Switching to an electric vehicle is good for the environment and your bank account. EVs save drivers an average of $800 to $1000 a year on driving costs compared to traditional fuel-powered cars, but some EV enthusiasts are finding ways to squeeze even more mileage and money from their vehicles.

Hypermiling is a driving practice that prioritizes efficiency and cost savings, encouraging you to drive as economically as possible. Even though electric cars are not gas guzzlers, EV owners can still adopt these techniques to boost their range and save money in the process.

How is hypermiling different for EVs compared to fuel-powered vehicles?

Hypermiling gained popularity in the early 2000s with petrolheads who hoped to cut down on rising fuel costs by changing their driving habits. In traditional vehicles, hypermilers use miles per gallon (MPG) as the key metric to determine their car’s efficiency. In comparison, EVs are already highly efficient and economical compared to fuel-powered motors, and they rely on alternative performance indicators.

Converts from traditional vehicles to electric cars can use the MPG equivalent (MPGe) to compare their new EV mileage to their former automobile. The US Environmental Protection Agency invented MPGe to give a ballpark measurement for drivers switching over from fuel to electric cars, but it doesn’t provide an accurate measure of EV consumption.

EVs base their energy consumption on the kilowatt-hour(kWh), so kWh per 100 miles is most effective at showing how efficiently an electric vehicle converts energy into mileage.

EV drivers who want to hypermile their vehicle should first calculate their car’s kWh per mile to measure their individual car’s fuel efficiency. To make this calculation, EV drivers need to know their electricity costs and their vehicle’s kWh per 100 miles rating. Cars with a lower kWh per 100-mile range are usually cheaper to drive and run longer on a single charge.

The results from these calculations will vary according to each situation. Charging an EV at home is usually cheaper than public charging spots. Daytime electricity tariffs are generally more expensive than evening electricity costs, so these variables will all play a factor in the kWh per mile cost.

Hypermiling = hyper-notetaking

Despite its motor-inspired name, hypermiling is less “Fast and Furious” and more slow and calm. Once you’ve estimated your vehicle’s kWh per-mile costs, start tracking your journeys. Understanding how different weather, roads, and traffic affect your vehicle’s range will help you determine which factors significantly impact your car’s efficiency and cost.

The results will differ for each vehicle and driving circumstances, so taking note of driving conditions and the vehicle range will help you better understand how to optimize your EV.

How to hypermile: before the journey

One way drivers hypermile EVs is by choosing the most economical driving routes. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the quickest route is not always the cheapest if it’s hilly, full of traffic stops, and intersections. Steep inclines and inconsistent traffic flow increase an EV’s energy consumption, meaning the ride is more expensive in the end.

Instead, routes with minimal traffic stops and flat roads will help your EV go further, saving you money. If you’re familiar with your local streets, personal knowledge may suffice to plan your journey, but you can always turn to transport apps to help you figure out the best trip.

For instance, the Polestar 2 electric vehicle comes with Google Maps, which will help you discover the greenest route to your destination. As the EV company highlighted in a recent article, electric cars aren’t completely clean , but there are things automotive companies and drivers can do to lower their impact on the environment. By taking the eco-friendly journey, you’ll be saving money and minimizing your carbon footprint on the planet ­– a win-win situation.

Before you set off, prepare your car for a comfortable ride without eating into the battery. Avoid using in-car systems like HVAC while driving because they reduce your battery’s capacity, resulting in lower mileage. Pre-heating or pre-cooling your vehicle while it’s charging saves it from consuming energy while on the road and maintains suitable in-vehicle conditions for a comfortable ride.

Hypermilers often sacrifice these conveniences to save money, but you can lower your costs without sacrificing those small comforts if you prepare beforehand.

It’s more practical to charge your vehicle on a low battery, as the first 50-80% can charge in as little as 15 minutes. By contrast, the remaining battery can take double that amount to fully charge, increasing your electricity costs in the long run. These minor changes can add up to extra savings on your EV over time.

