To get more bang for the gas buck, lots of people are looking to a bunch of oh-I-hope-it'll-work devices. I saw a $10 gadget that attaches magnets to your gas line and thought, what the heck maybe it'd help. But my colleague, Tom Spring, says, no way, no how, in his Gas Crisis Fuels Dubious Online Offers.
Some people are trying outlandish and extreme tricks in order to save gas. It's called hypermiling -- coasting whenever possible, sliding through stop signs (oh, yeah, that's smart), and tailgating trucks (oh, sure...). Edmunds.com has a good piece on hypermiling and Go Green Travel Green has a long list of tricks --- about 450 -- that you may want to spend a week studying.
Considering that you're getting zero miles per gallon while you're idling, an appealing hypermiling trick is turning off the engine while you're waiting for the light to change at one California's infamous five-minute, four-way intersections. It may be worth it, provided the stop's longer than a minute or two. Stanford University School of Earth Science says yes as does the Daily Fuel Economy Tip site.
More interesting -- and apparently legitimate -- is Valcent's Vertigro, a way to produce fuel oil from algae. The video explains how they can produce practically any sort of fuel -- diesel, airline fuel, whatever -- just by modifying the algae.
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