SmileySteve's Blog

So, in case any of you were wondering what was happening with my Twitter posts regarding driving with Cruise Control (constant speed) versus Constant Throttle (variable speed), I thought that I would add some detail.
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I’m occasionally a hyper-miler, it entertains me on the road, and when I’m road tripping with family or friends has an added sense of accomplishment and bragging rights. One time I remember most was in driving to Oshkosh, Wisconsin when my dad and I competed to get the best mileage. I beat my dad by a solid mile per gallon, and he beat the cruise control by a mile per gallon (in all cases over extended highway driving, Atlanta to Wisconsin.) To add to my credentials, I drive with a air flow computer in my car that tells me my current throttle %, airflow percentage, and more.
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One of the people I was responding to on my twitter post was irritated because the other had just driven a 6 hour + drive, and apparently not been maintaining a constant speed. I thought it might be worth the funny point to point out that driving variable speed can potentially be more efficient.
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To effectively drive more efficiently with variable speed you should do the following.

• Only drive within a power range that you can stay in your top gear. If your car is struggling without downshifting, then you are going to slow to get all of the advantage from variable speed.
• Have a maximum position that you are willing to put the throttle. In my car, I like to have this max set at 60%.
• Make sure that you maintain a highway speed
• Predict the open lane so that you aren’t braking (ie throwing gas away.) Particularly, try to be nice, and move to the right before up hills and figure out how to move back left for the downhill.
• Accelerate a lot on downhills, just maintain as much speed as you can on the uphill.

I imagine that the people in question were not driving with a “constant throttle” system and were instead just forgetting how fast they were going and slowing back down, or doing the opposite of what this system is supposed to do and accelerating to pass in an uphill.

This method will accelerate you on downhills (to probably faster than you want to go) and put you in a crawl going on an uphill, which is a decent way to remember that going with gravity is easier than going against it.

My father taught me to drive like there was an egg between my foot and the pedal, meaning that I’m never changing throttle too much or too quickly.

Best of luck driving.

During my Recent visit to the Central West Coast, I had the pleasure to ride Amtrak on one of the most beautiful trips that I could have possibly taken from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo. It was great experience and I recommend that you look into finding a cheap trip near you. First off, my ticket was only $38, which at an expected car cost of $0.50 per mile including maintenance is much cheaper for a 200+ mile journey like the one I took. I met some fun people on train, had a delicious lunch, and got to sit in an all window car for 3 hours.

A Nice Scene from my Train Ride

The Problems

My train ride was not perfect or fitting for many scenarios. First of all, scheduling was a pain, http://amtrak.com needs to get with google to add the train to google maps. I had to manually figure out which station to station would be the cheapest and quickest on their website and also found out on my ride that there was a quicker alternative without needing to go through San Francisco and Oakland and instead going south on Cal Train from my lodging at Stanford.  The time involved, a three hour trip by car effectively took 5 hours on the Amtrak; trains should be able to go faster than cars (is 80mph really that hard to engineer for?) and not slow down like we did many times – get the schedule right.  There was also some drama on my Train as apparently two guys were cursing a lot and when a man that looked like me asked the conductor to get them to treat the environment with respect I was warned to watch my back by an older woman… I wish I would have told the guys to quiet down, but the whole situation should not occur on the chill train.

A Rail car sitting on the tracks with a lovely scene

I would highly suggest that everybody get more into the train and transportation systems, because it can be a fun and enjoyable journey. I experienced networking opportunities over a soothing ride in a lunch car with two Entrepreneurs and a student studying abroad. One thing that could help this happen is American Maglev trains that solve some problems – check out this new venture http://academicvc.com/2009/03/american-maglev/

I ride Marta around Atlanta a lot because it goes North and South along most of my travels pretty well, but Cal Train and Amtrak were fun new experiences.

