The Midlands Hybrid Club

MPGfest 2008

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:31:21 +0000

I found this photo in my archive, it wasn’t in the right folder, this is everyone who stayed through the main events at MPGFest. I found it to be an appropriately timed find because the Green Drive Expo/HybridFest is next week

On another note, I seem to get more than my fair share of really good parking spots, I’m not complaining though. Of all the hybrids mine was right next to the action. We had: one HCHII (Honda Civic Hybrid) a smattering of 2nd Gen Toyota Prius, a pair of Volkswagen TDIs, one Ford Ranger, two rentals, and a pair of regular 8th Gen Honda Civics.

Sorry no deep insightful post this time, I have to be somewhere shortly but wanted to share this picture.

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club, "Choose green personal transportation." The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC.

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.

The best way to save gas …

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:04:19 +0000

Don’t burn the stuff!

With today’s telepresence technology, this is now easier than ever, though not something everyone can do all the time.

My day job is one of the most unsuited to total telepresence, but my employer understands the value of doing things electronically and actively seeks ways to do more work remotely and efficiently.

Forms

While we generate massive amounts of paperwork, we are constantly looking for ways to eliminate one or two form fields. (Eventually whole forms) Either we do this by consolidating forms, or back on topic, moving the information to a computer based data collection method.

What does that have to do with telepresence? We can input data anywhere in the world, and employees in our other locations can access the information they need securely, this reduces the amount of cross-country trips needed or wastefulness of using couriers and shipping companies ineffectively.

Customers

I currently work in the internet sales department, now our customers can shop without needing to drive all over town to do their initial research. We can also serve non-local customers effectively, often the only thing they need to do upon arrival (if they do not want to feel like buying a car in the mail) is inspect the product and sign final paperwork. In and out, it’s that quick.

Telecommuting

I can do all of my follow-up from home if I choose to do so, my home office isn’t the most comfortable right now so I often opt not to use that perk.

A few of my coworkers do this regularly and it shows both in how efficiently they can use the time that we are required to be onsite, and in their commissions, they spend almost all day on appointments with customers rather than doing stuff that could have been done elsewhere.

Minimizing the Importance of Geography

With the Phone

I have Google Voice and with that service all of my phones are linked, if I receive calls at the office when working from home, my home office phone rings, if a customer calls my cell phone during time I am in the office and the phone has no reception, my office phone rings!

With Meetings/Training

We have loads of meetings and training sessions. We will group everyone in each physical location together (usually in a conference room) and then we use either conference calling or computer meeting software to link all of the participating offices and the folks working out of the office and vendors. I do recommend video conferencing to go along with all of this as it makes everything a bit more natural.

With the Club

When working with other organizations or doing interviews etc, we use all sorts of technology and communications equipment to minimize time and fuel wasted on in-person meetings that don’t build value in our various projects. Many of our events have gone off without a hitch, with all the organizers having met just minutes or hours before kicking off an event (sometimes we have to meet in-person, as it is most effective.

Wrap-up

This is just the tip of the iceberg with what we can do at my job without burning a single drop of road fuel (gasoline, diesel, hydrogen, CNG, or electricity [in an EV]) imagine what could be done in more traditional workplaces.

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club, "Choose green personal transportation." The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC.

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.

This post may contain up to 0% ethanol

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:50:48 +0000

Photo: Mobil Station in Irmo, SC

I won’t get into a long spiel or conspiracy theories here. Ethanol is bad for gas mileage and your wallet. When running 10% ethanol you’ll see a drop in mileage of 3 to 10 percent. The upshot is you will give more money for road taxes, the downside is you’ll be giving the oil companies more money for the pleasure.

Lets not forget all the lawn equipment, and marine motors destroyed by this goo-gas. If this was supposed to reduce the cost of gas, why are the prices so out of whack (just the ethy versus pure gas), the savings need to exceed the up to 10% loss in fuel efficiency by running that garbage through my car.

