MAX Update No. 84: Speed Kills (Gas Mileage)

Reader Contribution by Staff
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In my 7,500-plus mile adventure in MAX this summer, one lesson really stands out: Haste Makes Waste.

To make a long story short, when George Voll and I drove our high mileage cars (that’s George’s car in the background) from his home in Indiana to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR in Pennsylvania, we drove various legs of the trip at various speeds. By driving in formation and scrutinizing each other’s fill-ups, we got two-heads-are-better-than-one confirmation of our mileage.

The above photo shows my side of the fuel pump, just east of Columbus Ohio, after our 100.4 mile, 45 mph run from Cleveland. I confirmed speed and distance with my GPS, but for most of the trip George’s diesel Metro was the pace car.

We had driven that leg at 45 mph for three reasons; first, George had never driven a hundred miles that slowly and didn’t know what his mileage was down there; second, 45 mph was the minimum speed when the Auto X Prize did its oval track “race” last year and we wanted to measure ourselves against that benchmark, and third, it was raining hard when we left Cleveland and it’s uncomfortable to drive MAX fast in the rain.

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