Save Money on Gas

Gas prices keep going up, and our wallets keep getting thinner. There are many ways you can spend less money on gas and reduce your overall fuel consumption.

StepsDrive less
Walk, bike, ride the bus or join a carpool.
Reduce your commute by moving closer to work or working closer to home. This will save time as well as money. You may even be able to save even more money by becoming one-car family.
Combine trips. If you can do several short trips in one longer trip, you will save fuel and time. Make lists to avoid having to go back. Call ahead to avoid wasted trips.
Walk between stops. Once you get into town, some of your stops may be near each other. Park between some or all of them and walk.
Park in the first spot you find. If you wander all over the parking lot looking for that really close parking space, you'll use more gas. Don't be afraid to walk a ways if it comes to that - the walk will do you good!
Find good prices
Apply for a credit card which offers gas savings when you use the card for purchases. This works in much the same way that some credit card companies allow you to earn frequent flyer miles when you use their card for purchases.
Join a loyalty club. Some gas stations, department stores and grocery stores offer lower prices when you present their membership card, but keep your eyes open and verify that their prices are really lower than other stations in your neighborhood.
Check the web for deals. Several gasoline price watching websites sites let you find the best deals in your area.
Use the lowest recommended octane for your car. The lower octane gas is cheaper. Most modern cars are engineered to run most efficiently on lower octane fuel, and often recommend not using higher-octane fuel. Check your owner's manual to be sure, as not all car engines should use lowest octane gas.
Mix octane's. In some areas, the lower octane may be too low for your car and the mid-grade or higher octane may be more than what you need. To avoid overpaying and still get the correct octane for your car you can mix the gas. For example, if your car takes 87 octane and the pumps have 85 octane and 89 octane, then when filling your car, fill half the tank with 85 octane and the other half with 89 octane and this will give you an equivalent of 87 octane plus it will save you money because the lower octane gas costs less.
Determine whether gas with ethanol is right for your vehicle
If there is a high proportion of ethanol, the lower energy content of the fuel will almost always lower mileage. However, 10% or less ethanol actually helps gasoline burn more completely, resulting in better economy.
Fuel with ethanol may be more expensive than standard gas, but the minimal price difference is often offset by lower fuel taxes or subsidies.
Ethanol is much better for the environment, however, fuels with ethanol additives can corrode fuel lines in vehicles not designed with ethanol fuels in mind.
Turbocharged cars often get better mileage with ethanol blends. This is because the higher (over 100!) octane of ethanol permits more boost, which means more efficient fuel usage.

Buy smarter

Watch out for these guysWatch where you fill up. If you regularly buy along a given route (say, to work or school), notice when the gas station gets refilled by the large tanker trucks. If you know that a station has just been filled, steer clear of it for a day or two. When the tanker dumps its thousands of gallons of gas into the containers below the station, the sediment and old gas get stirred up. This sediment and bad gas gets sucked into the cars that fill up first, and can cause a decrease in fuel efficiency, as well as wear and corrosion of the spark plugs in your vehicle.
Don't fill until the last quarter tank. If you do this, it can extend your gas because you are hauling a lighter load as the tank nears empty. This also allows you to buy gas on low-cost days. However, in cold weather, you run an increased risk of condensation in the fuel tank. And you never know when you might be in an emergency and need some gasoline in your car!
Fill the tank full. If you need to fill up, fill up all the way. The more money you try to save by adding $10 today and then $20 tomorrow will be wasted since each time you will have to travel to the station and wait for a pump. Instead, do it all at once to save time and money.
Don't top off the tank. It is wasted money and bad for the environment since the extra gas evaporates in 10 minutes of driving.
Buy gas on Wednesday. Gas prices are statistically the cheapest on Wednesdays, but this is only statistically true over a large number of days. It won't be true every week.
Buy gas three days before a holiday. Gas prices almost always go up for holidays.
Take care of you car
Give your car a tune up. Properly maintaining your car will keep your car running as efficiently as possible.
