Its just so funny how gas prices keep going up yet people still buy those darn SUVs. I mean lets get this right its not the size of your tank that makes you spend more on gas. Its your efficiency usually measured in miles driven per gallon of gas.
Your MPG can be fairly accurately measured by doing these steps:
1. Choose a gas station with a consistently low price per gallon. Also better gas will get better results over time all around. Shell, Chevron and 76 are pretty good quality.
2. Pull up to a pump on level ground.
3. Assuming your speedometer and odometer works Press the trip counter reset button. (usually a long stem like button by the trip meeter/counter and odometer) it should reset it to all 00000s.
4. Fill your gas tank all the way up until the pump shuts off. This will use the top of the tank to see how much gas you use.
5. Go about your driving as you normally would. Any special driving like off road or steep hills will effect the results so keep this in mind. We usually want to get an average picture of what you spend on gas so if you do anything unusual you might want to try this a few times. Drive until its almost empty but don’t run out of gas.
6. Try and go to the same gas station and the same pump as you used to fill up.
7. Fill your gas tank all the way up until it shuts off but make sure its full as before. Make sure you get a receipt from the pump showing how much gas you got.
8. Now write down the number of miles you drove on that tank of gas from the trip meter like say 278.5 miles.
9. Ok, now use a calculator or the one on your cell phone to divide the miles driven by the number of gallons used like for instance 278.5 รท 20 = 13.925 So the miles per gallon or MPG is 13.925, and thats not very good lol.
Many small cars get 25mph or higher. I used to spend $275 a month on gas in a 17mpg van. So if you drive around alot but do not need a big car, van, or truck make sure you realize you can easily save $100 a month by getting something else. Smaller 4cyl engines help and so does getting a tuneup or sometimes using fuel system cleaners. Try to tune your driving technique also like avoid speeding up just before a stop light. Also slower acceleration helps somewhat. And avoid routes with lots of stops.