How to hypermile on the road

While you’re on route to your destination, there are a few tips you can use to hypermile your ride. Reducing your average speed will lower your vehicle’s costs over time because it uses less battery. A slow build-up to acceleration coupled with a consistent rate will help your car drive longer on a single charge.

Similarly, regenerative braking can hypermile your EV. This technique is unique to EVs. Instead of braking, slowing your car down when coming to a stop allows you to convert kinetic energy back into an extra electrical charge for your batteries. Some advanced vehicles automatically convert the energy produced by driving. For example, the heat pump in the PS2’s Plus pack supports its HVAC system and increases its range.

A lighter ride makes for a longer range, so remove heavy items from the trunk or roof of your vehicles as this can severely impact fuel efficiency. Avoid long trips with heavy baggage if you want to extend your car’s mileage and reduce running costs.

Lastly, regular maintenance of your EV will help you identify and resolve issues that could hinder your car’s efficiency. If the tire pressure has a firm tread, this can dramatically improve your EV’s fuel efficiency . Likewise, consistent check-ups on your vehicle will help you spot issues such as battery degradation and accelerator throttle failure, all of which can impact how far your car travels.

What’s next for hypermiling?

EVs resolve many of the cost and environmental issues associated with fuel-powered cars. However, individual owners can still make their rides more efficient and kinder on the planet, while saving some cash along the way. Hypermiling has evolved from a fuel-inspired pursuit to a driving mindset that bears some relevance even for the newer vehicle innovations.

Our changing habits and driving norms will become part of our future vehicle experiences. As today’s EV owners take to the road, they will shape the next generation of vehicles and fuel efficiency in a real drive towards the future.

Apple’s self-driving car plans could change the entire company

What would an Apple-made self-driving car look like? We don’t know yet, but what we do know is that the company has serious plans to roll out its own electric self-driving car by 2024 .

Apple hasn’t officially confirmed any of the information disclosed in the Reuters reports that broke the news last week. And we are still missing many details on the company’s self-driving plans. Nonetheless, the news is significant, both for Apple and the self-driving car industry.

Depending on how the situation unfolds in the next months and years, the fact that there’s a concrete date for Apple’s self-driving car plans can indicate the company is making a fundamental change to its product-development strategy.

The current state of self-driving car technology

The history of self-driving cars is very much reflective of the decades-long search for artificial general intelligence (AGI): the finish line always seems to be around the corner. But the closer we get to it, the harder it becomes.

Like many of today’s AI technologies, self-driving cars have their roots in the 1970s and 80s. But until recent years, they were only limited to academic and military research labs and science contests. In the 2010s, advances in deep learning have led to great improvements in computer vision , one of the key technologies powering self-driving cars. We’re finally seeing cars that can drive themselves in real streets.

Deep learning algorithms have helped self-driving cars come a long way toward navigating challenging environments. But the technology is far from perfect . Deep learning models are only as good as their training data. If the data is representative of all the situations the self-driving car will face, then it will have a robust performance. But the AI’s actions will become unpredictable when faced with edge cases, novel situations that happen rarely, such or a fire truck parked at an odd angle or an overturned car.

Human drivers meet novel situations all the time but can handle them thanks to their commonsense understanding of how the world works in general. For instance, you don’t need previous training to know what to do if you see a deer calf crossing the road. We understand causes and effects, intuitive physics, goals and intents, and this knowledge helps us make rational decisions (most of the time) when we face situations we’ve never seen before.

Some companies are using complementary technologies such as lidars, laser-emitting devices that create 3D maps of the car’s surroundings. Lidars can help detect obstacles and people where the computer vision system fails, but they’re not resistant to environmental factors and motion, and they do not solve the problem of causality.

Apple’s self-driving car efforts

Apple has been doing autonomous driving research under the title “Project Titan” since 2014. But unlike efforts at other companies like Uber and the Google-owned Waymo, very little is known about Apple’s self-driving car project and the company’s progress.

