Since I bought my Honda Civic last January (2007), I’ve been recording my odometer, gallons filled, and gas price every time I filled up. My parents got me in the habit of recording these numbers a long time ago, and even though I resisted keeping track of this at first, it actually provides an interesting history to look back onto. Then Chris Messina recently pointed me to mymilemarker.com where you can keep track of these things in a nice little website. (See his screenshots here and here). So I decided to copy all my records into the site and see if anything interesting turned up.
I’ve driven 8125 miles since January 2007 with an (all-time) average of 31.6 MPG. I had been manually calculating the MPG after each refueling, so this seems reasonable, although there is a lot of variability depending on whether I drive on the freeway or city streets. My all-time best MPG was 40.41 on Dec 14, 2007; and all-time worst was 23.38 on Sept 19, 2007.
My car had been driven 6 miles when I purchased it. Since then, the mileage has been increasing somewhat steadily. However, the graph feels a little deceptive because I when I’m in San Diego, I almost never drive. The bulk of my miles has come from driving from the Bay Area to San Diego 4-5 times, plus a few day trips here and there. But based on my driving habits, mymilemarker.com projects my mileage and gas costs a year from now (which is interesting, because when I only had a few entries in there, it estimated that my costs would be $17,000). My estimates after all my data were entered were 13,876 miles in the next year and $642.37 in gas costs. Of course, if gas prices continue to increase, my gas costs may be much higher…but may not drive as much. We’ll see!
Exactly one year ago on June 15, 2007, I spent $3.20 per gallon for gas (and had only 1359 miles). The cheapest gas I bought was $2.52 (very first fueling ever), and the most expensive was $4.89 (just a few days ago in San Diego, right before driving to San Francisco). Maybe these numbers are just numbers, but in the context of a vehicle that I own and take care of and in light of the increasing gas prices, it’s pretty neat to be able to track these things and reflect on them later. Plus, mymilemarker.com has a very neat, simple interface—especially their iPhone site (which makes a lot of sense, since you’ll likely be creating new entries when you’re at the gas station refueling).
Bottom line: I really like mymilemarker.com for keeping a database of numbers I was already taking note of, but also for plotting and calculating global statistics. Check it out!
