
Yesterday's drive took us west from Memphis, passing through Arkansas and making our way into Texas. After a night at The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas, we're back on the road. This time, however, we will not be following major interstate expressways, and will instead be driving on rural highways to get to our final destination in Amarillo.
Yesterday showed some pretty impressive numbers from all vehicle classes. The leading Q7 was able to obtain fuel economy numbers of 30.3 miles per gallon with an average speed of around 59 miles per hour. The NextAutos Q7 didn't do quite as well, only managing to get 28.6 mpg with an average speed of 58 mph. When we asked the winning team what their secret was, they mentioned that driving the Q7 in manual mode and using the wheel-mounted paddle shifters let them keep low revs in each gear. Also, they were fortunate enough to find a semi truck driver who was willing to play along and let the team draft behind them for over 100 miles.
For the rest of the cars, the winning A4 achieved numbers of 43.3 mpg at 58 mph with the number one Q5 observing 37.9 mpg at 60 mph. The little A3 made the trip at an average of 60 mph, averaging 48.4 mpg along the way.
As always, we'll have more updates later. We've got a few tricks up our sleeve which might make today's drive a bit more interesting (and efficient), so we'll be sure to let you all know how everything works out.