I would like to see more trains going more places, with more people on them (hopefully some of this American Stimulus will help) because if people really start trying to enjoy their time they will love watching the scenario go by across from them instead of 10 miles up. Train technologies and conducting companies need to streamline their services though, offer faster service to more people at lower prices to more places. The Mag lev and other new lighter technologies are a positive.

On the other hand, current train systems get around 450mpg at cruising speed based on their momentum conserving ideals. What if the trains used batteries (instead of the dead lead weight that many cars have) to make their hybrid systems actually work a lot more efficiently.

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So as I noted yesterday in my post on Gold, I breezed through Dave Ramsey’s book. I’m also pretty familiar with his other financial advice due to members of my family also being very financially acclimated. Dave and Clark Howard both have a group of every day expenditures that they like to call the stupid tax.

Cars

I drive a fancy 20 year old Mazda RX-7, it’s stylish and I paid for it in full in high school, and I come to the somewhat painful realization on road trips that maybe 1 in 10 cars is close to the age or older than mine. I think that the truth that reflects on societies is that my car is noticeably one of the oldest daily driven cars at most colleges and high schools, where it is typically safe to assume that the driver did not pay for the car outright and probably does not pay for the insurance.

1989 Mazda RX-7

In his book, Ramsey has done the research that suggests that the average person with a car loan pays $376 a month, every month of their lives. I don’t know about you, but that is absolutely shocking what people will do for luxury.

In addition to this loan cost, consider your costs of insurance, especially if it’s an almost dead car worth hardly its value in steel, you will save a ton in not having (your fault) collision insurance. For teens, that can double the insurance premium.

Furthermore, when you finance your brand new car, it loses 60% of its value in the first 4 years as a depreciating asset that is likely to suffer damage and wear.

Dave Ramsey goes on to suggest that you should look at cars that are 2-4 years old and that the majority of millionaires own these older cars as their “new” cars. That warranty tends to not be worth it either. As an example, I was looking at cars this December and ran into a premium edition Infiniti G-35 with 50k miles for only $15k (the new ones were right around $30k.) Bringing me to a small and optional point Learn to Drive a stick… you might enjoy it and you will save about $2k on many cars.

The 14-20 year loans that some financing arms offer is the most ridiculous part though! I can’t think of anybody who buys a new car and plans on driving it for 10 years… and you would still owe most of the loan amount at the point anyway. So when you sell your car 5 years later without GAP insurance you would still be paying for your own car. (By the way, at the Atlanta Boat Show this year there were $200/month terms for $35k boats over 20 years — which is equally as appalling – especially at the 7% interest they wanted to charge)

Market Wise we all know that GM, Chrysler, and Ford (U.S. companies) are having dreadful sales and I think that a lot of it has to do with the car industry overselling their products. The SUV has changed America, but people don’t need or want to buy a new Suburban, Escalade every two years. And then thing about work trucks, like the F150, most companies keep these trucks for just over four years. But what this means is that there is a limit. GM Sold More cars than they had every sold before in 2007 barely beating Toyota. But there are limits to the  driving need, and unless GM can get that marginal cost down and stop depending on selling infinite  cars in the future then it will never survive in the long run.

I added this to the Environmental category as well because, well, getting more use out of the same 4000lb piece of metal is environmental. My car may not get 35mpg, but it gets slightly above 20 (very comparable to the RX-8), but by not buying another car, I’m reducing the parts and minerals being used in a new one. I’m also saving junk yard space.  Reemember – Reduce comes before recycle, so I’m reducing and encouraging you to do the same.

Finally, I’m going to make your kids hate me. Don’t buy them a brand new car. Don’t give them a car that is worth much or amazingly appealing. I used my dad’s 1991 pickup form 2002-2005 that was won at auction from a company for a reduced price. It got me around just fine. It was pretty safe, reasonable looking, and I had my first off-roading experiences among with other in it. So, get that junker like they suggest in Transformers and let your kids figure out what kind of car is for them.  And remind them not to complain about something that they’re getting for free (or on discount.)