You need to make sure your manual say you can run 10% ethanol, I haven’t heard of a new gasoline powered automobile that can’t run the stuff but I don’t remember a statement in my lawn mower’s manual that states its ok to run that stuff. Why I’m not running an electric mower is another story altogether and purely cost based.

I try to fill up with ethanol-free gas whenever I can, I think I’ve run two tanks of the corn gas in my car since I got it in late September, 2008.

I won’t get into the politics of the situation, I’ll only say that using corn for ethanol isn’t particularly efficient there are more environmentally friendly ways to produce alcohol.

I want to make a map of all the ethy free stations in the area, if you know of any please post in the comments and when I make the map I’ll add you to the credits if you like. I have the Irmo Mobile station, and the Columbia Travel center already.

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club
"Choose green personal transportation."

The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.

Keep Your Car on the Straight and Narrow

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 10:56:42 +0000

Proper tire care is more than checking and adjusting tire pressure at least once a month.

Keeping tires aired up is good for 1 MPG fuel efficiency (FE) per 1psi on average, some cars like the original Honda Insight would show it quickly, some like the original Prius would mostly just shred their tires with haste in retaliation for the lax care. Others like most American land-yachts and Asian Mega-SUVs would just hide the change in gas mileage in already poor consumption figures.

One often-overlooked care item is proper alignment. You should get your car aligned more frequently than just when you get new tires.

Alignments do not cost much or take very long as opposed to getting tires prematurely, on the regular (on a regular basis). Your regular dealership will hold occasional alignment specials, if not your town is sure to have several tire shops one of which may offer the service at a more budget friendly price.

The dealership will often have more sophisticated equipment but this is not a guaranteed situation.

Also, make sure that your shop aligns your vehicle to factory specifications, not just, "kind of close" or "until the lights stop showing red", it is very difficult to get a car to match the factory specifications exactly, and on some cars, it is not possible at all, as they age.

My suggestion is that if they are less than one or two hundredths of a degree off do not hassle your technician, though some see it as a source of pride to get each car rolling better out their shop than when it rolled off the factory line.

Think about it if everywhere you went there was a small child pulling you in one direction, you could still get where you intended to with relative ease but keep this up long enough and you would start to fatigue. Add one to three more children, all pulling or pushing in a different direction from the first, and the effect becomes more significant but not necessarily a show-stopping issue. That is how you car feels when miss-aligned.

Alignments can also reduce fatigue on the driver, if you constantly have to add small corrections to the steering wheel it might not matter on short trips but this would wear you out much more quickly than normal on longer trips.

As you can see in the story graphic at the beginning of this post, I recently got another alignment and some regular maintenance. I drive several hundred miles a week, before this particular servicing my 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid and I could only achieve Mileage in the mid 60s now we regularly get trips into the low 70s.

Our last tank for instance was practically the first full tank after that service visit, 70 and change mpg for 860.3 miles, my longest tank to date and I was not trying for a record. It was also a new personal MPG record, not a bad side effect for a few tens of dollars. We had a 74 mpg partial tank right after that, and this current tank is shaping up at around 72 mpg.

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club
"Choose green personal transportation."

The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.

News from some of our Insight owners

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:25:37 +0000

Meet the Proud owner of a 2006 Insight 5-Speed, the folks that traded it in bought a 2010 Insight.

Midlands Honda’s first 2010 Insight Customer reports that she is well into the Flower Level of the ECO-Guide at about 4000 miles. You are definitely a fast learner.

If you have a status you would like to see posted here at the site, drop us a line.

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club
"Choose green personal transportation."

The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.

Why have a hybrid club?

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:00:59 +0000

I’ve been asked several times what we expect to accomplish with this particular club. If anyone else was wondering the same thing but didn’t want to ask for whatever reason, I will share that answer with you now.

