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Fuel Consumption iPhone Apps

November 29th, 2009 by Matthew

For the last month, I’ve been manually recording my automobile fuel consumption. Its been an evolving process, as the amount of recorded data and data acquisition techniques have steadily been refined. This morning when I was inputting a row into my spreadsheet, I though that this process could be greatly optimized with a good iPhone/iPod Touch app. Turns out this has been done. There are a bunch of apps available that help you record your fuel consumption: Gas Cubby, GasHog, greenMeter, and AccuFuel just to name a few. GasHog and AccuFuel are the most basic of the lot, and too basic for my needs. greenMeter is by far the most innovative (see fuelclinic, NYTimes), however I don’t want more flashing lights–or in this case, real-time feedback on my fuel consumption–to distract me while driving. Gas Cubby appears to be the most mature of the fuel consumption apps, with support for lots of data parameters (tire size/pressure, fuel octane, etc.) and great features like online syncing (for more information, see the Gas Cubby manual). At $4.99 Gas Cubby seems like the app for me, let’s see if it works out.

Gas Cubby - Screen Shot

Filed under Cult of Mac, Interweb having 2 Comments »

2 Responses

  1. Tim Says:

    Nice! Do any of them work in L/100KM?

    Also, one thing I noticed from driving a rented Prius (it has one of those realtime fuel monitor displays), it really helped in changing my driving behavior.

    Some how having the display made me really focused on achieving the lowest L/100KM possible.

  2. Matthew Says:

    Yes, Gas Cubby supports lots of different measurement units, see: http://appcubby.com/gas/manual.html#measurement

    A real time monitor would be great, it just comes down to minimalist visual design that isn’t distracting while driving. I’ll have to check out Prius’ display :)