Efficient Drivers Cut Emissions, but Stir Up Hot Air

Eco-Motorists Slow Down, Coast, for Big Mileage Gains, but Their Strategies Might Drive Others on the Road Crazy
By JEFFREY BALL

Phoenix
Cruising around this desert metropolis in her four-door pickup truck, Morgan Dresser doesn't look like an environmental trendsetter.
Recently, though, the 26-year-old did something revolutionary. She began "eco-driving" -- a technique that combines a racecar driver's skill with the proverbial grandmother's pace. By learning to drive all over again, Ms. Dresser estimates she has boosted her truck's fuel economy to 21 miles per gallon from 15, a jump of 40% that surpasses the mileage advertised by its manufacturer, Toyota Motor Corp. With that shift in behavior, she has done more to curb oil consumption than most people zooming around in the latest hybrid cars.
"Who would have thought a truck could get good gas mileage?" she says. "It's possible with any vehicle, big or small."
A new technique to curb fuel consumption is on the rise: "eco-driving." Eco-driving teaches drivers not to slam the gas pedal and brakes, but rather, learn how to maintain a more constant speed. Jeffrey Ball reports.
Green Driving 101

Even without futuristic technologies, drivers can achieve eye-popping fuel economy in their current cars with nothing fancier than their brains and some lighter feet. The idea is to maintain momentum much as on a leisurely bicycle ride: accelerating only gradually, coasting whenever possible and constantly adjusting speed to minimize the need to stop.
The challenge will be to get Americans, who love the open throttle as much as the open road, to ease up instead of variously slamming on the gas and the brakes. In the meantime, as early eco-drivers lower their own emissions, they are certain to raise some hot air from the impatient drivers around them.
"I've been honked at. I've been flipped off. I've been yelled at: 'Grandma!'" says Ms. Dresser, a former back-country firefighter. "I just laugh."
Trials in Europe, Japan and the U.S. are finding that drivers commonly improve their fuel economy upwards of 20% after deploying a handful of eco-driving techniques. Among them: Driving more slowly on highways, shifting gears earlier in cities and shutting off the engine rather than idling at long stops.
Technology still matters. A car that is lighter and loaded with the latest environmental hardware will use less gasoline than a car that is heavier and conventional under the hood.
But technology can't do it all. Hybrid-car makers have been deluged with complaints from buyers who aren't getting near the mileage the cars' stickers promise -- largely because even hybrids need to be driven gingerly to fully exploit their fuel-sipping technology.
"If you own a Prius and you drive it like a Corvette, you're not going to get the results they talk about," says Drew DeGrassi, president of Pro Formance Group Inc., a Phoenix-based company that teaches eco-driving.
Attempts to promote eco-driving have puttered along for at least a decade, mostly in northern Europe. In 1999, Germany began requiring that elements of eco-driving be taught in driver-education classes -- no easy thing in the land of the autobahn and the Porsche. About 800,000 new drivers get their licenses annually in Germany, and they are supposed to learn three basic eco-driving tips, says Jochen Lau, manager for road safety for the German Road Safety Council, an insurance industry-backed group that helps coordinate the curriculum.
First, watch the tachometer, not just the speedometer, and shift gears before the car's engine speed reaches 2,000 revolutions per minute to minimize how hard the engine has to work. Second, don't tailgate, because tailgating requires a lot of unnecessary braking and accelerating. Third, coast if an upcoming light is red, letting it turn green so there is no need to stop.
In the U.S., where 5% of the world's population consumes 23% of its oil, eco-driving has existed so far mostly as a tiny subculture. In "hypermiling," a quirky new competitive pastime, the winning drivers have surpassed 150 miles per gallon in mass-produced hybrids.
The basic hypermiling technique is the "pulse-and-glide," says Dan Bryant, a Houston-based competitor whose accomplishments include driving a Toyota Prius on an 844-mile trip around Texas last year on a single tank of gas. The driver slowly accelerates to about 60% of full throttle -- the point where a car's engine tends to operate most efficiently -- and then steps off the gas, coasting until the car's speed drops. At the right moment, before losing too much speed, the driver gently presses the gas pedal again.
Now, mainstream interest in eco-driving is ramping up. Last year, two technology companies that sense a new market in eco-driving software and hardware organized a test involving 240 drivers in Denver. One of their tips: Drive as if there is a hot cup of coffee in the cup holder at risk of splashing. Fuel economy, they say, improved an average of 10% across the group.
Auto makers are the most enthusiastic eco-driving promoters. Pressured to improve the fuel economy of their vehicles, they see eco-driving as a way to shift some of the responsibility away from themselves and onto their customers.
Ford Motor Co. has been promoting eco-driving for several years in Germany. Last July, Ford flew Mr. Lau and another German Road Safety Council instructor to Detroit to give an eco-driving lesson to Mr. DeGrassi and other drivers from Pro Formance, the Phoenix professional-driving company. A month later, Ford and Pro Formance staged an eco-driving test with 48 Phoenix-area drivers, who improved their fuel economy an average of 24%.
Among them was Ms. Dresser. She co-owns a laundry business that involves driving her pickup and a much bigger semi truck across the country. After she passed along the eco-driving tips to one of her semi drivers, his fuel economy jumped to 12 mpg from 8 mpg, a 50% increase.
Often, Ms. Dresser is tailgated by trucks whose drivers figure they can intimidate her into speeding up. She, too, used to be that kind of driver, "weaving in and out of traffic," she says, to get a few feet ahead. "People don't realize that you don't have to speed up just to sit" at the next traffic light, she says.
To help drivers make the change, car makers have begun rolling out technological aids, including dashboard gauges that display fuel economy in real time. The rationale is that, if consumers see how their behavior affects their energy consumption, they will be more likely to change.
Within the next two years, Nissan Motor Co. plans to start offering in the U.S. and Japan a feature that it calls the "eco-pedal" -- a sensor that, when the driver is accelerating too piggishly, pushes back against the driver's foot.
But Nissan realizes that slow and steady also is the rule when it comes to changing drivers' behavior behind the wheel. "Not every driver likes to be an eco-driver," notes Nissan's Kazuhiro Doi. So Nissan will include a switch that allows drivers to turn the eco-pedal off.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com