Purpose of the club:

Teaches green driving skills
Enhance core values
Foster an environment of caring, sharing, and learning/education
Have Fun!
Recognize Achievements of members
Promote the spread of green personal transportation options

Core Values:

Saving Resources
Clean air (or not making things worse, for those who think we aren't a major source of air pollution)
Green Personal Transportation
Personal responsibility
Leaving the world a little better than we found it
Hybrids, EVs & Plug-in Hybrids (Tomorrow, whatever the future brings)

Those are our goals.

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club
"Choose green personal transportation."

The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.

Hybrids, grabbing eyeshare?

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:58:08 +0000

People often ask why I’d wrap my personal car in advertising? I usually give them a different answer every time, it all depends on what prompted them to ask in the first place. My reasons are complicated and plentiful.

I’ve been driving hybrid daily cars since 2006 this is a technology that I really believe in, right now there is nothing better available that is truly affordable and has a large refueling network available. EVs are out there but they are very expensive as are hydrogen fuel cell powered cars but they are expensive, not widely available and the refueling network is limited. (I’d take a Honda FCX Clarity in a heartbeat, there’s a hydrogen station less than 20 miles from my house). Natural Gas cars are awesome, but I don’t have anyplace nearby to fill one and my hybrids have gotten me used to small creature comforts not available on the Civic GX and I’m weary of most conversions after the one’s I heard of in Europe (it may have been Mexico) by non certified conversion shops that exploded. Plug-in Hybrids are also cool but I want one done right the conversions out there are hack jobs and only come close to what’s advertised but not close enough.

I’ve had advertising for a hybrid club on my car since 2005 it started with the Gainesville Hybrid Club (FLhybrid.com) and through today with the Midlands Hybrid Club. You know someone is a true believer in a technology when they start a club for it out of the blue. (especially when they don’t even own one as was the case when I started FLHybrid)

What’s the point of keeping all this goodness to myself? I’m trying to encourage people to choose green for their personal transportation I want to put the option out there in their faces, I stick to the slow lane, I’m courteous, I obey the rules of the road. I don’t road rage and I set a good example by helping others get to their destination smoothly (letting them into the flow, helping downed vehicles get assistance, etc) I don’t want everyone to drop what they’re driving now, but I do want them to realize there are other choices available when it comes time to get their next vehicle.

The Honda Civic Hybrid is the best match to my commute today (24-30 miles of mostly highway driving) I haven’t found a reasonable route that avoids the highway, and the Honda Hybrids excel on the open road anyway. It isn’t that I can’t read a map, but I live in Irmo, SC and work right on the border of Blythewood, I can’t even find a route that uses less than 3 interstates to get to work (again a reasonable route). This route ate my Prius alive, way too many hills and too high a speed to work its magic.

“I wouldn’t want to ride in that”, what is your point? I elected for my vehicle to look like that, just like you chose those pants, I wouldn’t choose those, please say something constructive.

Why do you advertise for a dealership (Midlands Honda), usually its asked with the person posing the question trying to find out if I’m getting paid off, that part is none of their business, and I let them know that very politely. Then I go on to explain that Midlands Honda provided the wrap and put my business on all four sides of the car, the least I could do was let them have the rear doors for their troubles. I’m employed by Midlands Honda yes, they are the Club’s premier partner that’s the more important part, though I would have had to give much harder thought to the offer than I did if had they been a company looking to see me out of a job.

“Hybrids are slow”, well first what are you basing your statement on? I can only legally travel at the maximum speed limit, and the minimum speed limit is very generous everywhere I’ve travelled that isn’t named Michigan. In my younger more reckless days I’d give you a first hand demonstration, I wouldn’t do that today because it would thrash my fuel efficiency for the tank I’m working on. Instead I’ll point out that I took my ‘04 Prius to the Gainesville Raceway and ran it several nights, it was sufficiently fast. (I was also the only one adding air to my tires on those nights, everyone else was letting air out.)

“Cool Paint job”, thanks.

“Is that paint?”, No it is a vinyl wrap.

There are many more but those are the big ones, I’m out of time for this writing session.

