The following is republished from one5c, a biweekly climate action newsletter. You can subscribe here. 

You might have heard the term “hypermiling” before, but just in case you don’t know the jargon: Hypermiling is the pursuit of getting more miles per unit of energy than a vehicle ordinarily delivers. Hypermilers compete with one another to see who can extract the most distance out of a full tank or battery, often going to extreme lengths to break records. A regular person shouldn’t try to match those pros, but some of their base-level techniques can help anyone increase their vehicle’s efficiency by up to 20 percent. As they say, your mileage may vary. (Sorry, had to.) 

This level of savings could have a staggering impact. In the U.S., our vehicles burn around 135 billion gallons of gasoline per year. If we could cut that by 20 percent, we’d save 27 billion gallons, which produces around 240 million metric tons of planet-warming CO2. But even if we don’t hit that target, every little bit counts. If you drove only 10 percent more efficiently in an average 36-mile-per-gallon vehicle, you’d save nearly 40 gallons of gas in a year.

This fuel-saving intel comes from one of the best hypermilers in the world. Kevin Booker is part of the three-person team that nabbed the Guinness World Record for lowest energy consumption while driving from one tip of Great Britain to the other. The trio drove an electric Ford Mustang Mach-E at an efficiency of 6.5 miles per kilowatt hour. In more familiar terms: They started with a full battery, charged once for a little over 43 minutes, and managed to travel 840 miles. (The Mach-E’s estimated range is 312 miles on a full charge, so this was an astonishing 34 percent more.) 

How did they manage this? “It’s not just one big thing, but more of a series of little actions,” says Booker, which is great news. Because even if regular drivers can’t be extreme hypermilers, they can integrate certain techniques into their daily drives. Here are some of Booker’s top tricks.

Junk out of the trunk

“Weight is the big thing,” says Booker. We have all been guilty of using our trunks as storage lockers, but it might be time to evict those old blankets and jugs of water. An extra 100 pounds of gear in your rear can reduce fuel economy by 1% or more — or around 4 gallons of gas per year. If even a million people (less than a third of a percent of the population of the U.S.) saved those same 4 gallons, that could equate to more than 35,000 tons of CO2 kept out of the atmosphere. 

Go gentle into that good lane

“Every set of traffic lights isn’t a drag race,” says Booker. “You’ve got to get gently up to speed.” It takes a lot of energy to overcome the coefficients of friction that keep your tires from turning, and it takes even more to get them rolling quickly. Beating those forces more rapidly requires introducing more energy (i.e., fuel) into the equation. Some sources say that accelerating gently can cut energy consumption by as much as 40 percent. 

Don’t run red lights, but…

Every time a car comes to a stop, it has to overcome those forces of friction to get moving again. “The idea is to keep the momentum,” says Booker. “If you see that the light is red down the road, you know it’s going to turn green again,” says Booker. “So try to arrive after it’s turned.” Similarly, “if the light is green, it’s going to turn red.” Try to time your arrival at the intersection so you don’t have to stop (without running a red or late-yellow light, of course). “It’s just about reading the road ahead,” he says. Booker also tries to keep his car in the appropriate gear for the speed he’s going because automatic transmissions will sometimes put you in a gear that prioritizes performance over absolute efficiency. “Hypermiling in a fueled [gas- or diesel-powered] car is much easier with a manual transmission,” says Booker. One more reason to #savethemanuals.

Mind your tires

As the only part of your vehicle that touches the ground, your tires are arguably the most important part of your car. They make a huge difference in how well you can stop and turn and negotiate challenging conditions. They’re also a crucial factor in your car’s fuel economy. If you’re shopping for new tires, make sure you buy ones that are marked as low rolling resistance. This means that their rubber is formulated to require less energy to move. 

But you don’t have to buy your way into tire performance. “Tire pressures are so important,” says Booker. “So many people don’t check them.” Sure, it may be a pain to navigate the quarter-hungry machine at the gas station, but this is a crucial part of saving fuel. A drop in pressure of a single psi can increase your rolling resistance by more than a full percentage point. That adds up as your tires air down. Booker recommends looking at the plate on your door jam or in your owner’s manual and inflating your tires to the top end of the range listed there. 

Another thing to remember about tire pressure is that it changes with the outside temperature: It goes down when it gets cold, so it’s important to pump your tires up when the days get chilly.

Climate Control

The knock on air-conditioning has always been that it lowers your gas mileage because your engine has to turn a hefty compressor to make that cold air; in older cars, this is certainly true. But “over the years, these systems have gotten more modern,” says Booker. “In some cases, it’s more efficient to run your air-conditioning than driving with the windows down.” 

One example is on the highway. “If you have your windows down at high speed, it creates a lot of drag,” which can sap your mileage, says Booker. In that case, it’s more efficient to run your A/C — unless you open your window only a teensy bit. “If you have it open just a crack, that’s more efficient than using your air-conditioning,” he says.

It’s different in EVs. “The heating is worse than the air-conditioning in an electric car,” says Booker. “A fueled vehicle naturally wastes energy as heat, which is what you use to warm the cabin. But with an electric car, it has to make that heat.” That means powering up a resistive heater (basically a space heater) for the entire duration of your trip. Some newer EVs use heat pumps, which are much more efficient but still draw a lot of power. In one EV that Booker tested, it took 7 kilowatts of power just to warm up in the wintertime. That’s more than 10 percent of that vehicle’s battery capacity.

Know your brakes

Another EV-specific trick is to get crafty with how you stop. In a gas- or diesel-powered car, when you hit the brakes, grippy pads clamp down on rotors that are attached to the axles that drive your wheels. An EV, however, doesn’t rely solely on a conventional braking system. 

You might have heard about regenerative braking, often abbreviated as “regen.” This is an EV- and hybrid-specific system that allows the same electric motor that drives the wheels to act as a brake by opposing the direction the wheels are spinning, instead of driving them. Instead of spending energy to go, the same magnetic principles allow it to harvest electricity by slowing the wheels down. Booker recommends figuring out how to use regenerative braking as much as possible. 

“When you press the brake pedal, there’s a point where you’re using the motor to slow you down, and there’s a point where the [traditional] friction brakes engage,” he says. “The key is knowing that point.” This is all about feel, and you’ve just got to pay attention to what the brakes feel like when you’re hitting them. Then, as you drive, you can try to do all your braking with the motor rather than the pads, sending extra volts into your battery pack. If your car has a setting for regenerative braking, max it out.

What’s this button do?

Your car has other settings that can help you cut fuel consumption as well. “I know it sounds basic, but if your car has a button that says ‘eco,’ press it,” says Booker. A setting like this will tell your transmission to shift less aggressively, and in some cases even reduce the amount of fuel the injectors squirt into your engine. 

Cruise control is also your friend. “The computer is much better at keeping a constant speed than an average person,” says Booker, and that’s crucial. Even small variations in speed on the highway — drifting up and down by a couple of miles per hour as you search for the next podcast — can really sap your mileage. 

Of course, the most efficient way to reduce your fuel use is to not drive. Take public transit. Walk. Ride a bike. Hopefully, someday soon, these options will be available to everyone, no matter where they live. 

The content provided in this article is for informational purposes only. Each vehicle is different, and Lyft makes no representations as to the accuracy and completeness of this information.Always consult your owner’s manual and/or a professional for further information specific to your vehicle. Unless otherwise stated, Lyft is not affiliated with any businesses or organizations mentioned in the article.