Fuelly tracks your gas mileage.
August 21, 2008 7:26 PM   Subscribe

Fuelly tracks your gas mileage over time, helping you save fuel and expenses as you drive.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (52 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Built by one Matt Haughey and one Paul Bausch, both of Oregon.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:27 PM on August 21, 2008


Previously mentioned on MetaTalk, and in Projects.
posted by box at 7:32 PM on August 21, 2008


wait till mathowie finds out about this!
posted by klanawa at 7:34 PM on August 21, 2008


Wow, he is getting some good mileage out of it.
posted by yhbc at 7:40 PM on August 21, 2008 [5 favorites]


hummmmmm, rings a bell somehow
posted by dawson at 7:43 PM on August 21, 2008


You're missing a tag.
posted by Dave Faris at 7:53 PM on August 21, 2008 [6 favorites]


Interesting, but can how green are the site designers?
posted by R. Mutt at 8:09 PM on August 21, 2008


I think it would have been funnier if they called it Gassy.
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys at 8:14 PM on August 21, 2008 [3 favorites]


This whole site is one big self-link!
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 8:14 PM on August 21, 2008


Does it have a metric option?
posted by pompomtom at 8:30 PM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]


My car already shows me the current & average gas mileage on its display.
posted by mike3k at 8:44 PM on August 21, 2008


AskMe question: What web ap can I use to track my gas mileage? Trifecta!
posted by fixedgear at 8:50 PM on August 21, 2008


This post is nondriver-ist!
posted by trip and a half at 8:52 PM on August 21, 2008


MeFi Blue. That's all I'm saying.
posted by Samizdata at 9:02 PM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]


C'mon, the trendy thing to do would have been to name it Fuelr or something.
posted by armage at 9:15 PM on August 21, 2008


There are a couple apps like this for the iPhone, which are more convenient because you can note your mileage and usage trends when you're actually at the gas station and can enter data.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:59 PM on August 21, 2008


psst, Blazecock: http://m.fuelly.com/
posted by jazon at 10:10 PM on August 21, 2008


*gasp*

Consider my words eaten.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:11 PM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]


I'm still going to keep track in my little lined notebook that I keep in my glovebox, but this means I don't have to keep extending the Numbers macros I set up to calculate MPG, Cost per Mile, days between fillups, cost per day and miles per day because my life is empty and bereft of meaning. Yay!
posted by Kyol at 10:19 PM on August 21, 2008


I'll still need to crank through the calculations myself. I'm OCD enough that I already keep track of my mileage. An automated ap should at least do this better than I do it by hand.

Fuelly would be a LOT more useful if it was smart enough to sum from fill-up to fill-up regardless of how many partial tanks intervene. (It should sum any partial fill-ups that occur in the interim).

As it is, it simply ignores all partial fill-ups, and doesn't include them in your cumulative stats.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:57 PM on August 21, 2008


Does it have a metric option?

Yeah, for input (you can change to L and km) and on the output pages, we're almost done with a metric view of the site via a simple toggle that will change all english units to metric you see.

We'll be adding support for other currencies soonish too, so you can track stuff in your native money instead of USD.
posted by mathowie at 10:58 PM on August 21, 2008


AsYouKnow Bob, how do you calculate MPG on partial tanks? I played with a bunch of test data and going through 3/4 of a tank and then buying just a couple gallons gives you an insane rate (150mpg is common), and if you drove a couple dozen more miles and filled it up, you'll also get an insane rate (2mpg) and when combined, they don't cancel each other out or get anywhere near the steady full-tank fill-up calculated averages.
posted by mathowie at 11:00 PM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]


Can't you just keep adding litres and kms until you're next at a full tank point, and then give a result?

(I presume I'm missing something obvious here...)
posted by pompomtom at 11:52 PM on August 21, 2008


going through 3/4 of a tank and then buying just a couple gallons gives you an insane rate (150mpg is common), and if you drove a couple dozen more miles and filled it up, you'll also get an insane rate (2mpg)

surely, you must be kidding. or drubnk?
posted by quonsar at 3:23 AM on August 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


surely, you must be kidding. or drubnk?

