Social Networking Site Tracks Gas Mileage

Fuel-conscious drivers now have an innovative new way to not only calculate and compare their car's mileage to others, but devise ways to raise their own fuel efficiency.

Fuelly.com lets you add your car to its system by entering the year, make and model, then tracks your mileage, gas expenditures, how your vehicle compares to EPA estimates and even how much money you could save by improving your mileage in different ways.

One of the most useful features is that you can see how your car compares to identical vehicles. If you're getting significantly poorer mileage, this can tell you a few things: For instance, maybe your driving habits are particularly lousy when it comes to burning gas, or maybe your tires need to be inflated or your air filter needs to be replaced. Whatever the case, fuelly.com could serve as a valuable warning system. Also, if you own an iPhone or another mobile device, you can update your remotely. Like while you’re waiting at the pump.

If anybody decides to try out fuelly.com, be sure to let us know in the comments if you find the site useful.

Fuelly Offers Social Networking for the Mileage-Conscious, Green Dragons (Jalopnik.com)

Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Avoid Using Reverse

The easiest example of this is in a parking lot at the mall or grocery store. It will save a small bit of gas if you pull through the parking space so your vehicle faces out. When you leave, simply pull forward and you're off. This won’t save you hundreds of dollars by any means, but it's an important part of being fuel-conscious in your driving habits.

Why is backing up so bad? Think about it this way: Do you enjoy creeping around parking lots in first gear? Of course not, and low gears make the worst use of fuel. Not only does reverse get poor fuel economy, but you’re often covering the same territory when you use it.

For example, backing up and pulling forward is twice the driving of just pulling out of the parking space and driving away. This may seem insignificant, but over the course of a year, better driving practices will add up.

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Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Teach Fuel-Efficient Habits

An easy way to save money while reducing U.S. oil consumption is to start young when it comes to having fuel-efficient driving habits. Changing the curriculum of driver's ed courses to include instruction for young drivers on how drive more efficiently would cost nothing and would save a tremendous amount of gas.

We've written before about how you can improve your fuel economy by adjusting your driving habits (and even devices that help you do it). Why not teach our fresh-faced youth that avoiding jackrabbit starts is as important as maintaining your hands at 10 and 2? Sweden has already begun implementing a similar plan, and you can bet a country that frequently sees gas prices higher than $10 a gallon has a decent idea or two about saving fuel.

Let us know what you think: Did you learn fuel-efficient driving techniques when you took your driver's ed classes? Would you support implementing such a plan in the nation's driving schools?

Sweden Requires Fuel-Efficient Driving Lessons (Morning Edition)

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Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Buy an iPhone

Seriously: Is there anything an iPhone doesn't do?

If you already own one or are considering caving to pop culture and corporate pressure and buying one, you can download fuel-saving applications for as little as 99 cents.

Some applications help you locate the cheapest gas in your area, gauge your miles per gallon, track your driving performance to tell you if you're driving as efficiently as you could be, and convert pollution into a clean-burning fuel that emits only dreams and pixie dust.

OK, I made that last one up, but still, the more information you can arm yourself with when it comes to your driving habits, the better performance you'll be able to coax out of your car. Plus, you can play Tap Tap Revolution when stuck in traffic.

5 iPhone Apps to Help Save Gas (Earth2Tech)

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Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Yes, Really, Check Your Tires

We don't like to get involved in political food fights, but the hash between John McCain and Barack Obama over checking your tire pressure has gotten fairly absurd, culminating in "Obama Energy Plan" tire gauges.

As we recommended earlier, keeping your tires at the proper inflation will improve your vehicle's fuel efficiency by 3% to 4%, according to the EPA, and yes, if every driver in the country did this it would save us more oil than can be found drilling offshore.

For instance, the Department of Energy estimates that, in 2005, Americans wasted 1.2 billion gallons of gas because of underinflated tires, which equates to roughly 61 million barrels of oil. Yet if the government opened every last spec of the ocean now closed to offshore drilling, the Department of the Interior estimates it would only find 17.9 billion barrels of oil, but not all at once.

This—after a minimum of five to ten years—would introduce only 200,000 barrels of oil per day to the market, or as the Energy Information Administration puts it, not enough to have "a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."

McCain continues to ridicule Obama for the statement, but by the government’s own numbers, the Illinois senator is correct: Properly inflated tires could save around 305 million barrels before the first drop of oil stands a chance of coming out of the ocean.

The lesson? Actually put that tire gauge to use.

How Air in the Tires Became a Gauge of Candidates (Detroit Free Press)

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Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Forget Tilt-Up Mode on the Moonroof

We've written before about the drag created by opening the moonroof, but at least that’s preferable to using the tilt-up mode.

