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On a summer Saturday in a Madison, Wisconsin, parking lot, about a dozen people stand around a red Honda Insight. They’re watching Wayne Gerdes prepare for his run in the inaugural Hybridfest MPG Challenge, a 20-mile race through the streets of the city. Wayne is the odds-on favorite to win the event, in which drivers compete to push automotive limits, not of speed and power–a desire those gathered here consider old-fashioned and wasteful–but for the unsexy title of World's Most Fuel-Efficient Driver.Wayne is believed to be that driver, but he's nervous. All day, his fellow hypermilers (the term he invented to describe those obsessed with fuel efficiency) have been getting crazy-high miles-per-gallon readings, up to 100 mpg. For the race, Wayne has borrowed a friend's Insight. To decrease the car's mass, he has jettisoned everything not screwed down. The detritus–a pillow, towels, cleaning stuff, a tool kit–sits on a nearby blanket.
What can't be removed is Wayne himself. At six-foot-one and 210 pounds, he looks too big for the two-seater. ("I would love to lose 60 pounds," he says. "It would help my fuel economy.") And in Wayne's world, fuel efficiency is about the driver. He doesn't get high mileage by tinkering with engines, using funky fuels or, usually, driving a hybrid. He gets it by driving hyperconsciously.
Wayne takes out his wallet and keys, then takes off his shoes. "He's speeding," a voice says as he exits the lot doing maybe 15 mph. He makes a full loop on the lot's exit road to slow down so he won't have to brake for traffic. Wayne hates braking.
Two nights earlier, on a clammy 80-degree Chicago evening, I wait for Wayne at the airport. The car he's driving, a 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid, drifts over like a jellyfish to pick me up. Around Wayne, drivers in four lanes are accelerating hard, weaving erratically, grinding to a halt. To him, these are the driving habits of the ignorant and wasteful–which is to say, nearly all of us. Wayne's car glides to a stop as if it's run out of gas. He has stopped without braking.
The car is owned by his friend Terry Honaker, who, with his wife, Cathy, is along for the ride. Inside it's hotter and more humid than outside. As we take off–or, more accurately, as the vehicle rolls forward really slowly–I notice all four windows are closed and the air-conditioning is off.
We take the interstate to Wayne's house. The speed limit is 55, and most of the traffic is zipping past at 75 or so, but Wayne hovers around 50. He's riding the white line on the right side of the right-hand lane. "It’s called ridge-riding," he explains, using another term he invented. He ridge-rides to let people behind him know that he's moving slowly. The tactic is especially useful in the rain because it gets the wheels out of the road's puddly grooves. My back and butt, meanwhile, are starting to stick to the seat.
An SUV flies by. Wayne says, "That’s getting 10 to 13 miles per gallon climbing this hill. We're getting about 80." I'm thinking he drives like a 90-year-old in a mobile sweat lodge. Soon I'll see I'm wrong.
"Buckle up," he says. "This is the death turn." Death turn? At 50 mph?
Wayne shuts off the engine. Bearing down on an exit, he turns the wheel sharply to the right. The tires squeal, which is what they do when you take a 25 mph turn going 50. Cathy grabs my leg. I grab the door handle.
We glide for more than a mile with the engine off, past a gas station, through a green light (Wayne is always timing green lights) and around a mall, using momentum in a way that would make Isaac Newton proud.
"Are we going to attempt that at home?" Cathy asks Terry, a talkative man who has been silent since Wayne executed the death turn in his car.
"Not in this lifetime," he says.
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