241 On the List
 

I'm number 241 on the fuel list and 188 in the gasoline section. I'm kicking you know what. Not really, but I think we should have more categories.

A pickup truck/SUV category for sure...

I have a friend who cant get above 17 in his Liberty, with a scangauge. but he has to have AC, and his trip to work is only 5 miles.

Yea, multiple categories would be great, vans, suvs and truck could all be separate. Maybe just class them by vehicle weight.

Short trips are a killer, my daily trip is 12miles and it takes about 9 miles for my FE to get up to normal. This is why I'm working on replacing my Fan with an electric system. All I need is my fan controller to come in... Its taking forever, almost three weeks now.:mad:

i want a truck/suv section alos so i could not feel as bad and enter the truck into the gaslogs. i dont drive it alot its usally my mom so it wont look as bad if we had a section just for it.

popimp -

I think this would be a good garage mod. If you could choose the category of your vehicle, aka car, truck, SUV, motorcycle, etc..., then Matt could perform lots of "top ten" lists based on the categories. There could also be a drivetrain category, aka gas, diesel, bio-diesel, hybrid, electric, hamster, etc ...

Technically, Matt could infer the category of car by model and make, but that would be a PITA to program.

Right now I think there could be "mpg by curb weight" categories, which I think might put more comparable cars side by side.

CarloSW2

Roger that! I don't count my tanks that I tow my boat with, just not fair. :D

Hockey4mnhs -

As far as I'm concerned, if you can get over EPA, then you are a "GasSaver".

Can someone make this a request in the "Forum Suggestions and User Assistance" forum?

CarloSW2

I agree on that. Just because I didn't drive as well as I could doesn't mean I would exclude a listing.

And making categories by weight just makes people down on the list have a higher number. In some sports they call that the "Chumpian" - The winner of the losers' bracket.

It should be a personal competition. I'm #1 on my list :)

MT / AT as well!?

Well, even if there were an accord category, I would still not be #1...

I disagree. Its a baseline with a typical vehicle in normal use as described by the EPA estimates which is valuable for directly comparing similar vehicles.

Towing is a different world and is not a very good indicator of anything since towing 1200lbs is not like towing 5000lbs. Just not apples to apples. I could see plotting under a separate color on the chart as such, towing. But even that is of little value.

im on your side with this one those are extreme conditions not just regular everyday things.

It's totaly up to the person keeping the log, but I personaly log everything, even the tank where I loaned my car out and it spent 3 hours driving around with a flat bed dual axle trailer, sure that gave my overall average a dip, but I made a note of that in the online gaslog in the "notes" section.
Not loging a tank because you towed something, is like me not loging a tank because I gave someone a ride, or hauled stuff.

theclencher -

Gotta Log 'em all!

Attachment 805

If the tank is low, just describe the conditions in the gaslog. It's important to know the performance of the vehicle under *all* driving conditions. If you tow your boat in one gaslog entry, you have a baseline to beat the next time your towing that boat.

CarloSW2

slurp812 -

Oh yeah, the idea would be to have lots of Garage options that could become sort criteria for generating lots of performance comparisons. Trying to compare apples to apples, so to speak.

CarloSW2

I'd prefer a rating of achieved mpg vs. EPA. Either the vehicle's lifetime average or a rolling average of the last x months (6 mo. would give you a span of seasons/temperatures).

That way you're in competition with yourself and the EPA's estimate. Someone getting 30 mpg in a car rated at 20 combined would be even in the standings wth someone getting 75 in a car rated at 50 (both getting 1.5X EPA).

I'd suggest using the "new" EPA-combined numbers for all cars. Those are the #s the EPA site is showing now and it's quite possible the old #s will disappear completely if they haven't already. That way we can standardize for just about every vehicle and not have the support system disappear on us.

IMHO setting up categories for vehicle types leads to a whole bunch of categories pretty quickly. And then what? Some pickups get much better FE than others right "out of the box", same goes for SUVs or any other type vehicle.

First post in this thread says "I'm number 241 on the fuel list and 188 in the gasoline section."

I'm missing something here - where is the list?
Makes me feel stupid that I can't find it.

Garage>Top Ten List>Fuel Economy - View All Vehicles

We have that too.
Garage>Top Ten List>Percent Above EPA Rating - View All Vehicles

Rick

Is everyone gonna want a new category until they are in the top 10?

SUV with < 10 miles per day + a/c users + state name starts with "A" / GM Drivers TOP 10 WOOOT!