The initial goal was reportedly for Apple to create a car from scratch. In 2016, the company shifted focus and aimed at developing software for self-driving cars. In January 2019, Apple laid off 200 employees from the project, then went on to acquire the self-driving startup Drive.ai in June. In December 2020, the company moved project Titan under the care of John Giannandrea, its head of artificial intelligence.

The history of Project Titan indicates that while Apple has always maintained an interest in self-driving cars, but there were never signs of a plan to launch a product. This changed with the Reuters report, which claimed Apple has “Apple has progressed enough that it now aims to build a vehicle.”

Apple’s product development strategy

Apple is usually not a first mover, but it certainly knows when to enter a new market. Apple II was not the first personal computer, but it was the first very successful one, building on top of a decade of rapid advances in storage and processing technologies and the gradual decrease of the costs of manufacturing the pieces required to assemble a home computer.

The iPod was not the first device to play audio files, but it launched at a very opportune time, when digital media adoption had reached critical mass and the market was ripe for high-end consumer products. The same with iPhone, which entered the scene as mobile communications, internet, and computing had become common thanks to the likes of Nokia and Blackberry. There was nothing new to the iPhone, but it was a novel combination of “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.”

If you look at Apple’s other products, the HomePod, Apple Music, Apple Watch, they were never the first of their kind, but a revolutionized version of what already exists. Maybe with the exception of the graphical user interface , Apple has seldom ventured into areas where the market has not been already established.

But the self-driving car industry is still marked with missed deadlines by all major players. Despite tremendous progress, there is still no real self-driving car solution. Uber and Waymo’s self-driving cars have logged millions of miles, but they are still attended by safety drivers. Tesla offers a fully autonomous Autopilot feature— but still requires drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel when it is enabled.

While most experts agree that we’ll eventually have driverless cars on our roads, many questions remain, such as what they will look like, how and if they will share roads with human-driven cars, what will be the regulatory requirements, and will the meaning of car ownership change.

Training data for the AI algorithms

There’s one very convincing reason Apple would enter a market as immature and risky as self-driving cars. Unlike other sectors that Apple has conquered, self-driving cars are heavy on artificial intelligence and warrant a different development strategy. The deep learning algorithms used in self-driving cars require huge volumes of training data obtained from driving cars on roads. Therefore, aside from sound engineering and design, you need an AI factory built on top of a solid data infrastructure.

Waymo and Uber have been collecting their data by test-driving their cars in different cities. Tesla, on the other hand, has directly collected its data from the hundreds of thousands of cars it has sold to consumers.

According to reports, Apple had done some small-scale road testing in the past, but downgraded the effort in 2019 . The plan to launch a consumer-level self-driving car might indicate that Apple will be adopting a strategy that is similar to Tesla, which would be a bit controversial for a company that takes pride in collecting very little data from customers.

It can also indicate that like Tesla, Apple will roll out its self-driving technology in a phased manner, gradually developing and fine-tuning its AI algorithms as it collects more data from its cars. This, too, would go against Apple’s nature of delivering near-perfect products right off the bat. That, of course, can change if the company figures out another way to collect hundreds of millions of miles worth of driving data before 2024

Who will buy Apple’s self-driving car?

According to Reuters’ report, Apple aims to build “a vehicle for consumers.” In this respect, too, Apple’s approach is like that of Tesla and unlike Waymo and Uber, which plan to launch robo-taxi services.

But selling directly to consumers raises the question, how much will the car cost? The benchmark we have is Tesla’s electric vehicles with Autopilot support, which cost between $35,000 and $120,000. But while Tesla is using a pure–computer vision approach, relying only on deep learning and minor help from a front radar and sensors to navigate roads, Apple plans to include lidars on its self-driving cars.

