Saving Money at the Pump
With a recent Lundberg Survey reporting the national average price of regular gas at $3.67, up almost a dollar compared to this time last year, improving your gas mileage and finding the cheapest price at the pump are high priorities when it comes time to fill up. And we’re not talking just a few cents a gallon. If I’m stuck getting gas near the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City, the price is $4.69 a gallon. At the gas station near work, I pay $4.19 per gallon.
Of course there are apps that help me pinpoint where the closest gas stations are and show me a list of stations sorted by price.
GasBuddy
View gas-station pricing on a map or sort listings by distance or pricing with GasBuddy. Pricing information is user reported. Users earn points to enter a weekly gas giveaway by posting current pricing information, so listings stay fresh. Checking the time and date stamp for the gas stations in my area, I found the stalest listing to be only 24 hours old. Free for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone.
Cheap Gas!
The free Cheap Gas! app for iPhone pulls pricing information from the same user-generated database as GasBuddy. It goes beyond listings, though. You can view the location on Google Maps, which provides turn by turn directions from your current location. Also, it has an augmented reality mode called Cyborg. In Cyborg mode, point your iPhone’s camera and it shows which stations you’ll come across if you travel in that direction. The stations are shown with the current price for regular gas.
SmartFuel
Instead of user-reported gas prices, the SmartFuel iPhone app uses gas and diesel pricing from OPIS (Oil Price Information Service). The company receives daily price updates from more than 125,000 retail outlets in the U.S. and Canada and is the same source used by AAA, Garmin and Mapquest, among others. You can choose to find stations near your current location or you can set your destination and see prices along your route. You can also get directions to a station from your current location.
The app is free, but SmartFuel passes along the cost of this database to you. After a 30-day free trial, you’ll pay $5 for a six month subscription, $9 for a year or $15 for two years.
$6 a gallon spotted 9/13
From Rich Moser on September 16, 2011 :: 12:56 pm
I just saw my first-ever $6 a gallon gas (not counting Europe, where they don’t use taxes to bring the price down). It was for full-serve in Lee Vining, California (near Yosemite), where the nearest options are about 45 minutes away, so if you haven’t planned well, you’re gonna get gouged. (P.S., 45 minutes away the prices are much closer to $4 so this would be a good use of this app.)
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