Change the oil regularly. Use a synthetic oil instead of mineral oil. This will cause your engine to run better and give you better mileage.
Upgrade your air filter. More efficient brands of air filters cost a little more but will pay for themselves in most vehicles in fuel savings. Check it every oil change and change it regularly. Clogged air filters cause engines to work overtime which requires more fuel.
Use a fuel injector cleaner or complete fuel system treatment occasionally. Not only will you see a boost in gas mileage, but in your car's overall performance. Fouled injectors vaporize fuel poorly, affecting how completely the fuel is burned.
Upgrade your tires. Low resistance tires, such as Michelin Energy MX 4 Plus claim to increase gas mileage.
Check the air pressure in the tires every week. Buy an inexpensive air pump and an accurate tire gauge. Keep all tires inflated to the pressure as recommended for your car.
Clean out any unnecessary items in your car. If you have heavy objects in your car that you don't need, remove them. If your car is lighter, it will use less fuel to get where you're going.
Remove unneeded racks. If you have a bicycle or ski rack, remove it when you're not using it. It causes drag and lowers mileage.
Buy a different car
Buy a diesel. Diesel cars can often get better mileage than comparable hybrids. Getting a diesel car also allows for use of bio-diesel or even waste vegetable oil (WVO/SVO) fuel.
Buy a hybrid. Not only do hybrids give you immediate savings at the pump, the U.S. government and your local state offer tax breaks for people who use gas-saving cars. Federal deductions for using gas-saving cars can be as high as $2,000, but check before buying to see if they're still in effect.
Buy a smaller car. Generally speaking, smaller cars are lighter and get better mileage.
Buy a motorcycle or scooter instead of a car. They are cheaper and often get 70 MPG or better. Riding gear is available for most weather conditions. A good example is the Kawasaki EX250, which costs about $3,000, gets 60-70 MPG at highway speeds, and can go 0-60 MPH in under 6 seconds!
Drive smarter
Avoid idling. While idling, your car gets exactly 0 miles per gallon while starting the car uses the same amount as idling for 30 seconds. Park your car and go into the restaurant rather than idling in the drive-through. Idling with the air conditioning on also uses extra fuel.
Plan your trips in advance. This can prevent wasting fuel and wasting time. Plan to use alternative routes. Often back roads can prevent you from stopping at traffic lights and more importantly sitting in traffic jams. Try to schedule your trips and errands when traffic is lighter.
Use a global positioning system (GPS) to help you navigate and find the fastest and shortest distance to your destination. Avoiding hills and stops will increase your gas mileage.
Drive at a consistent speed. Avoid quick acceleration and hard braking. Use cruise control when you can.
Avoid stops. If approaching a red light, see if you can slow down enough to avoid having to actually stop (because you reach the light after it is green). Speeding up from 5 or 10 miles per hour will be easier on the gas than starting from full stop.
Anticipate the stop signs and lights. Look far ahead; get to know your usual routes. You can let up on the gas earlier. Coasting to a stop will save the gasoline you would otherwise use maintaining your speed longer. If it just gets you to the end of a line of cars at a red light or a stop sign a few seconds later, it won't add any time to your trip. Ditto for coasting to lose speed before a highway off-ramp: if it means you catch up with that truck halfway around the curve instead of at the beginning, you haven't lost any time.
Maintain a safe following distance. Don't stick to the bumper of the car directly in front of you. You will brake more and accelerate more to keep that unnecessary and dangerous narrow gap. This also gives you a lot more room to play with when you are timing traffic signals. Likewise, ignore tailgaters. They will tailgate you whether you go the speed limit, or 100MPH over the speed limit. Allow them pass when it's convenient.
Slow down. Air resistance goes up as the square of velocity. The power consumed to overcome that air resistance goes up as the cube of the velocity. Rolling resistance is the dominant force below about 40 mph. Above that, every mph costs you mileage. Go as slow as traffic and your schedule will allow. Drive under 60-65 since air grows exponentially denser, in the aerodynamic sense, the faster we drive. To be precise, the most efficient speed is your car's minimum speed in it's highest gear, since this provides the best "speed per RPM" ratio.
