing about half the driving for these tankfills. She is wonderful and the love but of wife but definitely not a hypermiler.
Just to see if she would notice, I started doing a few " stealth mods" to her SUV to see if she would notice ( upper grille block, removed roof carrier crossbars, upped tire pressures to 42 psi). So far she has only noticed the higher tire inflation and asked me to reduce it back to the manufacturer recommendation. Its kind of amusing, like Spy vs Spy or Roadrunner vs Wiley Coyote.
Share share some of your experiences
all the best , L&S

[benfrogg]

My fiancee is on board, to an extent. No mods to her car, it's a spotless 96' civic LX. She couldn't stand anything that "looks different." She does pretty good, averaging 35 mpg tanks consistently since hypermiling. Her worst tank (and arguably the game changer for her) was 19 mpg on a winter tank. She used to use the remote starter all the time, now she uses it only on the coldest days.
She's changed her driving habits, on her own accord. She claims I didn't have much influence, but I guess it doesn't matter anyway.
She's okay with tire pressure increases... not as extreme as mine, but she's up to 45 psi. She wants an ultra gauge, and will probably get one for her birthday, but it's not in the cards financially until then.

The only real stealth thing I had to do was show her the actual FE she was getting by "stealthily" setting her trip odometer after coming back from the gas station.

Again, she won't tolerate mods that make the car look funny. She's talked about wanting a 6th gen HX civic (with lean burn) as her next car, so we'll see.
Fun stuff!
B

[theholycow]

My wife supports my hypermiling, but she doesn't do much of her own. Her Isuzu Rodeo isn't very tolerant of anything we try and we can't afford to break anything expensive. She doesn't have the same will to hypermile or patience that I have, and I can respect that...what we do is not for everyone. Still, I think she's getting 18MPG out of it, pretty respectable for that vehicle.

[IndyFetch]

My wife is pretty supportive of hypermiling. She has been "trained" to write down the mileage when she fills up, but she refuses to shut off the gas pump when it clicks off or top off until it is full; she always rounds up to the next dollar. Oh well.

In any case, she averages 36 - 39 mpg in the Fit, and it is only rated at 33 highway, so I think she does better than most. She also learned to drive a manual tranny so I could buy her the VX when we were engaged. Every car we have had except the truck has been a stick.

[goofy1]

Yup. She tries her best doing mainly city driving. She does lots of Pulse and Glide.

[low&slow]

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I should show this thread to my wife but then she would find out about my stealth mods and my secret strategy.
My wife actually does OK, probably averaging around 20mpg with her Lexus RX350 with lots of short trips. WHat I find that motivates her to do better is to show her how well I do when I drive her SUV and appeal to her competitiveness. I do praise her when she does well.
Happy Holidays, L&S

[bowtieguy]

my wife hates riding w/ me 'cause i drive the back roads to avoid traffic signals. and i will never get her to drive a 4cyl vehicle...unless, of course, they develop a way to get 300+ horses out of one.

[benfrogg]

It should go without saying that when I first started extreme hypermiling (lots of EOCing) she would NOT ride with me. She's softened with time... she actually doesn't mind riding with me at all now. The pace we travel at is slower, so she gets to see more. That's one of the reasons I really like hypermiling... we live in a beautiful state.
B

[theholycow]

I was afraid my wife would have that same reaction to EOC but she wasn't concerned at all. That was a nice surprise.

[FrugalFloyd]

I've got a Scangauge installed in my wife's car, with one of the gauges showing trip fuel cost. My wife pays attention to that, although she hasn't altered her driving much.

What she does to cut her fuel cost is sweet talk me into driving her in my car @50-60 mpg. She conned me into driving her to her college twice this week.

When she had knee replacement surgery last Summer, I drove her car for two full tanks of local driving, to the hospital, physical therapy, etc. I averaged 33.3 and 35 mpg for those two tanks.