Be assured the gas-savings you'll get from never using the tilt-up mode are Minimal, with a capital "M." However, it makes us question what really is the purpose of moonroofs’ tilt-up mode. It doesn't add a cool, refreshing breeze inside the car, it's obnoxiously noisy, and our staff felt overwhelmingly indifferent to its existence.

This begs the question: Why does tilt-up mode even exist? Simply to create unnecessary drag that burns more fuel? For smokers?

Let us know if you do use the tilt-up option regularly and, if so, why?

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Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Mix Your Octanes

Today's gas-saving moment comes courtesy of Cars.com senior editor Joe Wiesenfelder, who has an interesting idea about octane ratings. We mentioned before that unless your car "requires" a higher octane, you can go with the cheap stuff. Even if it's required, though, you can consider splitting your octanes.

According to Wiesenfelder, "Yes, most cars can run on regular, but some cars require premium and some drivers insist on using the recommended octane.

"To that end, I’ll use Chicago as an example. We get a choice of 87, 89 and 93 octane, but the overwhelming majority of cars that call for premium want 91 octane. That means there are people out there who pay extra for 93. There is zero benefit to running any car on higher octane than it’s spec’d for.

"It was probably too much of a pain before, but with pennies being squeezed, it might be worth people’s while to fill half with 89 octane and half with 93. The result is a tankful of 91 for less money."

How much less money? Not a fortune certainly, but when evaluating how to best pinch your pennies, it's good to check out every last nook and cranny for savings.

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Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Take a Caroliday

What, you might wonder, is a "Caroliday"?

From Seattle to New York to Beijing, local governments are testing ways to get residents to keep their cars parked. In Seattle, the mayor has announced car-free Sundays, encouraging people to stay home or use public transportation on Sundays. In New York, an entire swath of Park Avenue will become a car-free zone on weekends in August. And thanks to the Olympics, the Chinese government has restricted the days drivers can take to the road so athletes can cross the finish line without sucking in a lungful of Beijing's "unique" air.

Simply put, a caroliday is a vacation from your car, and you can implement it in your own family. Even if it's only for two carefully selected days each month, plan and set aside days when no one will drive anywhere for any reason (short of an emergency). Take the opportunity to spend some quality time together, go for a walk, explore your neighborhood — just don't get in the car.

The more carolidays you take, the more pleased you’ll be each time you do drive and see the gas needle remaining surprisingly high.

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Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Watch Out for a Cheating Pump

Gas pumps can tally your bill incorrectly due to shoddy maintenance, defective parts or incompetence on the part of the station. Here are four screw-ups to look out for.

• Watch for the nozzle clicking off but the meter continuing to charge you money. It should only be a few pennies, but it happens with some frequency.
• If the meter says gas has been pumped before you even pull the handle, this is because of a worn interior part. When you hit the activate button, the pump draws in a bit of gas to prime itself, but this should not cost you anything.
• Occasionally, the pump will simply give you less gas than it's charging you for. This can happen for several reasons and there's not much you can do about it other than keep a watchful eye.
• Although this is less likely than the first three, sometimes gas station personnel will forget to change the road sign advertising their prices. As everyone knows, gas prices change daily, so simple human error can leave you holding a gas receipt that seems too high (or, if you're lucky, too low).

The easiest way to catch any or all of these miscalculations is to stop pumping gas when you reach 10 gallons. The price should 10 times the amount of one gallon, which means everything is honky-dory — or at least as honky-dory as things can be with gas in the $4 a gallon ballpark.

4 Ways Gas Pumps Screw You (The Consumerist)

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Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Await Innovation

As with a few previous posts, we will admit that today's moment will not have an immediate impact on how much you spend on gasoline. Automakers, however, are diligently working on numerous innovations that will increase mileage in years to come.

One of the most promising developments is a new thermoelectric material designed by researchers at Ohio State University and Caltech in Pasadena. These scientists noticed that while 25% of an engine's energy is used to move the car and run accessories like the power windows, the rest simply piddles out through the exhaust pipe.

With a new thermoelectric system in place, heat exhaust would be captured and converted to electricity, which could power a vehicle well beyond the gas in the tank. The technology has been around for a while, but with oil at $20 a barrel, the economics never worked in innovation's favor.

The larger point is that automakers are now racing to increase vehicle efficiency, so if you can just hold out a few years (perhaps five in the case of this thermoelectric system), the car you buy in 2013 could be considerably more efficient than the one you buy in 2009.

New Material Could Help Stretch a Gallon of Gas (Reuters)

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