The term MPG stands for Miles Per Gallon. As gas prices are continuously rising, fuel efficiency is becoming a more serious issue. When the MPG is figured out, a lot of useful things can be done, some useful things are calculating the amount of rise in gas that will affect a person's budget or how a car with better MPG will reduce costs per month.
The only items needed for calculating MPG are pen, paper, and calculator. Following the easy and simple steps for calculating Miles Per Gallon or MPG:
Steps
1. A paper and pen has to be ready at hand when one is at the gas or fuel pump. Now start filling the car's tank.
2. Gather the information and record the mileage in order, the amount of gallons filled and the current odometer reading. This process has to be repeated few times for getting good average when you visit the gas station.
3. Now use a calculator, the second odometer reading has to be subtracted from the first reading and the result that will be shown is the amount of miles that were travelled from the last time you visited the gas or fuel station. This number will be used in the next step.
4. Once the miles travelled have been calculated, simply divide this by the amount of gallons that was used in refilling the tank. The calculated result will be the average MPG of the car. As stated earlier, these steps have to be calculated few times for having a better average.
Useful Tips
- For determining the effect on one's budget because of the changes in gas prices, the number of the miles expected has to be used for driving in a week or month or year.
- Divide this number by the MPG. Then, multiply the answer by the price of gas per gallon. Just by calculating different prices, it will be easily determined the higher amount or less amount a person will need to pay per week or month or even year.
- The MPG is also useful to experiment with ways to increase the fuel efficiency. For example, if a vehicle is driven at an average speed of 70 mph, then the MPG has to be calculated and then, try driving at an average speed of 55 mph and calculate the MPG again. It will probably be seen rising.
- The more high the MPG will be, the more efficient the car will be. Besides that, the car will be filled at a much cheaper rate.
- If you want to calculate the average cost per gallon, then simply divide the total money spent by the number of gallons filled in the car.