Comments on: Fuelly tracks your gas mileage.

Fuelly tracks your gas mileage.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:26:58 -0800

Fuelly tracks your gas mileage over time, helping you save fuel and expenses as you drive.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:27:08 -0800

Built by one Matt Haughey and one Paul Bausch, both of Oregon.

By: box

box — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:32:58 -0800

Previously mentioned on MetaTalk, and in Projects.

By: klanawa

klanawa — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:34:43 -0800

wait till mathowie finds out about this!

By: yhbc

yhbc — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:40:08 -0800

Wow, he is getting some good mileage out of it.

By: dawson

dawson — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:43:11 -0800

hummmmmm, rings a bell somehow

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:53:33 -0800

You're missing a tag.

By: R. Mutt

R. Mutt — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:09:30 -0800

Interesting, but can how green are the site designers?

By: An Infinity Of Monkeys

An Infinity Of Monkeys — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:14:42 -0800

I think it would have been funnier if they called it Gassy.

By: Fuzzy Skinner

Fuzzy Skinner — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:14:55 -0800

This whole site is one big self-link!

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:30:52 -0800

Does it have a metric option?

By: mike3k

mike3k — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:44:58 -0800

My car already shows me the current & average gas mileage on its display.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:50:13 -0800

AskMe question: What web ap can I use to track my gas mileage? Trifecta!

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:52:27 -0800

This post is nondriver-ist!

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:02:33 -0800

MeFi Blue. That's all I'm saying.

By: armage

armage — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:15:00 -0800

C'mon, the trendy thing to do would have been to name it Fuelr or something.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:59:31 -0800

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.

By: jazon

jazon — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:10:52 -0800

psst, Blazecock: http://m.fuelly.com/

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:11:35 -0800

*gasp* Consider my words eaten.

By: Kyol

Kyol — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:19:11 -0800

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!

By: AsYouKnow Bob

AsYouKnow Bob — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:57:32 -0800

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.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:58:08 -0800

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.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:00:55 -0800

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.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:52:04 -0800

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...)

By: quonsar

quonsar — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:23:37 -0800

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?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:48:49 -0800

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?

By: twine42

twine42 — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:20:08 -0800

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...

By: notreally

notreally — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:20:37 -0800

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. .

By: notreally

notreally — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:23:05 -0800

Meant to add that in that time it traveled a total of 9,208 miles. Not a lot of driving.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:29:01 -0800

>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).

By: twine42

twine42 — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:40:39 -0800

Pompomtom : MPG. Just to be confusing.

By: lyam

lyam — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:39:58 -0800

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

By: MtDewd

MtDewd — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:57:01 -0800

>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?

By: smackfu

smackfu — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 06:59:37 -0800

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.

By: thekorruptor

thekorruptor — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:29:47 -0800

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?

By: mikepop

mikepop — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:41:38 -0800

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.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:43:51 -0800

Nods

By: djeo

djeo — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:58:35 -0800

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?

By: beagle

beagle — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:21:35 -0800

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.

By: willmize

willmize — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:07:29 -0800

I'm a My Mile Marker kind of guy, but there you go.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:30:58 -0800

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.

By: lyam

lyam — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:06:12 -0800

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.

By: mikepop

mikepop — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:06:44 -0800

Server timeout as well. My ISP is Time Warner cable if you are curious.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:07:48 -0800

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.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:42:23 -0800

>Heh... of course. Server seems fine to me.

By: AsYouKnow Bob

AsYouKnow Bob — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:16:29 -0800

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.

By: twine42

twine42 — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:48:21 -0800

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...

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:17:03 -0800

Yeah, we'll eventually allow some output in UK gallons. They only sell in L right?

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:10:08 -0800

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).

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:10:56 -0800

two decimal points, even.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:32:09 -0800

...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...)?

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 06:29:56 -0800

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".

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:21:22 -0800

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...