Yesterday I filled the gas tank of my Toyota Camry and it came to just under $60. To be fair, it could have been a lot worse -- compared to many parts of the country, where I live gasoline is still relatively cheap. But in this world of rising fuel costs, tracking your gas consumption is a necessity if you want get any relief from the pain at the pump. FuelFrog, a new web app that launched last week from Durham, NC-based Second Pixel, aims to make tracking your gas mileage and consumption easier and more edifying.
FuelFrog is exceedingly simple, and immensely useful. After each fill up, users enter their miles traveled since the last fill, the price paid, and the amount of gasoline in gallons. Over time, FuelFrog will track and graph your fuel consumption data so you can do things like identify trends in gas prices in your area, see how fuel efficient your car is (is it time to put air in the tires, perhaps?), how much you're driving, and how much you're spending.
Information can be entered via the web, or via Twitter, which powers the site's mobile compontent. Twitter integration means that you can log your fuel data immediately after filling up. (It could also suggest a future monetization model for Twitter, in which the site sells API access to companies looking for an easy way to support mobile access to their web applications.)
Eventually, FuelFrog plans to give users access to aggregate data from other users, so you can compare your vehicle's fuel consumption against another make and model, for example, or your city's average gas prices to those in another area.
"We're paying more attention to our impact on the environment today than we ever have before and FuelFrog is making it easier to track fuel consumption and the impact, not only on our wallets, but on the environment," said Second Pixel co-founder David Rasch in a press release.
FuelFrog joins a growing list of apps that are attempting to leverage the distributed nature of Twitter to gather useful data. Commuter Feed (our coverage), which uses Twitter to map traffic congestion, is another.
Comments
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And if they integrated it with Microsoft Auto platform, this could be done automatically...Then it would actually be convenient.
Posted by: Don Jones | May 12, 2008 8:35 AM
Thanks so much for linking this. I signed up and will definitely use it.
Posted by: anna martino | May 12, 2008 8:38 AM
I'm used to count in kilometers and liters,
instead of miles and gallons.
So when it's possible in the future,
I really like to be able to change to euro's, kilometer and liters.
And for those with 2 cars: you can sign up multiple times,
but support for several cars would be nice!
But, this being just a starter, I like their service!
Posted by: Joel de Bruijn | May 12, 2008 9:11 AM
Maybe people could/should also try out http://www.mymilemarker.com
They have a special page for iPhone/iPod touch users and also a mobile version of the site. Also uses twitter to upload information.
Posted by: Jamie Rytlewski | May 12, 2008 9:35 AM
Your car does a shocking miles per gallon. If you lived here in Britain, you'd be bankrupt by now. $60? Try £70. Stop moaning!
Posted by: Andy | May 12, 2008 1:51 PM
The screen shots aren't actually of my car (which gets about 26 mpg on average in the city).
But yes, it could be much worse... gasoline is outrageous across the board, and compared to many Western countries, us Americans have it well (though I've heard before that car prices are lower to begin with in the UK -- so it evens out a bit). Anyway, I'm all for cheaper gas (or other alternative fuels) on both sides of the pond. ;)
Posted by: Josh Catone
|
May 12, 2008 2:14 PM
Bear in mind his Camry uses American gallons (in UK terms he gets around 28mpg), and runs on the really low octane US fuel, that isn't really that bad.
That said, it likely has a huge engine and automatic gearbox that won't be helping!
Posted by: James Fry | May 12, 2008 2:56 PM
Josh, if you think car prices are lower in the UK you are somewhat mistaken. For many cars it is actually cheaper to buy them in the US (even imports into the US) and to export them to the UK and convert them to right hand drive...
Everytime I visit the US (yeah, I know, that's not helping the environment either) I'm absolutely stunned at how cheap cars are, especially for what I consider large engined cars (2.4, 3.0L). And I'm stunned that I can get a 3.6L V8 hire car! :-)
Posted by: James Fry | May 12, 2008 2:59 PM
Would it be too much of a chore to have the option of converting these stats to km and liters? North of your border has changed and I would like to use this site as it may save me some money or open my eyes. I know I can convert it manually but with the difference in gallon size etc, it's a drag.
Posted by: styxxman | May 13, 2008 1:14 PM
Even better is www.fueleconomy.gov It even tells you the average for your make model and year.
Posted by: lvleph | May 13, 2008 1:37 PM
Put me down in the "add km/ltrs" column. I definitely want to track my Maruti Suzuki Swift over here in Hyderabad.
Posted by: Dempsey | May 13, 2008 10:29 PM
For those who wants km/litre/euro and multiple cars per account support, check out www.trackyourgasmileage.com. It's got that, and more.
No twitter support thought :/ I guess you can't have it all.
Posted by: Frode | May 15, 2008 2:09 PM