How breaking a World Record taught me to love hypermiling

There are some things that I just can’t resist, like driving flat out on a race track, overlanding across continents, off-roading and generally pushing cars to their limits.

But there’s another that I’ve got hooked on that, in contrast, is about conserving energy and driving as far as possible, rather than fast. Yes, I love hypermiling.

The biggest draw for me is the personal challenge: testing my driving skills in a way that temporarily transforms my entire personality. It not only demands monk-like patience but also the ability to resist the urge to just smash the throttle and get a move on.

Precision is key and even the smallest throttle modulation matters. It should feel as if there’s an egg between your right foot and the pedal. The idea is to ensure no more than the required power is being fed to the car.

And don’t think using cruise control is a way out: it’s actually counterproductive, because the car’s ECU will keep making corrections to achieve your set speed as the road conditions change, thus depleting more charge or fuel than needed.

Another crucial thing is anticipating the terrain and the traffic and using it to your advantage. The ideal scenario is to coast freely as far as you can without any throttle, and if the road slopes downhill, it’s essential to make the most of it.

Similarly, anticipating an uphill slope well in advance and accelerating just enough to mitigate the climb and not a moment longer is crucial. You learn the car and know how far before the crest to lift off in order to clear it and start coasting again without wasting any energy.

In electrified cars, regenerative braking is also important, but again it has to be used smartly and not left entirely to the car’s devices.

Recently I got to put my years of hypermiling experience to use, covering 949.0km (590 miles) in a Mercedes-Benz EQS 580 from Bengaluru to Navi Mumbai without plugging it in, breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest journey by an electric car on a single charge.

I had to channel every skill I’d learned – and some improvisation was needed too. What made it more of a challenge, and therefore more exciting to me, was that it was at the peak of the rainy season and the roads were a potholed mess. I even got a puncture near the end.

Plus, the EQS is long and notoriously low-slung so prone to scraping its belly on speed humps. It does have a suspension lift, but I had to avoid using that, as that would expend precious energy. Instead, I opted to cross humps carefully and at an angle.

The previous record of 916.74km (570 miles) was set in the UK in a Ford Mustang Mach-E only earlier this year, and I hear that team is now thinking of toppling mine. Have at it: I’m ready for another go myself!