How much does it cost to drive? Driving cost calculators and tools

by

in

My girlfriend bought a new car. After 23 years, she offered her 1997 Honda Accord to a guy who is more mechanically inclined than we are. Kim updated to some 2016 Toyota RAV4, and it is loved by her.

Among her major considerations while browsing for a new automobile was the cost to drive it. In her ideal world, she’d have bought a automobile but it wasn’t within her budget. The RAV4 hybrid vehicle was a compromise. According to fueleconomy.gov, it gets an estimated 32 mph. (And actual users report 34.7 mph.)

Cost to drive a RAV4 hybrid

Kim’s quest for a fuel-efficient car motivated me to reevaluate internet tools and apps that help customers monitor their driving and gas customs. I’ve written about those in the past — and this can be an post from 2008! — but haven’t looked into them recently.

Following is a look at a number of apps, tools, and my favourite driving price programs.

Cost to Drive

Cost to Drive (stylized Cost2Drive) is an easy-to-use internet app that estimates how much you will pay to drive from point A to point B. Enter your starting point (address, city, country, or zip code) and your destination, and enter your automobile info, then click an option button.

Cost to Drive input

That is it. Cost to Drive calculates travel space, approximate time, and an estimate of your gasoline expenses. Here, for instance, is just how much it might cost to drive from Portland to visit Kim’s brother in Groveland, California.

Cost to Drive output

This tool is handy for road trips, naturally, but it’s also helpful for journeys. Earlier Kim and I put out on our R.V. trip round the U.S., I utilized Cost to Drive to estimate just how much we had spend on gas. (I was way away, but that’s not the fault of the instrument. I overestimated the gas market of our motorhome!)

It’s definitely easy enough to bookmark for later usage, although this is not the form of instrument that you’ll use daily.

Individuals in Europe — and possibly the remainder of the world — might want to play with the Via Michelin program, which provides route planning and driving price calculations.

Fuelly

While we only used the Cost to Drive once for our R.V. trip, we utilized the Fuelly program every single day. And I still use it now.

Fuelly is a smartphone program with which you may monitor your vehicle’s fuel market. Whenever you stop to pump gas, you enter mileage and pricing information into the program, and it calculates just how much it’s to drive.

Here, for instance, are two screencaps out of Fuelly showing how it tracked our motorhome in data.

Fuelly cost to drive screenshot  Fuelly cost to drive info

To get estimates of the charge to drive your automobile, you could log upkeep information in Fuelly. And, since you may see, that the version of the program is ad supported. Ad-free premium models are available, plus they include features.

While the Fuelly website does not provide a lot, there’s 1 characteristic I think GRS readers will find interesting. If you pick the navigate vehicles choice from the primary menu, you, you can find a record of driving information for all Fuelly users. Here, for instance, is the program has tracked for different people who own a 2004 Mini Cooper, for example me.

Fuelly individual model info

Fuelly cost to drive info

GasBuddy

A decade before, GasBuddy has been a gas price aggregation tool. It collected fuel price information from throughout the United States, and served it up so that visitors could find the best prices in their area.

Now, GasBuddy remains that website, but it is a whole lot more. As an example, you may look up a chart of gas price trends.

Gas price trends

Or it is possible to find maps of gas rates and maps.

Local gas prices

National gas prices

And since it is 2020 now, GasBuddy provides a smartphone program featuring all kinds of tools to help you compute (and reduce) your gasoline expenses.

FuelEconomy.gov

FuelEconomy.gov is the official U.S. government resource for fuel market information. Like most of U.S. government websites, it is a treasure trove of data and assets.

The site contains a automobile finder (and comparison) tool (also available for iOS and Android apparatus ), a vehicle power hunt , a gas savings calculator, and more. There is even a page researching extreme MPG!

The site also provides some widgets for site owners (like me!) To share with their audience. Here is

Locate a Car Tool

This tool allows you look up EPA fuel economy ratings back to the 1984 model year.


Gas Mileage Tips

This tool displays a fuel-saving methods and offers links to further suggestions on fueleconomy.gov.

Each year, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency produce a Fuel Economy Guide to help buyers select fuel-efficient vehicles. You may find guides from recent years from the Get Rich Slowly file vault, in case you are interested: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

If you are into alternative fuels and advanced technology vehicles, the U.S. Department of Energy includes a lot of different configurations to play with at their Alternative Fuels Data Center.

Sidenote: Many people want a Tesla or Prius in order to minimize their effect. This is as it might seem. The calculations are complex but the bottom line is that: In several situations, it makes more sense to store (or buy) an older fuel-efficient vehicle than to purchase a new one. That is because the production process itself is the source of roughly 25 percent of a car’s environmental impact.

The Bottom Line

It’s important to note that the top driving price calculator has limitations. The majority of these tools monitor fuel expenses, which are a part of the price.

Your true price of auto ownership involves the purchase price,insurance, upkeep, and more. According to the American Automobile Association, the typical new vehicle costs 62 cents a mile to drive. AAA amounts the average driver spends 9,282 each year.

To truly determine how much you are paying for about, you have to take matters into your own hands. Locate a laptop or pad of paper. Grab a pen or pencil. Whenever you make a trip though it’s just down the street — log the time and the space. Write down the amount you spend on upkeep and gasoline. Tally insurance premiums and your automobile.

Do this long enough and you will begin to have an image of your expenses that are driving that are private. At any point, you may divide the amount you’ve spent from the number.

What you do with this information is your decision!

Note: This is an post out of the GRS archives. The first version from 03 December 2008 was woefully out of date. Some comments that were older are retained.

Article Source and Credit getrichslowly.org https://www.getrichslowly.org/cost-to-drive-a-simple-web-tool-for-budgeting-road-trips/ Buy Tickets for every event – Sports, Concerts, Festivals and more buytickets.com

Discover more from Teslas Only

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading