Toyota: The Hybrid (and Hypermiler) Texas Tour

Hey guys, I'm going to be working with Toyota next week on a Hybrid (and Hypermiler) Tour of Texas. We will be visiting Houston, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, with media events at all venues.

I'll be in my Prius and see how far I can get on a tank. Wish me luck.

Here's the itinerary

Sun July 13th - Drive to Corpus City Hall
Mon July 14th - Drive to The Alamo in San Antonio
Tue July 15th - Drive to Brush Square in Austin
Wed July 16th - Drive to City Hall Plaza in Dallas
Thu July 17th - Drive to Discovery Green in Houston

We'll start the drive to each destination at Noon and have one media stop on the way. So hopefully that will spell out when we'll arrive.

Here's the Map. The format is going to be Michael Garfield ("High Tech Texan" Radio show) and myself driving around Texas. He's going to drive without instruction, and I'll be driving for the numbers. At the end we will compare travel time and fuel budget. It's a round trip so no hope of getting lucky with a prevailing wind or drop in elevation. Hardest part is going to be from San Antonio through Austin. This is the Texas hill country and it ain't flat.

There should be a full media blitz on this stuff with a video blog they will be hosting. Reality WebTV meets Hypermiling.

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Yeah, they will have everything wired to the gills. Video blog, audio blog, and morning news shows at each stop.

Most of my miles will be highway. For highway I just hold the ignition timing (IGN) at 14 for as long as possible. Once it falls off I pulse back up and try to find IGN 14 again. With a lot of luck you can pull 70 MPG between 50 and 55 mph. I've got about 700 foot rise coming from corpus through the Texas hill country. That is going to be rough to recover. I'll try to Warp Stealth like mad through this stuff

Thanks... I'll keep everyone posted.

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OK... The blog is up with some test video from the production team. The blog should hold our daily progress and video diaries.

The Hybrid-Tech Texan

PS... The "ONE TANK" Gauntlet has been thrown down. Any tank stuffing advice would be much appreciated

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I doubt Toyota has a VW in their fleet .

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OK... I'm getting ready to siphon the bad gas out of my car and stick the good gas in. It's about a 50 mile hike to get across the county line for the good gas.

Also, I'm repairing my EBH today. The plug has a bad contact. Any suggestions on how to resplice the plug head?

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OK... Got my Prius back yesterday as I'd lowned it out to a friend while I was reviewing the Camry. When I lent it to him I told him "don't fill it up", but I don't think he heard the "Please ohhh Please don't fill it up whatever you do" and instead heard "Hey I'm a nice guy and I'm not going to ask you to fill the tank for borrowing the car".

Well he did fill it up... all the way up... with crap gas! After spending 2 hours trying to siphon the gas out we found the "Prius + Siphon = Impossible" thread. So now we are taking shifts trying to burn as much gas as possible. Since the idle is only 0.3 gph it would take a full day in idle to empty the tank.

My wife is behind the wheel now and she's under marking orders to try to get below 30 mpg. This is just sick...

On a positive note, I got my block heater fixed thanks to FireEngineer. Just clipped off the plug and installed a new plug head. I'm officially out of slack on the line so if this one shorts out I'm gonna need to get creative.

All right... I'll let you know how the stuffing goes in the morning.

Did a quick highway test with the crap gas and got about 71mpg pure highway. Since it was only an 8 mile curcuit, the exit back to my house bumped it all the way up to 79. I've I don't hold at least 72 mpg I'm really toast.

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Micheal was updating the blog as I type... ( The Hybrid-Tech Texan ) so there should be some media coming shortly. It's all tounge in cheek but there is hopefully going to be some good content in there too.

PS.. be nice... I'm bringing Micheal around .

Quick update ....

Wake up call is 5am to do our morning interviews in Coprus Christi. We have two lined up. Suffice to say. I'm ready to go to bed.

The winds were horrific. Unforgiving and unrelenting. All either head-on or at a 45-90 deg Angle. The worst! Glides were WAY short for SHM and since you need at least 3 seconds to pop from 80-90 (note TPS drop from 18 to 17), I wasn't in the really Spectacular Highway Mode as much as I would have liked to be.

Final number for the day (Cringe) 201 miles @ 61.8 mpg. All pips still solid.

Micheal got 199 miles @ 40.3. 8 Pips showing (two dead and buried).

Differential... an nice round 55% (well 54.5%).

Hope for a tail wind up to San Antonio.

Front left tire was a bit low on air (don't ask the PSI, I ain't telling). It wasn't that bad, but I'll balance them all out before we launch in the morning.

One interesting note... I've been using my S1 veto for all it's worth. It's so hot, 3 starts usually lands me in S4. Well worth it.

I'm also concerned that the heat (97 degF) is flipping out the batteries a bit. I'm looking for any excuse I can get .

I'll see if I can't spread the delta to 60% tomorrow.

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Good Morning PriusChat!

OK... 6am and 10am interviews at KIII-TV in Corpus. Might be webcast, but I can't be sure...

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