GOING THE EXTRA MILE

'Hypermiling' is a way maximum of extracting efficiency from your car. We explain how to go about it

- Charlie Martin

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THINK OF HYPERMILING as the motoring equivalent of making a tasty meal from yesterday's leftovers; you can get more journeys out of each tank of fuel and save yourself a tidy sum, simply by doing a bit of planning and adjusting your driving style.

What's more, hypermiling isn't just useful with petrol and diesel models, because many of the same adjustments that work for those cars will also improve the efficiency of hybrids and electric vehicles (EVS).

In 2021, a team set multiple Guinness World Records by driving a Ford Mustang Mach-E electric SUV from John O'Groats in Scotland to Land's End in Cornwall - a distance of 840 miles - and stopping just once to recharge.

The version of the Mach-E that they drove was an Extended Range RWD, which covered 302 miles in our summer range test - in which we didn't use any special methods to boost efficiency. So, for the team to have extended that to around 420 miles illustrates just how effective hypermiling can be.

The three key parts of hypermiling are planning, preparation and technique. Let's take a look at each of them...

PLANNING

Before you set off, think about the route you're going to take. Slogging across town through a gridlocked high street isn't very energy efficient in a petrol or diesel car, because you'll be burning fuel even if you're crawling along or, in older cars, stationary. It's best to pick a route that's less likely to be busy or to travel outside peak hours.

On the other hand, EVs thrive around town, where typical stop-start driving allows their regenerative braking systems to put lots of energy back into the batteries, but many of them quickly lose range at motorway speeds. This is because the motorway provides fewer opportunities to recuperate energy by slowing down, and EVS tend to weigh more than comparable petrol and diesel models, requiring their motors to work harder.