According to a 2017 estimate , lidars used in self-driving cars can cost between $8,000 and $85,000, and each self-driving car requires several lidars, which can sometimes triple the price of the car. This might force Apple to reconsider its product delivery strategy and shift to providing an autonomous ride-hailing service in the future.

But the industry is changing rapidly. There are now $100 and $500 lidars , and Apple has developed its own lidar scanners at a cost that makes it affordable to embed them in the iPhone 12 and iPad Pro devices. For its self-driving car, Apple will be using its own lidars and partner with other manufacturers. So, the consumer-level Apple car will probably be more expensive than the Tesla, but by 2024, the costs of the hardware might have dropped to the point that the difference will be negligible.

Giving up full control?

According to the Reuters report, Apple is looking to outsource the manufacturing of the car, which would be in contrast to the company’s preference to maintain full control over its product stack. Apple controls the hardware, operating system, and the app store of its phones, watches, TVs, and computers.

But even though Apple has decades of experience in running manufacturing plants and managing complex supply chains, building cars is a different challenge altogether, which would warrant partnering with a car manufacturer.

An alternative would be for Apple to acquire an automotive company. With more than $200 billion in liquid assets, the company could easily buy many top-tier carmakers, including General Motors and Volkswagen, and build vehicles at scale.

The future of Apple’s self-driving car?

Throughout its history, Apple has set an example of design, performance, and durability (and high prices). Today, companies that deliver great products are compared to Apple (e.g., the Apple of gaming, the Apple of cars, etc.). But this history of perfection has also set high expectations for Apple. Where consumers allow other companies to fail and recover, they expect Apple to be flawless. And at the moment, self-driving car technology is anything but flawless.

This might partly be the reason that Apple has been reserved until recently and only leaked information about its self-driving car project through unnamed sources. It gives the company the maneuverability to backtrack on parts of its plans as the industry and its own project develop. The self-driving car industry is changing rapidly, and I wouldn’t be surprised if what we see in 2024 is very different from the initial report.

But what’s for sure is that Apple is serious about creating a self-driving car, and its engagement can have a serious impact on the future of transportation and the company itself.

This article was originally published by Ben Dickson on TechTalks , a publication that examines trends in technology, how they affect the way we live and do business, and the problems they solve. But we also discuss the evil side of technology, the darker implications of new tech and what we need to look out for. You can read the original article here .

SHIFT is brought to you by Polestar. It’s time to accelerate the shift to sustainable mobility. That is why Polestar combines electric driving with cutting-edge design and thrilling performance. Find out how .

Apple ‘steals’ former Tesla Autopilot director for its iCar dream team

Apple has been annoyingly secretive about the possible development of its own Apple Car. But is it building a dream team to make that happen? Certainly.

As Bloomberg reports , the tech giant has hired Christofer “CJ” Moore, who’s been working as the director for Tesla’s Autopilot software since 2019, and who’s been with the company since 2014 — hinting at the attempt to develop self-driving tech.

And that’s only the latest addition.

Apple already has three more former Tesla executives on its team: Stuart Bowers, head of Autopilot until 2019 (to whom Moore will report, according to Bloomberg), former drivetrains chief Michael Schwekutsch, and interiors head Steve MacManus.

The list of “poached” automotive experts from world-renowned companies is very long. But even if we focus on the recruits of 2021 alone, we still get a clear picture of Apple’s attempt to get the best from the best.

In February, the company hired Manfred Harrer , a Porsche executive with expertise in chassis design, who’d also worked for many years in BMW and Audi.

In June, Apple signed Ulrich Kranz , the former co-founder and CEO of EV startup Canoo. Before Canoo, Kranz had served as a senior executive of BMW AG’s electric car division, where he oversaw the development of the i3 and i8.

Three months later, th e Cupertino tech giant hired two former Mercedes engineers with expertise in the mass production of vehicles, vehicle steering, dynamics, and project management.

We might not know when we’ll actually have the iCar, but with such experts on board, my expectations for this vehicle are through the roof already.