100,000 fuel-ups!

[reppact]

"10,118 Fuelly users have tracked 100,745 fuel-ups in 12,182 vehicles over 26,466,557 miles of driving. "

Congrats on breaking the 100,000 fuel-up mark!!

[mathowie]

Yeah, I was watching for that milestone (we hit 10,000 users early in the week as well). Now that we have more data about more cars, we'll be able to do a lot more things with it, so stay tuned.

[cee]

..so we're averaging 262.71 miles per fuel-up..wonder what our mpg stats are..even better: what are our collective +/- mpg compared to EPA estimates..that'd be proof positive that Fuelly is helping its membership improve on gov't averages--!..

..kudos to the site, from a new member (3 fuel-ups to date)!...

[pb]

Well, our collective fuel economy across the board at this moment is 17.51 MPG (13.43 L/100km and 21.04 UK MPG). I don't have an easy way to compare our collective MPG vs. EPA estimates, but that would be interesting.

[KawiGreen]

One thing I'm curious about: What factors affect MPG. Browsing vehicles, it seems like lots of variation in MPG even within same model and year. What else can we glean from the data (or ask users to enter) that will help us learn what habits etc to replicate and which to avoid.

An easy one would be effect of temperature (based on location/date) ... although that wouldn't be useful from a standpoint of improving driving habits ...

[pb]

I'm also curious about how temperature affects my MPG because it seems like I get much worse mileage in the winter. This will be my first winter with Fuelly so I should get a sense of how much worse it really is.

[rem83]

A couple of factors that could contribute to poorer winter fuel economy:

longer warmup times, potentially long idle times while waiting for the car to warm

reduced traction

winter gasoline formulation (although actually i think this helps, but not sure)

use of snow tires (i'd assume they would have higher rolling resistance) and potentially studs

increased traffic due to poor weather

that's all i can think of off the top of my head

[bates]

I don't know about the rest of the Country and World, but in Southern California we get increased fuel economy in the winter due to the so called "Winter Blend" fuel which has better BTU's per pound and gallon than the "Summer Blend" This year has been somewhat better for me with the summer blend, due in large part to the extreme rise in gas costs in June and July which encouraged me to drastically reduce my commute speeds, therefore I didn't realize the percentage increase in my fuel mileage that I have in the past when the gas switched back to winter gas. Also, I think the Ethanol is a factor, in the past as I understand it Ethanol was a Summer Blend additive which doesn't burn as well as gasoline thereby hindering fuel economy, now that it is a federal mandate to have 10% Ethanol there isn't the drastic difference between the winter and summer blends, but this is just my guess, I don't have any facts or data to back that up. Purely my experience and applying my understanding of fuels and ICE's.

Also for the question about the variance in fuel economies between similar makes and models even within the same year, I think that there are a lot of factors there that are well beyond the control of the moderators. I put in my comments section whether or not most of my mileage is commuting, as commuting helps me increase my mileage. There is also the "Ricky Racer" factor, where some drivers are going light to light with hard accelerations and braking, which destroys your fuel economy over a tank of gas. I've been adding the commute or around town notes for my own personal help, but the moderators might want to consider adding it as a suggestion if the members are interested in it. I know that there was some discussion of and dismissal of the idea of providing an input to estimate the amount of highway versus city driving that were involved in a tank of fuel. That would be easy for me to guess, since I know exactly how long my commute is but I see how it would consisit of mostly WAG's for many members.

Keep up the good work guys, I love the site and appreciate all that you do for us here.

[rem83]

I think the problem with ethanol is that there is less chemical energy per unit volume. From what I understand, ethanol actually burns very well, it just doesn't have the same chemical energy. I kind of hate to run even 10% ethanol in my older cars / bikes though, I can just picture all of the fuel system seals dissolving...

[cee]

..for some ideas on engine warm-up, here's a link to the Fuelly Fuel Talk Forum related post:

http://www.fuelly.com/forum/258/Warm-Up-or-No#974

..basically, it's cool to drive with a cold engine, so long as you're not gunning things..go at a slow crawl until the temp gauge hits normal operating range (between C & H somewheres)..

..just a (hopefully) helpful hint.