There are a lot of other tips on this site that talk about ways to get better mileage out of your car. But if you’re serious (or even just curious) about learning to save gas and money, you can do better than to go through the motions with your eyes closed. Monitoring and recording your fuel economy is essential, as it gives you tangible feedback to work with. It’s like lowering your cholesterol — you can try to eat healthy and hope everything will work out, or you can get the hard numbers and keep tabs on what’s really going on.

There are a whole range of options for monitoring your fuel use, ranging from the old school to the geeked out — pick one and start tracking:

  • On paper. Every time you fill up, record the miles you drove since your last fill and the gallons of fuel you just put in your car. Divide the first number by the second, and you’ve got your MPG for that tank. Reset your trip odometer every time, fill your tank completely, and keep an ongoing record so you can compare over time.
  • On the web. Use a free website — Fuelly is a great one — to log your miles driven and fuel consumed, and see all kinds of graphs, stats, and comparisons to other folks driving the same vehicle.
  • On the phone. There are numerous smartphone apps that perform these functions, or you can visit a website like Fuelly through your phone’s web browser.
  • On the dash. If you’re into gadgets, it get’s no better than the Scangauge. You mount this little instrument anywhere on your dashboard, plug it into your car’s onboard computer (all 1996 or newer model vehicles have them), and get instantaneous fuel economy feedback, average trip and tank fuel economy, and a slew of other data about what’s going on in your engine.

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People's experiences completing this action

  1. kolakitty kolakitty completed this on March 15 3:51 PM

    I pay attention to the number of miles I make

  2. aarongustafson aarongustafson completed this on March 13 7:35 PM

    No comment

  3. oluanaigh oluanaigh completed this on February 11 7:34 PM

    I use GasCubby, an iPhone App. The interesting thing for me is that when we got our Prius I started changing my driving to try and get my MPG up. What I learned is transferring to my other cars, dr…

  4. mmutel mmutel completed this on February 06 3:20 PM

    No comment

  5. Ei Ei completed this on February 05 10:15 PM

    No comment

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