Moody Clouds > How to save money on Gas

1. Drive less
   1. Walk, bike, ride the bus or join a carpool.
   2. 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.
   3. 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.
   4. 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.
   5. 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!
2. Find good prices
   1. 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.
   2. 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.
   3. Check the web for deals. With the ever increasing gas prices, use the Internet to find the cheapest gas near you. Some of these sites even offer text messaging capabilities, where they will send you the a text message with the location of the cheapest gas in your area. Here are 3 sites that enable you to search for lower price in your town: MapQuest, GasBuddy.com and GasPriceWatch.com.
   4. 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.
   5. Mix octanes. 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.

   6. 

      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.
3. Buy smarter

   1. 

      Watch out for these guys

      Watch 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.

   2. 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!
   3. 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.
   4. 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.
   5. 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.
   6. Buy gas three days before a holiday. Gas prices almost always go up for holidays.
4. Take care of you car

   1. 

      Give your car a tune up. Properly maintaining your car will keep your car running as efficiently as possible.

      1. 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.
      2. 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.
      3. 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.
   2. Upgrade your tires. Low resistance tires, such as Michelin Energy MX 4 Plus claim to increase gas mileage.
   3. 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.
   4. 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.
   5. 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.
5. Buy a different car
   1. 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.

   2. 

      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.

   3. Buy a smaller car. Generally speaking, smaller cars are lighter and get better mileage.
   4. 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!
6. Drive smarter
   1. 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.
   2. 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.
   3. 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.
   4. Drive at a consistent speed. Avoid quick acceleration and hard braking. Use cruise control when you can.
   5. 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.
   6. 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.
   7. 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.
   8. 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.
   9. 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!
   10. Stay well away from store fronts where you will spend significantly more time idling and waiting for pedestrians and other vehicles.
   11. 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).
   12. 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.
   13. 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.

Sources: Wikihow.com