Don't Charge Up Hills

Hills are very bad for fuel economy. But even worse than the cost of fighting gravity on the way up is to accelerate going uphill. If you try to speed up while climbing a hill, your fuel economy will really plummet. You might consume up to 10 times as many gallons per hundred miles while doing it. Anybody who has an instrument showing instantaneous gas mileage quickly learns not to accelerate uphill. You might be getting say 25 miles per gallon on the flat, and then when you try to accelerate up a slope, the gauge will drop to 5 miles per gallon!

The sight of that number shocks most people enough that they stop trying it. But if you do not have a gauge showing instantaneous fuel consumption, the enormous loss of efficiency is invisible. So keep the consequences in mind: do not accelerate uphill if you want to save on gas!