From 46mpg to 52 easily, thanks priuschat!

I'll concur with the findings of my fellow drivers. Starting as a mid-40's MPG operator, I finally saw the light after reading the two referenced articles by Hobbit. The first is a rather technical presentation of "BSFC curves". The second apparently maps those curves onto our HSI, where the region shown in green is where we want to be. If you're not chasing the links, this is basically the "quarter inch in under the ECO sign" up to a point about the same distance away from the Power region. This is where your gasoline does the most good. As a result, I can now consistently see 50 on the consumption gauge. These are, of course, "Toyota miles", so I'm really looking at about 48.5 MPG. Still not the best, but it's nice to see it "break 50" as a reference. Keeping in mind it's a darn sight better than the 26 I can eke out of the other car

So I understood what "pulse and glide" suggested, but not really how to do it. As stated earlier, it comes down to this: (1) Keep it in the "green" region where possible, let the car accelerate slowly and anticipate where you want to be; (2) If your speed is too much, slow down by gliding. This is where you make the bar disappear at the left just above the charge region. Pulsing and gliding comes directly from doing these things.

A note about that spot just above the centerline: I find it helpful to thing of it this way: The gauge says I'm getting 85 MPG here, but for the amount of gas being used, I should be getting 120 MPG. I made up the numbers, but that's the sort of thing they mean when they talk about "efficiency".

One last thought. When you "take all day" to accelerate up to your desired speed, you are consuming fuel the whole time. If you accelerate faster, you use more fuel but for a lot less time. The two don't quite balance, but makes me feel a whole lot better about pushing it into the red now and then.