How to Manuel Shift for the Best Gas Mileage

1. Listen to your car as you drive. You can hear the engine revving louder as the RPM increase. Your goal is to keep the RPM low without stalling the car. This will decrease the amount of power you have and slow down your acceleration time, because the engine will not be working as hard. It will take some practice to listen to your car and monitor the RPM gauge before you can shift to optimize your gas mileage.You do not need to have a manual transmission to do this. If your automatic transmission has the option to switch into a tiptronic mode where you can control the gears, you can shift gears in your automatic vehicle to get better gas mileage.
2. Shift up to a higher gear between 2 and 3 RPM until you get to your optimal gear for the speed you want to reach. If you quickly need power, for example when climbing a hill, you can downshift to a lower gear to increase your RPM and gain enough power to drive up the hill.
3. Shift down to a lower gear later than normally. As you decelerate, wait until the RPM get low before downshifting. This will prevent the engine from revving high when you shift to a lower gear. If you need to slow down to stop, you can take the car out of gear to glide to a stop.