Easy Peasy Tip: Log your Mileage!
By tinychoices | December 6, 2008
It’s often said that you can’t save what you don’t measure, so consider starting a driving log to keep in your car. Every time you fill up note the total miles you’ve driven on your prior tank and the amount of gas required to fill your tank (and now that it’s not quite as expensive to buy gas it should be easier on the wallet and psychologically to fill up your tank when you get gas!). LighterFootstep.com recommends also marking down WHY you drove.
Karina keeps a ratty 4×6″ spiral notebook with a mechanical pencil (bonus tip: ballpoint pens freeze in the winter) in her glovebox and has tracked every refuel in her 3-year old car. Or you can get an iphone app such as MPG (iTunes store), iPhone Miles, or Trip Cubby to serve as the log book, send tweets from the pump to fuelfrog to track on-line at their webpage, or use a service such as ecomodder, where you create a profile for your vehicle and update your statistics online.
Start tracking your mileage and see how it fluctuates on long trips, in cold weather, or on those weeks when you feel like you’re rushing everywhere!
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- Remember when conservation was patriotic?
- Driving like a Granny
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- This 4-Dollar Gas Thing
- May Experiment: Driving Slower and Results!
- Green Your Driving
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Read all of our Easy Peasy Tips!
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[Photo of logbooks (exactly the kind Karina uses!) by Flickr user SonnyandSandy via creative commons license.]
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Topics: Easy Peasy Tips, Transportation |
My husband has been tracking his and now our mileage for as long as I have known him. He was just commenting how our miles per gallon fluctuates seasonal depending on whether he is going to summer part-time job or not. In the off season the number of miles per month drops as does the number of miles per gallon due to a larger percentage of city miles.
I use Fuelly, an online service for mileage tracking. I think their goal is to become sort of a Facebook for cars. I always fill my tank and pay by credit card, so I just scribble my miles since the last tank on the receipt, then enter it later online.
My method is a teensy bit easier: I reset the single trip odometer on my car every time I fill up with gas so I can see how much mileage I am getting as I go. No pesky arithmetic with large numbers required!
Do you keep tabs of it over time, though? I think there’s a lot of value in amassing large quantities of data and then graphing them (but of course, that’s the way I roll).
I don’t keep a graph of it but I do know how much mpg I usually get so if it’s lower than normal I will ask myself why (more city driving than usual? car needs maintenance? etc.).
Karina - I realize that this might not be the best time to shop for a new car, but have you heard about the new Honda Insight? Supposedly it’s Honda’s Prius-killer, coming out in April 09. It should deliver comparable fuel economy for about $5000 less.
Also VW will soon sell a Bluetec diesel Jetta which gets close to 50 mpg on the highway, without reliance on batteries (and all the ick associated with manufacturing and disposal). A few simple mods and it will work on biodiesel.
I had heard about it - but I am so ultra happy with my “old” insight. you really can’t beat the gas mileage! and I so infrequently need to drive around more than one other person besides myself.
the new insight looks *just* like the prius, doesn’t it? I still think honda blew it when they revamped the civic engine but put the efficiency gains towards zip instead of mileage. but I am a huge fan of hatch-backs, and if the new insight is smaller than the big ‘ol prius, that’s to the good.