Hypermiling is an interesting method of increasing your car’s gas mileage by making changes in the way you drive.

Accelerating more slowly away from green lights and stopping more gradually for red lights can cut fuel consumption by 25 percent or more.  This change along with maintaining more steady driving speeds would have a dramatic effect on reducing our current energy consumption.

With today’s high traffic congestion, vehicles are getting lower mileage due to more frequent braking, an ever increasing amount of idling time and longer commuting time.  If Passenger Energy could reduce the number of vehicles on the road, we would not only save big on all the vehicles left home, but also by running the remaining ones much more efficiently.

photo credit: edkohler

There are many reasons to ride a bike including staying fit, avoiding traffic delays and saving money.  Best of all, bicycles are solely powered by human energy, do not require any fossil fuels and can quickly travel short distances.

Bicycle commuting allows you to include a workout in your daily schedule and improve your overall health.  While exercising you can ride right past traffic utilizing bike lanes and off-roads trails.  You can also save money by decreasing your gas and vehicle maintenance costs, plus you won’t need a membership to a gym.

Pickup trucks and cars fitted with bike carriers can provide an extra service for passengers.  To further improve this concept, we could include super light folding bikes.  The Curve SL from Dahon is a top of the line commuter bike that folds in seconds, weighs about 20 pounds and will fit into a shopping bag.

This way you could ride your bike for short distances at the begining and end of a trip, but let Pay4Rides transport you greater distances on highways.

photo credit: Svadilfari

Thursday night, Republican Sarah Palin said at the vice presidential debate in St. Louis that:

Energy independence is the key to the future of the nation

How do we do that?  Pay4Rides is a concept that would drastically reduce energy consumption and help break our oil addiction.  We need to reduce trade with oil-rich countries to gain independence from foreign oil.

U.S. consumes over 20 million barrels of petroleum a day.  40% of this is consumed by automobiles which is 9 million barrels a day. U.S. consumes over 7 billion barrels a year.  Improving fuel economy is seen as a superior solution to trying to tap reserved locations like Wildlife Refuges.

So while more drilling will help increase our domestic production, it does not address the root problem of consumption.  Pay4Rides would tap into unused passenger energy and result in a dramatic reduction of demand.

photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

I am sick of high gas prices and want to tell the Middle East we do not need their oil.

Not only do rising gas prices cost me every time I go to the pump, but they are impacting transportation costs of all goods and services.  The only way to reduce the cost is to reduce the demand. 

Pay4Rides is a concept that will dramatically cut our oil addiction and give us time to develop alternative solutions.  We have little or no control over supply so we all need to work together to reduce demand which would result in lower prices.  This is our chance to show the rest of the world how the American people can unite to solve this problem.

photo credit: slopjop