It’s a question that everyone should know the answer to, but many people do not. I didn’t even know my own, until today when I calculated it out.
How to Find Your Official Gas Mileage
If you want the quickly know your approximate mpg, the good ol’ U.S. government has set up this website where you can look up your car’s gas mileage or compare miles per gallon for different cars. And just recently, the EPA has changed how it calculates MPG to more accurately depict real world driving conditions.
According to their site, my car gets 24 miles per gallon (highway and city gas mileage combined). Based on an average gas cost of $3.01 per gallon and average annual driving of 15,000 miles, that works out to a whopping $1883 each year just spent on gas! That’s not even counting car repair costs, rotating tires, or oil cost.
How to Find Out Your Own MPG
To find out your car’s actual gas mileage, you just need to do some simple mathematics.
- Fill up your car with gas, and reset your odometer to zero.
- Drive like normal.
- Next time you need gas, pull up to the gas station and write down how many miles you’ve driven since you last filled up.
- Fill up your car, and write down how many gallons o’ gasoline it took.
- To find your car’s MPG, divide your miles driven by gallons of gas. Voila!
Using this method, I divided my miles driven by gallons of gas (426.8 / 14.454) to get my actual gas mileage ( 29.5 mpg! ). Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. How many miles per gallon does YOUR car get?
November 14th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I gave up driving my 1998 Dodge Truck that at its very best only got 13 MPG.
I ride two BMW Motorcycles:
A 2002 K1200LT with 37 MPG
A 2006 R1200GS with 42 Plus MPG
I ride daily, rain or shine and use the bikes as my primary transportation.
The Dodge truck has been parked since 2002 with only 120 miles on it since then.
-Dave Dragon
Ride it like you stole it
November 14th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
That is awesome. Helping the environment and helping your wallet at the same time, good job.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:47 am
7.8 MPG. I tried to get a bigger engine, but they did not offer it.
I drive hard at the stop lights, and brake hard to. This is about the lowest I can get on my Crew Cab Dually Pickup (long bed) with the 8.1L engine.
Yes, I don’t care about gas prices, and no one who buys a $50k truck should.
Also, its a free market.
November 19th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Didn’t you (John Galt) already invent an engine that doesn’t need gas?
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Dirty? Perhaps. I drive a 96 Geo Metro 3cyl. It gets 42/44mpg normal driving depending if AC is on or 47 if hypermiling.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I wanted to know how much gas I will need to pump from my house to my niece house. So I can figure out the amount of money on gas. I have a Mazda Tribute /2007 we live in Pasco county and my niece in Pensacola . I hope somebody can help me out .
Thank You so much
Glorissa
June 9th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I drive a jeep 92 and I get like 20 miles to the gallon. gas is now $4.25 at the gas station by home and $4.14 every where else. it sucks. How I save on gas is by not driving as much, and noting running the extra trips.
Amy 6-9-08
June 11th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Dang, 20 miles to the gallon. You might be able to increase that mileage by following some of these gas saving tips.
Good job not driving as much, you can save some money fast by watching how much you drive.
July 11th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Before you buy a car, go to: http://simplestuff.info/mpg
God, I looked at some cars I was considering and they are ridiculous. People should be required to run laps around the car dealership before buying a car. The worse mileage the car gets, the more laps you need to run.
I would guess that would change things a lot.
July 11th, 2008 at 9:50 am
True, it would be funny to watch people huffing and puffing as they ran around the lot. But people that buy inefficient cars are already paying the price each time they fill up.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Hi,
What do you mean by ‘reset your odometer to zero’? How do you do it? Thanks!
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:26 am
ay girl to reset dat odometer you hafto make sure you headlight fluid is full (so you dont get shocked) and pump your breaks 6 times when you start. then when it starts hold down the accelerator with the car in park (this will put the car into overdrive which will reset the odometer)