The Audi Mileage Marathon: Day Three
Thursday October 9, 2008
Today we woke to a pretty steady downpour of rain in Cleveland--kind of a dismal way to start my final day in Wave One of the Audi Mileage Marathon. But as bleak as the weather was, good news awaited me and my driving partner Mike Omotoso as we listened to the morning briefing from Audi’s communications director Josef Schlossmacher. As I said in yesterday’s blog, Audi’s official Day One fuel mileage calculation for our car number 7 TDI Q7 clocked in at 29.9 mpg. While we were happy to handily beat the EPA estimates (24 mpg), we were a bit disappointed to place only third among all seven Q7 teams (first place: 31.6 mpg, second place: 30.9).So we commenced to change our Day Two tactics to better suit the characteristics of the big, heavy and powerful V-6 diesel crossover Q7. I think the biggest change we made was not using the Adaptive Cruise Control while in congested highway traffic, as well as much more coasting. And not only did we coast with our foot off the throttle, we also slipped the transmission into neutral on hills and slopes—which translated into 200 mpg on the instantaneous fuel display. Small incremental doses of coasting, over a distance of several hundred miles, has a substantial cumulative effect. So how’d that all work out? When Josef announced Day Two results, we were at the top of the list with the best Q7 team fuel mileage of 33.1 mpg. Yes, that felt very good.
Traffic heading into Chicago on our final day was, how shall I put this, horrendous. And we certainly saw the effects on our economy. Nothing like creeping along in rush hour traffic to crush great fuel mileage and all at once elevate the stress level. But you know what? Chicago is a beautiful town, so I did take a nice relaxing walk in the late afternoon—and counted all the Audis I saw along the way. I really enjoyed participating in this event for the past few days and I will very much miss driving the powerful and efficient Audi 3.0 TDI diesel. --Scott
photo - Scott and driving partner Mike refueling in Chicago
Comments
I hope the tranny you were ’slipping’ into neutral was a manual. Putting an automatic into neutral to gain a few measly mpgs will seem pointless when you overheat the transmission or worse, you accidentally shift one too far and blow it sky high. But hey, at least it wasn’t your car.
We cleared this with the Audi people–they were fine with it.
Scott