Stat request: driving rate (miles per month/year)

[unixdude]

Hi. I love fuelly.com, but I wonder if you could add one more statistic. One thing I track is my current rate of driving (over the last 12 months or so), and I wonder if fuelly.com can add that statistic.

I calculate this number today, and what this tells me is two things: First, when fuel economy is multiplied by monthly driving rate and the cost of fuel, it shows how much money to budget for fuel. The second thing it allows me to do is to predict (with surprising accuracy) when I will need service on my car, allowing me to better budget for that.

Actually, I guess it would be nice if fuelly.com could calculate both of these other statistics too.

[unixdude]

Current rate of driving, as in miles per year or miles per month.

[pb]

We have this in the mini-stats section of vehicle pages. On your vehicle page click the "Customize Mini Stats" link. From there choose "Total Miles Tracked", and then choose the timeframe you're interested in. You could set one for "Last Month" and one for "Last 12 Months" if you want.

[MEP]

Not forgetting the handy annual reports on the bottom of each vehicle page also.

[unixdude]

pb & MEP, thanks for the comments. The "Total Miles Tracked" for "Last 12 Months" is close to what I am looking for, but the number of miles tracked over 12 months isn't really the same as the current rate of driving -- and it requires that I have actually had the vehicle for 12 months. I just got a new van, and I can calculate my rate of driving by computing the total miles driven and days owned, and performing appropriate calculations: miles per year = 365*(total miles driven)/(number of days owned) ... obviously this calculation is not very accurate at first fillup, but it gets more accurate with every fillup. And, after a year, the calculation is extremely accurate when using a sliding 12 months timeframe, which is what I do for my other car.

[pb]

Yeah, I think this is a pretty niche request. We're not going to be able to support everyone's preferred method of tracking. You should be able to use the data you enter here at Fuelly to calculate this fairly quickly. And if you try out the export feature, you could probably build this calculation into a spreadsheet that's easy to update.

[unixdude]

Sure, I understand that, and your suggestion of using the miles tracked over the last 12 months is really basically the same.

I will continue to use my own spreadsheet for this, but I was hoping that "how much should I budget for fuel next month?" might be a request that others might appreciate. (That is calculated using the current rate of driving, current (or recent average) fuel economy, and the current (or recent average) price of fuel.

In case you're curious, I started calculating that a few years ago when the price of gas skyrocketed in my area due to a regional shortage after Katrina, and I ran out of gas money one month.

And, now, I do see that you have a "Total Spent" "Last Month" option. Is "last month" currently "June 2012" or is it June 18-July 17? Is there any way to have rollup stats for all vehicles (thinking specifically of "total spent last month," or are stats available on just a single vehicle's page?

[dmention7]

I was also just noticing that an "average per time period" stat seems to be missing from the available stats. More specifically, Cost, Gallons, and/or Spending per month/year. For a site specifically about tracking your fuel consumption, I don't think this would be a niche feature at all, to be honest.

[MMUK]

You get total spent, average price per mile, average price per (litre/gallon) from the 'cost analysis' bit, you can change that from month, 3 month, year, ... etc.

[dmention7]

I don't think there's any question about how to manually calculate these stats. The whole point of using Fuelly though is that it calculates and summarizes useful stats for you, so this is a suggestion for a stat that some people may find useful.