Take off slowly from a full stop. This is one adjustment that will have dramatic effects on your gas mileage; don't tear off from a stoplight or stop sign!
Stay well away from store fronts where you will spend significantly more time idling and waiting for pedestrians and other vehicles.
Use A/C only on the highway. At lower speeds, open the windows. This increased the drag and reduces fuel efficiency, but not as much as the AC at low speeds (35-40 mph).
Shift into neutral if you are not comfortable with downshifting. Standard transmission vehicles may save gas by shifting into neutral when going down hills steep enough to maintain speed (although engine braking is safer on steeper declines). Do not do this in a Hybrid car, they use this "regenerative engine braking" to generate electricity and charge the batteries. NOTE: This strategy will result in more wear and tear on your brakes. Neither of these strategies is recommended for normal automatic cars. Also, if you own a car with fuel injection, it is more efficient to keep the car in a high gear while going down hills. Simply take your foot off the gas.
Park in the shade. Gasoline actually evaporates right out of your tank, and it does so faster when you park directly in the sun - winter or summer. Parking in the shade also keeps it cooler inside, and you will need less A/C to cool off when you get back in. If there is no shade available, park so that your gas tank (the actual tank under the car, not the valve to fill it) is facing away from the direct sun.

Tips
If you are driving a stick shift with fuel injection, note that 50% throttle at 1200 rpm's uses less gas than 10% throttle at 2500 rpm's. As long as the engine is not lugging or pinging, shift as soon as possible and use plenty of throttle. The engine is more efficient when it does not have to pump air past a closed throttle plate.
You could use a GPS to calculate how far away you are from the next state and if you know fuel tax is less in the next state, just put enough fuel in to get you to the next state and fill up with gas where it is cheaper
Pencil gauges are not accurate for measuring tire pressure.
When choosing the optimum air pressure for you tires the figure imprinted on the tire wall is the most accurate. The figures printed on the sticker in the door frame, in the fuel filler flap, and in the manual are for comfort rather than fuel efficiency. Generally speaking, a slightly higher pressure will improve fuel mileage and handling, but too high will degrade traction and wear the tires rapidly.
Reusable air filters are not recommended, as they can destroy expensive Mass Airflow Sensors if they are over-oiled. A quality paper filter does a better job of filtering.
Most car modifications do not improve mileage. Extra wings add drag. Power improvements often hurt mileage. However, if your car is turbocharged, chiptuning may result in a mileage boost. The mileage boost will be canceled out if you drive more aggressively due to power improvements.
Many of these tips change slightly if your engine is turbocharged or diesel. For instance, diesel engines use almost no fuel while idling. Diesel trucks will often be left idling all night to provide heat or power for the trucker inside the cab, at the cost of relatively little fuel.
Wholesale unleaded is now a traded commodity. Watch the futures price as it will forecast price at the pump, which will be about equal to the wholesale price plus taxes plus about a nickel per gallon for the station.
Keep meticulous records of what you spend and how many miles you drive so you can quickly spot changes in vehicle performance. It will also help focus you on the goal of saving.
Every MPH faster yields you less advantage than the last one. Going 10MPH is a big difference over 5MPH, but there is very little difference between 55MPH and 60MPH, unless you are on a very long trip. Many people mindlessly speed wherever they go, and gain absolutely nothing but a heftier fuel bill. Assuming everything goes perfectly (and when does it?) going 5MPH, even 15MPH faster on a highway for a short trip will yield nothing but aggravation as you keep catching up to slower traffic.
Slow down a little below the speed limit, and the highway can seem like it is wide open.
Often the right-most lanes keep moving more than the left-most in areas prone to traffic-jams. Vehicles continue to exit, which keeps leaving 'gaps' to fill in.
