New vehicle with zero miles?
 

I want to use the "odometer" method.

I bought my new motorcycle with 0 miles on it and I hauled it home on a trailer. On the way home I stopped by a gas station and filled up the tank.

For the first entry on Fuelly, I want to put in the tank capacity (3.7 gallons) and the cost of the fuel per gallon and zero miles.

I can do everything but the zero miles part. So if I put one mile in there the "tracked" odometer on my account will be off by one mile.

A simple solution would be to allow the first fillup to allow zero miles.

Here is what I would like to see:

Or am I doing it wrong?

Thanks!

Here is a picture of the problem I have. It should tell me that I am tracking 263 miles but it says 262 instead. That means my OCD kicks in, plus some of the MPG calculations will be slightly off. (Not sure which ones!)

:confused:

Here is the data I have entered so far, with the 1 mile offset:

I would just ignore the first fillup and assume that the motorcycle came with a full tank of fuel.

If I do that it "ignores" the first fillup and only tracks from the second fillup.

:confused:

Fuelly is just going to ignore the first fill up odometer anyway. It gave you a 0mpg for the one mile entry. It needs a second reading entered to calculate distance. The first fill is to get the starting baseline at an odometer reading with a full tank of gas.

You are running afoul of Fuelly trying to prevent erroraneous entries. It is extremely rare for a vehicle to have 0 miles on the odometer by the time the first owner gets it and registers it here. Friend of a friend has a Grand National SS he bought new and trailered home. Still has the plastic on the seats, I've been told. Between all the moving onto and off of transports, the car still had about 4 miles on the odometer.

So you have three choices.
1. Just leave the first entry with an initial odometer reading of 1 mile. This means your first calculated fill(the second entry) is off by about 0.8mpg, but it will have less and less impact on the lifetime average overtime.
2. If you don't want that error in your data, do as Jay says and just start with the your second fill for the Fuelly profile.
3. Ask Robert or another administrator to make your 1 mile enrty a 0. A suggestion that motorcycles be allowed to have a 0 mile initial odometer reading wouldn't be a bad one.

I ended up using the "tripmeter" method and leaving off the first fillup.

I didn't want to use the tripmeter method but I will adapt.

Now all of my data is correct which was my main goal.

Gabrielle (Yamaha YZF-R3) | Fuelly

The odometer reading will not be off if you put an initial fillup with one mile on it and zero or .001 gallons filled. Odometer logging does not add up the miles from each fillup, it just takes the most recent odometer reading.

This should probably be in the FAQ if it's not already.

I prefer the trip meter method anyway, if you skip a few fill ups it makes no difference. If you skip just one fuel up using the odometer reading, then you have to check the "missed fuel up" box and then wait another two fuel ups until your data can be calculated accurately again.

Why doesn't Fuelly simply allow for adding in miles since last fillup instead of Odometer reading? I never track the odometer, i always reset my trip meter at the pump.

Then i simply look at how much distance I've traveled and divide it by the amount I pumped in back to full to get my MPG.

It does... it offers both options. You just have to pick one

I brought this particular request up at our weekly meeting today. We'll be looking into a resolution in the future to make it easier for new vehicles to be added with less confusion. We'll also look into making it more straight forward for new members to catch on/understand how best to add/track their vehicle.

It'll likely be as simple as adding an option as "Starting Odometer" of the vehicle as soon as you add the vehicle to your garage and it'll be placed prior to your first fill-up.
Fuelly does do just that. We refer to it as Trip Mile tracking-
FAQ: What's the difference between tracking with Odometer vs. Trip Miles?

Is there an email list or something that lets users know when new functionality is added to the system?

Not at the moment. We've tossed around an idea of a Newsletter. We've used a mailing system in the past for our mobile users to let them know what's to come in regards to integration with Fuelly.com, so it's not out of the question.

We'll revisit that idea in the future. In the meantime, whenever we make any significant changes, it's usually in response to a post/thread here, and/or we'll start a new thread to let everyone know.

I agree with the OP. With new vehicles you should be allowed to enter 0 miles for the first fill up (like the new cars I have bought that come full after the dealer filled them prior to delivery). Just had this issue with a new Sonata I bought for my wife.

Fillup# 1
Gallons: ?
Miles Driven: 0
MPG: N/A

Fillup# 2
Gallons: 10
Miles Driven: 200
MPG: 20


What value is Fillup #1 actually offering you?

Exactly Robert, I've tried to explain that a "fuel up" is when you've already added fuel, driven a certain distance, then refuelled. That's a fuel up, not simply adding fuel.