Nope, I'm serious. Without running calculations against some known quantity (full tank or same distance every time or same fuel amount every time) there's no way to get a reliable mpg from buying random amounts of gas each time you fill up. I've run numbers on this and it doesn't work out, so we drop the fuel stops that aren't topped off.

How else should it work, quonsar?
posted by mathowie at 3:48 AM on August 22, 2008


For us UKers, can we have a "difficult confused country" setting? We buy our fuel in litres but we use it by the mile.

I'd try and work it out, but I'd guess your using US gallons not Imperial ones...
posted by twine42 at 4:20 AM on August 22, 2008



Other owners of '97 Civics may be interested in mine. It is used exclusively for local trips IN town. NEVER on the interstate. In S/W Fl. with a/c running eight months a year. It is filled at the same pump by same person. For the four year period ending April 30 2008 the avg. mpg was 27.8. The worst single tank was 26.3 and the best was 28.9 mpg. The largest single tank topoff was 11.1 gals. The smallest topoff was 5.5 gal. in anticipation of a hurricane. The next smallest topoff was 8.8 gals.
Yes I am OCD with this car and no I am not OCD about improperly combining top and off.

.
posted by notreally at 4:20 AM on August 22, 2008



Meant to add that in that time it traveled a total of 9,208 miles. Not a lot of driving.
posted by notreally at 4:23 AM on August 22, 2008


>How else should it work,

Take the odometer reading when the tank is full. Do your calc when the tank is next full, knowing how many litres you've added in between. Then work out l/100k (or MPG or, what, MPl or whatever the Brits want).
posted by pompomtom at 4:29 AM on August 22, 2008


Pompomtom : MPG. Just to be confusing.
posted by twine42 at 4:40 AM on August 22, 2008


I couldn't get the site to load when I saw it last week and i can't get it to load now. : (
posted by lyam at 5:39 AM on August 22, 2008


>How else should it work

I'm hearing you saying that, e.g., if you go 335 miles & get 5 gallons (45 MPG) and then fill up with 20 gallons after 335 miles (16.75 MPG) your graph will be jumping all over the place. Is that the problem?

If you don't want the fluctuations of partial fills, can't you just have a checkbox for partial fill and keep a running total until the next fill? Check partial fill on the first one, don't check the next one and get 560 miles on 25 gallons for 22.4 MPG.

Or is it more complicated than that?
posted by MtDewd at 5:57 AM on August 22, 2008


I really want to buy one of those real-time mileage computers that plug into the data port on your car. Those are supposed to be the best way to really see the direct impact of your driving on your mileage.
posted by smackfu at 6:59 AM on August 22, 2008


Without the partial fill calc ability, this is a non- starter for me. I rarely dump a whole tank in my car. There has to be a solution, no?
posted by thekorruptor at 7:29 AM on August 22, 2008


I couldn't get the site to load when I saw it last week and i can't get it to load now. : (

This kept happening to me, but I assumed I only remembered to check it out whenever I saw it mentioned somewhere so I thought it was just too busy. But checking now, I can get to it via my phone, but it still times out for any desktop browser I use.
posted by mikepop at 7:41 AM on August 22, 2008


Nods
posted by tellurian at 7:43 AM on August 22, 2008


I'm still going to keep track in my little lined notebook that I keep in my glovebox...

Me too, I have logs going back to the day my '92 rolled off the lot. I started transcribing it into a spreadsheet recently but it's a lot of work.