A manual transmission saves an average $1000 on the cost of a new vehicle, and eliminates routine transmission maintenance that an automatic transmission requires (and most people never do this maintenance once the warranty is up - so a used car with an automatic is a risky purchase). In most cases, an automatic transmission gets significantly worse mileage overall than a manual transmission.
Neutral is also a 'gear' on a manual transmission, which you use constantly anyway. Learn how to coast between traffic lights, applying power only as needed to keep the car rolling (more or less) with traffic. Learn to judge terrain and use neutral to its full potential to keep the car moving 'for free', and save more gas over time.
'Regenerative braking' recovers far less energy than acceleration requires to replace the momentum it loses. To 'coast' further without regenerative braking excessively slowing your automatic transmission equipped hybrid, putting just the right pressure on the accelerator can prevent the 'regen' drag without adding engine power (i.e. if done right the engine won't start AND the regenerative braking won't kick in). With manual transmission hybrids, just leave it in neutral to defeat 'regen' and coast further.
If you are always stuck in rush hour traffic after work anyway, try to find something to do near your work until the traffic dies down, rather than try to fight through it.
If you want more information about the mileage NOW, and your car doesn't have a real-time fuel economy distraction, there are various OBDII reader devices (like the 'ScanGauge' or 'Equus 3130') that can be plugged into cars with an OBDII port, and provide 'live' real-time information about fuel consumption rate (gallons per hour), engine RPM, speed, whatever you want that's tracked by the engine computer. Some of them also allow the data to be recorded and downloaded to a computer with a serial or USB cable. Some are little more than a serial/USB cable that plugs into a portable computer with software to give you all manner of 'instruments'.
The more convenient it is to check your tire pressure, the more often you'll do it. If you are dedicated enough to do it with a manual hand/foot pump, fine.
You can spend a little extra on a pretty good self-contained electric one with a jump start and flashlight on it, too, and then consider it a 'safety' purchase.
If you have a garage, an air compressor has many uses besides tires.
If you have a larger vehicle (with higher pressure truck tires), you will need a 'real' air compressor; the little electric ones made for cars will fail right away, and you'll wear yourself out trying to pump it yourself.

Warnings
Be careful of credit card interest rates which may negate your gasoline savings. Also verify that the stations you use don't charge higher prices to credit card customers
Stopping and starting the engine frequently will cause extra wear. Don't stop the engine if you are going to idle for less than a minute.
In very cold environments, it is recommended to allow the vehicle to idle and warm up, rather than just start it and take off. You might save gas, but your engine oil won't do its job until it's fully liquid, so you'll spend more money on overhauls.
Drafting is dangerous. All the fuel savings in the world will not matter a bit if you get wrecked while 'trying to save gas'. Safe driving habits will save a lot more money than risky driving, and maybe even save lives. Slow down. Be careful.
Nearly all gas-saving devices do not work, and some even decrease fuel mileage. Intake twisters, gas pills and fuel line magnets do not help mileage. Even if the mileage improvement claims were true, they often cost enough to negate any potential savings.
'Chipping' the car (changing/flashing the ROM in its 'brain') is usually meant to improve power, but often fuel savings are claimed as well. Be paranoid about it. It usually can achieve the power statistics it claims, but possibly at the cost of dreadfully expensive engine and drive-train wear and damage. The wrong chip (or a buggy version of a chip) can result in a dead car that's expensive enough to repair that it's 'totaled'. Needless to say, 'chipping' a car definitely voids the warranty.
Be very careful when shifting into neutral when going down hills. You may find yourself going a lot faster than you thought you would. This is actually illegal in some jurisdictions.
Be sure to keep to right lanes if you're not going to keep up with speeding traffic, and allow other traffic to pass.
If you drive slowly enough on a long enough trip to add hours, be sure to take extra breaks.
When you sign up for the 'loyalty' cards at your nearby store, realize that they do that to track your spending for their own benefit. That is not to say that you don't get a lot out of it. The savings can be substantial.