The art of ecomodding

It's been way too long since my last post. I can blame work, life, etc etc. This the start of my attempts to post more often.

Last weekend I found a cool new website: http://ecomodder.com/. Here people talk and post about ways to improve their vehicle's fuel efficiency. There's some people with the latest hybrids, or handbuilt cars, but most people have regular cars that they just want to make more efficient. There are a whole range of people using the site. Some are able to use driving 'techniques' alone to increase their fuel economy by 50-70%. Others have fun adding/modifying their cars aerodynamics to squeeze out more gains. People are a whole range of crazy on the site but the forums seem quite active and genuinely helpful, so I signed up and entered my gas receipts since last May. There's a handy chart that tracks your MPG and compares it to the EPA baseline:

And more here: http://ecomodder.com/forum/em-fuel-log.php?vehicleid=4684
I like all the metrics that it spits out for you, including the dollars saved vs EPA baseline.

The biggest graph feature that jumped out at me was my precipitous drop in MPG in late November. This happens to match the start of cold temperatures in the Virginia area. I see two reasons for the drop: cars take longer to warm up and reach optimal operating temperature in cold weather. And I was driving to work more often (vs biking) with cold and snowy weather. The 3 mile commute is very inefficient since my car barely has time to warm up by the time I get to shut if off.

I'm starting to incorporate some of their driving style tips into my driving, so stay tuned for future MPG updates. I also plan to build and install upper grill dam in my car such as this.