I don't drive much the last several years so maybe I'll take my mileage just since 2003 and put it into fuelly and see what happens. I'm concerned about the partial-fill issue tho. I don't often gas up without topping off the tank but there are times that I only put in $10 or so. Would MtDewd's suggestion be an easy fix?
posted by djeo at 7:58 AM on August 22, 2008


It's nice to use this on your computer or cell phone, but the basic data gathering for this app really should be built right into the dashboards of cars. Existing cars with onboard mileage calculators already have all the necessary sensors, they just need a way to upload to the site. This would solve the partial tank problem, and with the addition of GPS info there would be ways to add ways to track and analyze mileage achieved when repeatedly driving certain routes, like one's commute. As a further step, the aggregated user data from driving route segments could then be used to provide expected fuel use estimates on sites like Mapquest, and Mapquest could supply the most fuel-efficient route in addition to the quickest and shortest as it does. Some of this seems to be available, on its way, or feasible with Dash, which combines social networking with GPS.
posted by beagle at 8:21 AM on August 22, 2008


I'm a My Mile Marker kind of guy, but there you go.
posted by willmize at 10:07 AM on August 22, 2008


mikepop, what errors do you get? Server not found? Some other kind of HTTP error?

And for partial tank tracking, here's some test data showing 5 fuel stops, where 4 are filling back to the top but one stop included just 2 gallons, with the car fixed at 20mpg during the entire course of driving.

As you can see, the reported average is showing over 42mpg with the short non-fillup when averaged, even accounting for the low mpg that followed it.
posted by mathowie at 11:30 AM on August 22, 2008


I'm not mikepop but I can't access the site via desktop (either m.fuelly.com or www.fuelly.com) but I can access m.fuelly.com via blackberry.

The error I get (regardless of browser) is a server timeout.

Strange.
posted by lyam at 12:06 PM on August 22, 2008


Server timeout as well. My ISP is Time Warner cable if you are curious.
posted by mikepop at 1:06 PM on August 22, 2008


Oh shit, duh. I finally figured out how to do mpg averages for non fill-ups. I just track total mileage of all time divided over total gallons ever purchased, then it doesn't matter if you buy five bucks to fifty gallons in gas as it all averages out eventually.

Weird to hear people can't reach it, I haven't gotten a single report of that until today from you two. I'll ask a networking IT friend if he can find anything weird about the server setup.
posted by mathowie at 4:07 PM on August 22, 2008


>Heh... of course.

Server seems fine to me.
posted by pompomtom at 4:42 PM on August 22, 2008


Mathowie: on preview, I was just about to reply when you figured it out.

You don't need to figure the mileage on partial tanks. But you do need to figure it from fill-up to fill-up, including all of the partial fill-ups made in the interim.

(Total miles driven) / (total gasoline purchased). Easy.

Oh, and as long as we're used MetaFilter to report Fuelly bugs: my car hasn't shown up yet/ isn't findable in the "all vehicle" search.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 5:16 PM on August 22, 2008


Matt - sorry to be a complete pain in the ass, but could we have the option to do things in US or UK gallons?

I really appriciate being able to add that I've used Xlitres to travel Ymiles, but in the UK we then track everything in mpg, and it would be cool to have that in Imperial gallons not US ones...

The Uk really needs to sort itself out on measurements...
posted by twine42 at 12:48 AM on August 23, 2008


Yeah, we'll eventually allow some output in UK gallons. They only sell in L right?
posted by mathowie at 8:17 AM on August 23, 2008


Yeah, it's sold by the litre in the UK. It's typically priced in pence too, e.g. 112.9p per litre rather than £1.12.9 per litre (which looks weird since it has two decimal places).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:10 AM on August 23, 2008


two decimal points, even.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:10 AM on August 23, 2008


...and while we're whinging... There should be a different form for the first fill. ie: you should start off using the site with a full tank, and the form for a fill is confusing. I just topped up the tank so I could start using the site, why do I need to enter litres? Should I put zero, or the size of a full tank (which I don't accurately know, as I've never emptied it...)?
posted by pompomtom at 7:32 PM on August 23, 2008


which I don't accurately know, as I've never emptied it...

Easy enough to find, either in your car handbook or by Googling "[car type] fuel tank capacity".
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:29 AM on August 24, 2008


Yeah, sure, but the point is that the size of the tank is irrelevant. The first 'fuel-up' data point is just opening the account. Tank is full, so we're at a known point. Now we can start counting litres and kms...
posted by pompomtom at 6:21 PM on August 24, 2008


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