Its gonna get messy. Does that crossover count as a minivan, jeep or car?

Just do your best. Sometimes I look at that list, and I see a Toyota Yaris driver ahead of me, and I wanna beat him. I don't care that his car is in a different class. Also wanna be the highest mpg Acura on the forum, but there's plenty ways to go for that to happen.

Thanks.
Makes me wonder, maybe there's a page I didn't find yet where you sign up to get a million dollar check sent to yourself. :D

Thanks for asking, now I found it as well. :o

I love categories. However, I think this is definitely a case where we could get too many, too soon. The issue of vehicle weight has come up several times though, and this was my first thought as well (given that most of the closest competitors in my class are a 1000+ lbs. lighter than me). I'm not sure this should be something that necessarily gets one into the top ten(s), but I am very curious about MPG/weight ratio.

For example, it often occurs to me when I see a semi rig on the highway, hauling say, half a dozen bloated Pickups/SUVs, that there is a tremendous disparity in their FE vs. weight. That is, the SUVs are getting say, 15 MPG and weigh 3,600 lbs (i.e. Jeep Liberty) while the semi truck, trailer, and load totals out at around 70,000+ lbs. and is still getting... 6 MPG (or so). That's nearly twenty times the weight, but only two and a half times the fuel... so I'm thinkin' this can be expressed in some nifty figures and would make for an interesting tool for comparison.

Just did some looking around to see what that might entail, and came across this thread, in which we find the following, which is what I was getting at:

Curb weight w/ 200 pound driver:

Prius II: 3,090 pounds
Prius I: 2,965 pounds
HCH Manual: 2,884 pounds
Insight Manual: 2,080 pounds

Average MPG per the Real Mileage Database (this morning):

Prius II: 48.3 mpg
Prius I: 48.3 mpg
HCH Manual: 46.9 mpg
Insight Manual: 66.9 mpg

Average mpg/pound:

Honda Insight: .0322 mpg/pound
Prius I: .0163 mpg/pound
HCH: .0163 mpg/pound
Prius II: .0156 mpg/pound

bbgobie -

I'm don't see anything wrong with looking at data from different directions. I guess it's just a baseball stats thing to me :o . From a personal POV, I don't mind if I'm never in the top ten of anything, but I can see why other people would want to see their car in comparison to similar cars. A Chevy Malibu will never be able to "compete" with a Geo Metro in terms of pure MPG.

Just make a crossover category. And all categories should have "other" category. In fact, if Matt implemented it, everyone would start in the "other" category for all options by default. That way he wouldn't have to troll through all the Garage entries and make guesses (Matt, "other" would have value "0").

Personally, I think of a crossover as a car, but 2wd/4wd/awd can be another category.

CarloSW2

All I know is when you get up there and start mucking about in the top 25 or 30. You better have a tin can or your going to get your teeth kicked in. :)

I'm very happy to be able to compare in terms of &#37; over/under EPA. I think that's as level a playing field as you can get without going insane. They've already done the work in figuring out a car/truck's likely FE.

Oh please lets not have "other".

I'm familiar with another FE/mpg forum which has an "other" category. There is always someone with a regular gasoline vehicle who does not pay attention when setting it up - and it ends up tagged as "other". To make matters worse, the only person who can change the car's category is the administrator. So there it stays, in a category all by itself.

The more we break it down into smaller and smaller types, the fewer cars/trucks there will be in each type. So maybe there will be a grouping for SUVs between 3500-4000 lb, split into stick and auto tranny? With one SUV in each category? How about we subdivide that into c/d below 3.5 and above 3.5? With and without a boat strapped on the roof?

Exactly, that is what you all should be shooting for, % over EPA. If you want to be in the top 10 buy a metro and go for it.

I still want an 'Other' category, I don't think a top 10 would matter in it but for random stuff like tractors and ATVs. Stuff that could still get better mileage if someone actually cared and could be something interesting to add to the site. I don't think any street legal vehicle should be in the Other category though.

Btw my 2006 Yamaha Wolverine 450 ATV gets 31mpg running around the mountains. My Max II 6x6 gets 8mpg on land :) No category to list them in on this site or I probably would add them to my gaslog.

Instead of a large variety of categories I think just keep the main ones and add more information about each vehicle that can be searchable. That way the normal lists stay as they are but if you are curious about a very narrow range of vehicles you can do a search and get your results. Doing something basic like comparing all 90-94 auto metros to 90-94 5psd metros does not need separate categories but a having a way to find just those cars in a search would be great.