I've been driving the Prius for almost four months now and have heard all the jokes. I didn't buy it as a status vehicle. I bought it to simply try and be green and reduce my carbon footprint. Drivers are encouraged to improve their fuel efficiency by trying to beat their past best trip mpg and this becomes quite addictive. It's a little like a computer game player wanting to beat the high score. Until today my "scores" have always been around the 64mpg level on long trips and I was a bit disappointed with that but I have started to appreciate exactly when the car is driving efficiently and when it is not and made a big effort on the trip across to the CEDA conference here in Lincolnshire. And the result? 78mpg. That's a big improvement.
75 is what the manufacturers state in their literature so I was pleased to beat their figure. How was it achieved? Well, the most important factor was keeping to 60mph on the motorway. Now I know that that sounds a bit boring and some would say it might be dangerous but I made sure that I did not cause any lorries to slow down and sped up if that looked like it might be a possibility. The traffic was pretty heavy anyway so we kept catching up with those that overtook us and we arrived at our destination just 12 minutes later than we would have done if we had stuck to the sat nav forecast which puts in motorway speeds at 70. It also helps to drive behind (not on the tail) a big HGV as the slipstream seems to help fuel use. There are other minor tips to help but now that we've scored 78, I've got to aim for 80 on the way back.
Here at the conference, we arrived for lunch and then went into the first big meeting with CEDABOND. The meeting lasted a full er twenty minutes leaving us somewhat short of things to do business wise this afternoon so I'm writing up the blog. I expected a full afternoon of input from the meeting so was a bit disappointed that we could only stretch it to 2.20pm. Never mind. There's a big dinner tonight so perhaps we can sell something then.
I spoke to Gavin at the office earlier. The good news is that more circuits have arrived today and the factory can get on with catching up on the order backlog. The bad news is that the price of nickel is set to double and that will put our stainless steel up significantly. That makes it look like the recession is clearly on its way out. Last year the price fell so we held prices in a lot of cases but this will make rises inevitable when the steel price filters through.
Tonight's dinner is advertised as a "networking" dinner whatever that is. I checked it out on youTube and came up with this.
75 is what the manufacturers state in their literature so I was pleased to beat their figure. How was it achieved? Well, the most important factor was keeping to 60mph on the motorway. Now I know that that sounds a bit boring and some would say it might be dangerous but I made sure that I did not cause any lorries to slow down and sped up if that looked like it might be a possibility. The traffic was pretty heavy anyway so we kept catching up with those that overtook us and we arrived at our destination just 12 minutes later than we would have done if we had stuck to the sat nav forecast which puts in motorway speeds at 70. It also helps to drive behind (not on the tail) a big HGV as the slipstream seems to help fuel use. There are other minor tips to help but now that we've scored 78, I've got to aim for 80 on the way back.
Here at the conference, we arrived for lunch and then went into the first big meeting with CEDABOND. The meeting lasted a full er twenty minutes leaving us somewhat short of things to do business wise this afternoon so I'm writing up the blog. I expected a full afternoon of input from the meeting so was a bit disappointed that we could only stretch it to 2.20pm. Never mind. There's a big dinner tonight so perhaps we can sell something then.
I spoke to Gavin at the office earlier. The good news is that more circuits have arrived today and the factory can get on with catching up on the order backlog. The bad news is that the price of nickel is set to double and that will put our stainless steel up significantly. That makes it look like the recession is clearly on its way out. Last year the price fell so we held prices in a lot of cases but this will make rises inevitable when the steel price filters through.
Tonight's dinner is advertised as a "networking" dinner whatever that is. I checked it out on youTube and came up with this.
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