This fuel calc

The example is for the car I drive a 2007 Honda Civic using the gas mileage from my best tank.   The combined EPA for my car is 29mpg, the price of gas was $3.65 and I got 44.23 mpg.  The equivalent cost of fuel per gallon was $2.39.  One question you might ask yourself is how long would you wait in line If you found a gas station that was selling gas for that low of a price.  If I could keep up this mileage, I would save $867 per year.  Not too shabby for driving a little slower and using other Green Driving Tips.

Click here to use this calculator online

How did I do it?  Mostly by slowing down.

We headed down to St Pete to visit Ofie’s father last Friday.  I filled the tank about half way down and got 43 MPG on the rest of the trip.  Saturday we drove around the city making lots of stops at lights and stores.  I shut the engine off and coasted in neutral whenever possible.  The scan gauge recorded 30 mpg while we were there(average speed was 20 mph).   Sunday morning we left to head home at 5:40 am and I kept the speed around 62 until we reached highway 19/27.  There was lots of smoke and fog and 50mph was about the highest speed I felt was safe(sometimes we couldn’t even go that fast).   The road was actually closed due to the conditions,  and we were forced to make a detour on a very narrow two lane road. We had to stop to listen to the FHP Trooper give us directions to get around the smoke.

After we got back on the highway we went through several small towns and I was able to time the lights so I never came to a complete stop at the lights, although we only stopped one more time to get a bite to eat.  The average speed for the trip was 50 mph.  I had 440 miles on the tank before the low fuel warning light came on, with two ticks left on the gas gauge.  Scan gauge showed 42 mpg but my actual mileage was 44.64 – 446 miles@9.99 gals.  

It took 5hours and 40 minutes to make the trip of 273 miles but to me it was so much more relaxing than driving faster.  We kicked back and listened to a few sermons by Alistair Begg, and the time really flew by.

Many people have been taught that if you are going to idle for less than a minute, it is better to keep the car running.   That is simply not true.  As you can see in the video that when I stopped at the light my gas mileage was 36.2 MPG.  By the time the light changed it had gone down to 35.5 MPG.   In other field test’s where I have turned the engine off at a light, the mileage did not change once I started it up again.

According to the California consumer energy center   ” If you’re in a drive-through restaurant/business line or waiting for someone and you’ll be parked and sitting for 10 seconds or longer… turn off your car’s engine.”

Wayne Gerdes in his article on the “why’s and how to hypermile” says ”  Consider shutting down your vehicle if stopped for more than 7-seconds as that is all the fuel it takes to restart a modern day, fuel-injected engine.”

The lower gas mileage you get, the more of a difference it will make.   For instance my 2007 Honda Civic rated at 25 mpg city uses .19-.22 gallons per hour when the engine is idling.   A 2013 Chevrolet Corvette rated at 15 mpg city will use perhaps twice that amount.

How much money do American’s waste each year due to idling?

A new study by the U.S. Treasury Department finds that traffic snarls wasted 1.9 billion gallons of fuel last year — about 5% of the gas American motorists used.  At the current price, that would work out to more than $7 billion nationwide.

Here are some other myths associated with idling according to the California consumer energy center

As mentioned on this and many other websites, the ScanGuage or other iFCD (Instantaneous fuel consumption display)  is vital to measuring the effectiveness of any green driving tip you might try.  I use the scan gauge II pictured above.  I admit the mounting of it is not ascetically pleasing but I like the fact that it  is positioned where I can see it without taking my eyes off the road.

I hate to do anything drastic like take the dash apart but I am thinking about ideas to mount the ScanGuage  in a better location so the wire is not hanging down.   For the time being though this will have to do.

Comments anyone?

flashing headlights

Have you ever been driving down the road and noticed cars traveling in the opposite direction with their “headlights flashing”? Many times that means that a “speed trap” may be set up just around the bend or over the hill. If you came to this site to discover ways to get better gas mileage you will most likely not be speeding but the do unto others rule applies here. Wouldn’t you like to be alerted if you happened to inadvertently be going faster than the posted speed limit?

Wikipedia defines headlight flashing as ” the act of either briefly switching on the headlights of a car, or of momentarily switching between a headlight’s high beams and low beams, in an effort to communicate with another driver or drivers. This signal can be intended to convey a variety of messages, including a warning to other drivers of road hazards or of speed traps, and it can also be a form of aggressive driving. The legality of headlight flashing varies by jurisdiction.”

The practice of flashing headlights to warn oncoming traffic of possible “radar” in the area, used to be illegal in Florida but effective January 1, 2013, Florida motorists will no longer be ticketed for flashing headlights for any reason, including as a warning to other drivers that law enforcement officials are nearby. That could be welcome news for drivers who felt they were doing fellow motorists a service by giving a heads up that police were waiting in the shadows.

The original legislation, HB 1223, was introduced by Representative Ben Albritton (R-Bartow, 56th District), and proceeded through its assigned committees before being passed unanimously by the House and Senate. The law, approved by Governor Rick Scott on April 27, 2012, included provisions that amended section 316.97, Florida Statutes, pertaining to headlights. Here’s a link to the actual statute that it amended:

The measure contained several other provisions, including the creation of additional specialty tags and a revision of the definition of “swamp buggy”. For a summary of the legislation, please click here.

Keep in mind that the laws regarding “headlight flashing” vary from state to state.

Be a careful driver, slow down (this usually goes hand in hand with getting better gas mileage) and know the laws for your state.