Sat October 9th, Richmond, CA

[Billy]

I will be driving south from near Seattle, WA to attend Green Drive Expo. It will be a fantastic event, more info is available at Home Page Green Drive Expo Eric Powers and a contingent from Madison, WI is putting on the show.

On Friday the 8th, at 1:00 pm, is the MPG challenge event. It's aprox a 26 mile course, I think, and it will be lots of fun. So everyone please consider signing up as a VIP for Green Drive Expo, and compete in the MPG challenge!

I sold my 2005 red Insight, and now am driving my previous 2003 silver one. I hope to average 105 MPG on the way from Seattle to the Bay area........

[Highmileage Insighter]

I'll be there Saturday with my 175,000 mile 2001 Honda CVT Insight.

[JoeMultihuller]

The Green Drive Expo was a worthwhile event, staged for the first time on the West Coast. Nice to see a bunch of EVs (everything from electric bicycles to Teslas), and especially including the new Nissan Leaf. Lots of plug-in Prii conversions with Toyota demo'ing their own plug-in Prius, and our Insight Ron Hansen (Hybrid-Battery-Repair.com) showing off his wares. Honda was missing from the event, although I had my Gen1 Insight off in a corner. Would have been nice to at least see a Honda CR-V at this Expo.

On the Mileage Marathon - I screwed up and depleted the battery and couldn't shut off the engine for P&G and thus only got 105.7mpg, whereas Billy hypermiled his Insight to an amazing 181+mpg(!!!) on what I thought was a not-that-friendly course involving lots of traffic lights. Ron competed in a rented gas-guzzler (Ford Fiesta?) and eked out 53mpg from the darn thing, if I recall.

I sat through all the presentations and discussion sessions which focused mainly on EVs and were quite interesting, with Chelsea Sexton ("Who Killed the Electric Car") being very impressive with her knowledgeable and candid, yet very astute, responses.

Nice Bay Area event which could have used more advance publicity but was well-attended despite the Fleet Week conflict. Hope more Insights will attend next year.

JoeS.

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

Originally Posted by JoeMultihuller

Ron competed in a rented gas-guzzler (Ford Fiesta?) and eked out 53mpg from the darn thing, if I recall.

Yup. Avis didn't have any hybrids for rent and I didn't have time to borrow a Prius from Luscious Garage. I drove a 2011 Ford Fiesta SES which is a non-hybrid vehicle. It is rated for 33 combined and I managed to get 54.6 out of it.

The sweet spot for that car was 42 mph. I discovered that way too late or I would have gotten 60 out of it for the race. I also would have lapped Bill who managed a score so high we had to use L/100KM to measure it - 180mpg!