The advantage in slowing down.

It seems like lockdown has increased the average speed everybody thinks they should drive? In the past I could commute at 70-75mph, passing some cars and getting passed by others. Now its more like 80-85mph. Fortunately I've only been in the office twice in the last two months.

The other day I had to head in and decided I'd slow right down and see what I could get for fuel economy out of my 2015 VW Jetta TDI. I kept my speed to no more 65mph maximum and spent the longest part of the drive at not more than 60mph. I didn't want to go any slower because I would have to drop out of 6th gear although I will probably experiment with that at some point. I felt comfortable doing this because there were so few cars on the road. I wouldn't do this in heavier traffic, just because I want to try for high mileage doesn't mean everybody does.

My commute is pretty much 60 miles each way and includes about 600 feet of elevation change with it dropping on the way in and rising on the return. This shot shows mean just before I got off the highway. I figured that the low speed surface street run to the office would cost me. In the end it was only maybe a tenth of a point, not so bad. I actually didn't think of trying of this record run until I was a few miles into the drive so I could probably do a little better.

This is the return and we can see the effect of the elevation change, still thats a solid 57mpg round trip and I suspect if I took my top speed down from 65 to 60 and ran the previously 60mph sections at 55 we could probably break, or come close to breaking, the 60mpg barrier.

Remember that this is all in a reasonably sized car that has pretty good power, with a comfortable ride. The Gen6 Jetta is not a tiny economy car...