Like others I have read a lot about slowing down and bringing your car up to speed slower to conserve fuel, so I decided to check those ideas out, not that I doubted it but I was looking to put my own numbers to it, with my car.
I drive a TDI wagon (Diesel) its a standard. I check my mpg on most fillups, more so lately. I almost always gets 48 mpg, during warm months. I get about 600 miles/tank on about 12.5 gals.
I did not start my test till I had already burned about 1/3 of a tank... and I still improved my mileage to 51.75 mpg. I have never seen it that good. In general the change was that I just slowed down and shifted earlier, trying to keep rpms around 2000 as a max.
One of my observations not related to gas....driving 55 mph on route 95, in my opinion is actually dangerous....its almost too slow for normal traffic on the main highways. You kind of feel like a sitting duck with traffic/trucks/etc flying by you at 70+. I wasn't crazy about it.
The other observation is buy a diesel car... I know, it does not burn as clean, but burns much less fuel than most cars. There just are not many options and VW stopped making them, VW is supposed to come out with a cleaner burning diesel engine, not sure when. Even with diesel prices as high as they are it is still better than our other car at 25mpg burning 87.
Not necessarily an advocate of reducing the speed limit, but in my simple experiment it does save a few bucks
