Being fiscally responsible and filling up at the most competitively-priced gas station is a no-brainer, but when it comes to truly saving money on fuel, it starts the moment the key hits the ignition. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, aggressive driving like speeding, rapid acceleration and braking is the quickest way to waste gas and can lower gas mileage by as much as 40 percent.
That’s why we are excited to introduce the new Trips feature, pinpointing exactly where and when during a “trip” we have been guilty of fuel-inefficient driving.
With the new Trips feature, drivers get an assessment of their trips based on a 3-tier rating system — great, not bad, or not great. The summaries include the date, time, distance and maps out when and where during the trip a poor driving habit occurred whether it be speeding, hard braking or acceleration.
“Our goal is to help people make smart decisions when they’re on the road, from providing real-time gas prices to which stations have the cleanest restrooms,” said Levi Hamilton, head of product, consumer experience, at GasBuddy. “The new Trips feature provides motorists with transparency on how they’re driving and, in turn, impacting their wallets. In our initial testing, we found that Trips is already improving our users driving habits and helping them save more money.”
During beta testing, we analyzed more than 140,000 individual trips and found that a majority of trips (78 percent) fell into the “not bad” and “not great” buckets, meaning there are instances of fuel-guzzling habits with hard braking being the #1 culprit.
“The manner in which a car is driven will impact its fuel economy tremendously and, unfortunately, most drivers don’t even realize the way they are driving is causing them to make more visits to the pump,” said Patrick DeHaan, head petroleum analyst for GasBuddy. “Gas prices fluctuate constantly — that is something we can’t control. But what you can control is making appropriate changes that can save you between 13 cents and 89 cents a gallon.”
To test it out for yourself, download the latest version of the free GasBuddy app for iOS and Android at www.gasbuddy.com/app.