The ChicagoPriusGroup has never and will never shy away from the media.  In fact, we seek it out as part of our outreach program to educate the general public about the Prius and all hybrid cars in general.  After all, most people fear what they don't understand and unfortunately there are a lot of people who do not currently understand hybrid technology.

This page is dedicated to media coverage we have had.  We hope this page becomes very big.

Reporting on the High Price of Gasoline

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Hyper-Milers: 'Gliding' Toward Fuel Conservation

Very early today, in a house adorned with leftover Halloween decorations, stirred a man consumed with energy. Literally.
Wayne Mitchell is focused on saving energy. He eats his breakfast long before sunrise just so he can allow for a morning commute that will burn less gasoline. "I make the effort simply because it is the right thing to do," he said.
Today, after he unplugged his car, Mitchell allowed 'Nightline' to join him on his daily journey to downtown Chicago. Every inch of it was designed to maximize his gas mileage.
Starting with the plug that's connected to a heater that kept the engine warm overnight. "Have to unplug the car, don't want to drag the extension chord downtown."

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Riding High on Hybrids

The Toyota Prius … a “gateway drug?” So claims a well-known actor in a new book of celebrity essays, “The Green Book,” about the hybrid that hooked him into living more “G.” “You know how people say marijuana is a gateway drug? That’s sorta what buying a Prius was for me,” he says. “I love nature, and I love taking walks on the beach at sunset. And if that makes me sound like Miss February filling out her turn-ons in a Playboy bio, so be it.”
Tony Schaefer, one of the founders of the Chicago Prius Club, uses the same analogy when he describes how the Prius turned him from an unaware Buick Regal owner — “Emissions? Didn’t care. Mileage? Didn’t care” — into a “raving, evangelical environmentalist” with a bumper sticker of a stick-figure man blowing his brains out with a gas nozzle.

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The Pursuit of Hypermileage
Wayne Gerdes knows how to wring a gas tank dry. He can squeeze 84 miles per gallon from your standard-issue Ford Ranger pick-up. He once averaged more than 100 mpg during the course of an entire summer. And while behind the wheel of a hybrid electric Honda Insight, he coaxed the vehicle into yielding an astonishing 180.1 mpg. Gerdes can do these seemingly impossible things with a car because he is one of a rare breed of drivers known as hypermilers.
These drivers are “completely obsessed” with getting good gas mileage, says Bill Robbins, spokesperson for an annual event called Hybridfest in Madison, Wis., which celebrates hybrid cars and all things related to reducing fuel consumption.

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Fuelish Lessons
Hypermiling: When maximizing miles per gallon becomes an extreme sportt

On the hottest days of summer, Wayne Gerdes drives with his windows rolled up and the air conditioning off.
He crawls into stoplights at a few miles an hour, wears an "ice vest" (technical equipment used in nuclear power plants) to stay cool on long rides, parks in the isolated outskirts of mall lots and turns off the engine and coasts on major highways -- all in the name of greater fuel efficiency.
His efforts have paid off. In the small but growing world of American hypermiling, in which top drivers compete for the best miles-per-gallon statistics, the 45-year-old Wadsworth resident with lightning reflexes and a laid-back country drawl is Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods rolled into one.

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[Text]
Reporter: With fuel prices this high, every last drip of gas counts.  That's why some Chicagoans are "hypermiling."  They drive hybrid cars and modify them to get the best mileage possible.  And they're sharing what they know.  The Chicago Prius Group hosts meetings to show drivers how to get the most out of their hybrids.
Tony: "It turns out what we found was the things you learn when you're fifteen taking Drivers Ed: coasting to stops, not accelerating heavily, anticipating traffic, it turns out that those actually work."
Reporter: "For more information about the Chicago Prius Group and when they meet, go to our website, myfoxchicago.com and click on the "seen on tv" section."

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By Kim Janssen Staff writer
The last time Browning Mitchell bought gas, there was still ice on the roads.
By the time he fills up again, it could cost $4 a gallon.
Mitchell, of Chicago's Mount Greenwood community, doesn't hide his car in the garage. He drives it at least 38 miles a day to and from his city hall job as an engineer with the Chicago Fire Department.
He eats Cheerios for breakfast, not muesli, and displays no outward sign of meanness.
But getting the industry-leading 60 miles per gallon in the city from his 2004 Toyota Prius just isn't good enough for him and a small but growing band of "hypermilers" -- motorists committed to squeezing the maximum use out of every drop of gas.
"There's three types of people who buy hybrid vehicles," Mitchell says.
"Stingy people, people concerned about the environment and geeks who are into the technology."
Mitchell, who travels across the country in his spare time meeting other Prius owners and helping them modify their cars, is in the last group, although many of his techniques can be adopted by drivers of traditionally engined cars.
He's stuffed foam in his car's grill to keep the engine hot and added a meter to his dashboard that measures how far he's pressed the gas pedal. He keeps his tires inflated high enough above the recommended maximum that he's too embarrassed to admit just how high, and he and plugs an engine block heater into the electrical system at his home every night so his car performs efficiently from start up in the morning.

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