by Tim Joseph
A lot of saving money at the gas pump is knowing what factors affect your fuel economy. There may be things costing you money that you don't know about and that's why educating yourself is so important. Today I came across an interesting website (http://www.willyoujoinus.com) created by the good folks at Chevron. I don't believe we have any Chevron gas stations here in the Detroit area but this website can help us none the less. If you click on the MPG Optimizer you can move these little sliding icons around to see what is impacting your fuel economy.
The website asks you to set the icons based on a series of seven questions. By moving the icons I found that I save 15 miles per gallon. The questions are:
- What kind of car do you drive?
- Are you an aggressive driver in the city, accelerating and braking suddenly?
- How fast do you drive when you're on the highway?
- Do you use the manufacturer's recommended grade of motor oil?
- How much extra weight do you have in your backseat and trunk?
- Do you get your car's engine tuned up regularly?
- How well-inflated are your tires?
Most people are not sure how often they need to tune their car up. Usually it's 60,000 - 100,000 miles so most people would answer "Always" to question 6. By changing a few little things, you could save big just by knowing that you need to change.
