Calculating the cost of gasoline in our travels

September 14, 2008 -- Filed under Saving money by Normand Miron

Quite a simple little tool can be found on roadtripamerica.com. It enables you to calculate how much your next escapade will cost you in gasoline. Of course, this tool does not take into account the fact that fuel consumption may vary according to whether you’re driving in the city or on the highway, but there’s nothing stopping you from coming up with an average that accounts for the percentage in the city versus the trajectory of your next road trip. Or from calculating the two costs and telling yourself that your fuel consumption will be somewhere in between…Or that either way it will be expensive

Note that in its calculations, the tool does not take into account the state of your vehicle, how well you maintain it, or your style of driving. As we will soon see together, these parameters have a strong impact on our real consumption of gasoline. And unfortunately, neither does it predict the price of gasoline two months from now (nor the winning combination of the 6/49…).

On the other hand, it would be an excellent idea to develop a tool that enables you to find out, in dollars AND in CO2, the combined significance of all those good little driving habits that we don’t always think about. Who knows, perhaps it already exists? If you find it, please let us know. We want to talk about it.

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