Sunday, March 16, 2008

Mileage maniacs hack Toyota's Prius for 116 mpg


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In a presumed attempt to prove questionable reports about the Prius' true fuel efficiency dead wrong, a Japanese group of mileage maniacs (or nenpimania) have assembled to push their hybrids to the brink and utilize a sly combination of hackery and zen-ish ways to elicit extreme miles per gallon figures. One such enthusiast burns his gas money on special tires, cardboard surround for the engine bay (saywha?), and blocks of foam rubber that occupy the grill, and somehow manages about 100 mpg by "hacking into the Toyota's computer" and carefully manipulating the accelerator with just his large toe. One upping even him, however, is a fellow mpg freak dubbed Teddy-Girl, who has reportedly become such a master of the "pulse and glide" method of driving that she can crank out 116 miles on a single gallon of fuel. Of course, sustaining such numbers on even mild inclines is entirely unlikely, and we're fairly sure you're hearing best case scenarios with all these gaudy numbers, but until we're all cruising in purely electric whips, this doesn't sound like a half bad approach to keep those trips to the pump at a minimum.

[Via The Raw Feed]

2 comments:

Cheap said...

I've been driving a 100mpg Plug-in Hybrid for a year so this news story is not big deal to me. However, why don't more people know about it and why are the car makers not making them yet. It they don't build them, I will.

Xeno said...

Without trying any improvements I'm getting about 38 MPG from a new Prius I've been driving. I'd like to shoot for 100MPG with some modifications, but I'm not sure where to start.