Fuel Saving Tips

Shifting Automatic Transmissions manually

I saw two posts one by BenjaminWKI and another about using the manual shift mode on automatics to keep RPMs low. I have found a 16% improvement in fuel economy by doing this. Combined with another tip to accelerate briskly at 50-75% throttle is brilliant in my Passat v6 wagon. I am constantly trying to get into top gear as soon as possible and I can get into 6th gear past 40 mph at about 1,300 rpms. I regularly barely get 22 mpg but on two deliberate attempts to get good MPG I went from 25 mpg in fully automatic to 29 mpg when shifting at 2000 rpms manually. Also "manual" mode on the highway in cruise, my car does not kick down to 5th gear unless I really slow a lot. In normal "Drive" the engine downshifts on long hills and overpasses pretty quickly to maintain roadspeed. In "manual" mode it really lugs down to around 1,500 rpms before downshifting.