This is a fun picture of John Bailey and Myself showing off our wrapped hybrids. John wrapped his vehicle to advertise for his business he owns a restaurant in Lexington, SC. We both have the same color as you can see in his mirrors, also as you can tell by the wheels he has a different model year than I do. John has been driving his HCHIII for a year and he loves the faithful service it provides him and his family.

Well, now you have a small idea of why I feel so strongly about the alterative fueled personal vehicles that I’d wrap my personal car in an eye catching design.

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club
"Choose green personal transportation."

The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.

The little things give you away…

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:09:11 +0000

When I went up to Lake Norman for the Electric Vehicle Ride & Drive, the other guys on the trip ribbed me for snapping this pic of these flowers when I was in the middle of the product photo shoot.

Though to me this group of flowers next to Lake Norman spoke to me as a symbol of what it is that we are trying to do, they symbolized green-ness and blue skies for me at that moment, they were just hanging out in the middle of this field next to the lake and I had to snag a shot.

In life sometimes you just have to sweat the small stuff.

What do you think? Am I just loosing my mind or what does this shot make you think of?

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club
"Choose green personal transportation."

The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.

2006 Honda Insight w/Lean Burn available

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:08:34 +0000

Midlands Honda just took in this nice 2006 Honda Insight Hybrid with just under 59,600 miles on the clock. It runs very well and the owner reported lately he’d been getting 60 mpg tanks on the regular. The vehicle is equipped with Climate control and has two radios included, the stock radio and an aftermarket unit with an aux jack for a portable ~~MPG Player~~ MP3 Player. Window Sticker ratings for this car were 60 MPG City, 66 MPG Highway.

This is a 5 speed standard transmission which gives you, in addition to direct control over what gear you’re in, Honda Lean Burn and ULEV emissions rating. The vehicle seats two comfortably and has a spacious rear hatch and an under floor storage area in the rear.

Notably there is a full size spare, but it is an Alloy Wheel just like the four already mounted on the car.

Honda Introduced America to the first mass produced hybrid available to the general public back in 1999 it was the 2000 Honda Insight Hybrid. Own the MPG Pioneer today, no other car matches its fuel EPA economy to this day.

Contact Kacey Green for more information.

Contact information:
803.691.8563 or 803.691.8500
kaceygreen.midlandshonda@gs.reyrey.com or use the contact us button.

Photo Gallery is below, we took about 20 min of video in about 10 clips, those will be posted later.

Gallery

This car came in late Memorial Day and hadn’t been cleaned or been serviced in yet, if you want fresh and clean pictures and if the car hasn’t been sold, let me know and I’ll get them for you.

My car has a plug!

bb@grlt.com (Kacey Green) — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:18:28 +0000

My 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid (HCHII) is equipped with an engine block heater (EBH), it allows me to plug the car into any standard household outlet to pre-heat the engine coolant allowing the car to reach operating temperature more quickly as well as to provide heat for the cabin and defroster much more quickly. Some people use their EBHs in the summer to get that extra percentage point of fuel economy, a car at operating temperatures gets better fuel economy than one that is warming up.

As you can see in the photo after the jump, this was a frosty morning, for my car and electricity rate it is marginally better to warm the vehicle by plug rather than running it but only marginally so. My issue is that my setup isn’t convenient to plug the car in and unplug it so I only use my EBH on cooler days where frozen water is involved, of course there are exceptions for or against plugging, for example competitions or laziness for instance.

As of this writing I’ve only used my EBH three times I have quite a few more uses to go before I’ve recouped my investment with fuel savings, but having instant heat is worth it.

It would be really nice if this could interface with either the starter battery or the IMA hybrid battery and top them off, but current production hybrids don’t offer this function.

Don’t be shy, post a comment!

Kacey Green
for the Midlands Hybrid Club
"Choose green personal transportation."

The Midlands Hybrid Club, is the home of the hybrid and hypermiling club of the Carolinas, based in Columbia, SC

My fuel economy, tracked at every fill-up since purchase, your mileage will vary.