Online MPG calculator

With rising petrol prices we note that lots of our visitors like to keep track of their fuel costs and fuel economy.

This is why we originally supplied our mpg calculator and it is proving to be more popular than ever before.

Adjustments and refinements to our mpg calculator have seen many new features added. In addition to tracking your last 4 fill ups and mpg to allow you to see trends (which is now a selectable feature rather than automatic due to a silly EU directive on cookies), you can see what your annual fuel cost is.

The cost per mile proves useful to people who are couriers and need to charge a cost per mile basis and a few have emailed us thanks as they would have been running at a net loss without this information.

You can alter the annual mileage to give an approximate annual fuel cost.

We have also updated our fuel saving tips on this page allowing you to get more miles out of every gallon of fuel you use.

There are also a few other new MPG related calculators including one that gives the annual fuel cost of 2 cars from MPG and price of fuel allowing you to make an informed choice on your new car purchases.

We nearly bought a diesel because of the extra MPG but the extra fuel cost didn't add up to a saving overall so we stuck with a petrol with a lower purchase price and lower running costs.

It's amazing that most people pay around £2000 per year for fuel and still don't think of it as being a major part of their budget.

The more fuel we all save the lower the demand and this will help keep down prices and if you are believing the hype save the planet!

Oil companies make more money.

We are all pretty depressed at the cost of a tank of fuel. The rising cost of oil is not bad new for everyone. I note this morning that Shell have just posted obscene profits of 18.5 billion euros. With the global demand for oil increasing the price is set to climb even higher. Why though should a company that makes fuel which we all need be posting such high profit annoucements.

To my mind this smacks of a cartel. Competition is supposed to mean lower prices for the consumer but we see that this adage does not seem to apply to the fuel industries (this includes gas and electricity prices as well!)

The profits made come very much from the prices paid by you and I the average consumer. There are some things we can do to encourage more healthy competition in the energy/fuel market.

1) If we shopped around en-mass and boycotted a company it would be forced to lower its prices and then as we start buying from them again another oil company will also drop its prices.

2) We reduce demand for oil. If we agree to walk instead of take the car for every journey we can walk in 20 minutes, we reduce our demand for fuel. We will also be a lot healthier and reduce our cars running costs and maintenance by not using it for short journeys.

This 2 pronged approach requires we all synchronize our habits and mindset. We already have one thing in common - we do not like paying the current high fuel costs and we choke when we see the obscene profits made by the oil industry.

How though can we all shop around with the same buying parameters - here is an idea. Taking the letters that make up the company name we could boycot them if the letters of the current month contain the same letter? Strangely enough it works out that we boycott the main oil companies for 2 months in a row.