First, let’s look at ways you can obtain better miles per gallon or, for folks in Europe or Australia, use less litres/Km. You use strategies to improve your fuel consumption, and the higher MPG you get then takes care of everything else, like saving petrol or gasoline.

Some petrol-saving tricks can be as simple as car pooling or taking your vehicle in for a lube and a tune-up. Or you may have to re-learn your driving skills so as not to be a “lead foot”. (A person who accelerates too heavily and has to brake hard as well.) Apart from being antisocial and probably illegal, this kind of aggressive stop-start driving wastes fuel.

Other ways to save gas money can be more radical, such as modifying your car’s air intake or carburetor, maybe changing the engine or even exchanging your present car or truck for a hybrid, an electric vehicle or a smaller, more fuel-efficient automobile.

Alternatives to the Motor Car

And for city dwellers with short commuting distances, there are even more alternatives. These include motorcycles, motor scooters and even super-economical mopeds (pedal-assisted bicycles with small built-in motors). These have been popular in Europe and Mediterranean countries for several decades. But that’s an important point… Two-wheeled vehicles are not well-suited to cold weather driving. And wet-weather riding on a bike or scooter is no fun either.

The recent high cost of oil was caused in part by global warming and greenhouse gas emissions (such as carbon monoxide). Therefore, any methods we can come up with to improve your fuel efficiency will also reduce pollution (which is good for the world) and cut your gas bill (which is good for you, personally).

It may also be good for our balance-of-payments figures, and for our struggling national economy.

With fuel prices around the world leaping up and down like the stock markets, anything we can do to burn up less fuel is good for our pocketbook, is good for our country, our children and their childrens’ children.

Think of the environment, as well.

However, we also need to be sure that these fixes and adjustments to our lifestyle does not create new problems we hadn’t thought about. We need to be saving the environment rather than destroying it.

In modern-day Viet Nam, as an example, and many other Asian countries they cope with their traffic problems by having millions of people getting around on small motorcycles and motor scooters.

This gets folks around economically on their many small congested roads, but the two-stroke engines of those little motor-bikes has also created a major pollution problem because 2-stroke engines burn a mix of lubricating oil with their gasoline. They are terribly smoky.

So each of us will have to weigh the pros and cons most carefully before we decide how to improve gas mileage for ourselves.

Who is the EPA?

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is a US Government body, tasked with assessing possible and actual environmental issues that affect our environment, and indirectly, we the people who live in that environment.

The organization has been around for a while – since 1970 in fact – but increased environmental awareness has lead to their activity building up over time.

Why Is the New Formula Necessary?

Before the new EPA formula came into play, many vehicles used to be rated with a far better mpg than they could ever achieve under real driving conditions. This was because the formula used failed to take into account real driving conditions and issues, such as speeding, cold weather and aggressive driving, all of which impact on fuel economy (your miles per gallon).

Improving the way that average miles per gallon information is calculated means that you are better able to make good choices when buying a vehicle. You save money on fuel costs and, hopefully, will have less impact on the environment.

How Does This Help You?

Well, by having more accurate information regarding fuel consumption on easy to read stickers in the windows of all new cars and trucks sold in the US, consumers can now shop according to their requirements. For instance, you can now easily find, for example, cars that get 30 mpg or more, or even cars that get more than 40 mpg, and make a selection from those “pre qualified” candidates.

Making this information freely available to the public, by an unbiased third party, means that consumers can choose cars that will really save fuel.

What Other Information Does the EPA Provide?

Aside from the new EPA gas mileage statistics on every car, a visit to the  EPA website is worthwhile if better fuel economy is high on your list of requirements for your car, or even to check data on your existing vehicle.

Among the information offered on the site is a fuel consumption calculator, that allows you to search based on make, model and year, and provides average fuel consumption data. This can help you to check whether you are driving to save fuel, or even if your car could do with maintenance and repair.

The site also has a section for the greenest vehicles. These are the best fuel economy car, truck and vehicle statistics, and are a great resource when buying a new car.

What Information is Included

When running a search on the EPA site, you can make a comparison between two models, again useful if you are upgrading. You can also calculate the running costs for a year, based on an average of 15000 miles per year.

Information on where specific car models are sold, the emissions of those models, and many other useful pieces of information are included. This helps you to not only choose a car that will save money on fuel, but it let you know where to buy one, and how much of an environmental impact your choice will have.

What Else Can You Do

Once you have used the EPA site’s data to choose and purchase a new vehicle, which offers more miles per gallon as a standard, there are other ways you can improve this. So you can further improve gas mileage, and really save fuel.

When considering the fuel efficiency and emissions problem from all angles, whether it be finding cars that save fuel when buying, checking emissions to find out what your environmental impact is, or choosing a car that provides the best of both worlds, the new EPA gas mileage calculator, and indeed the whole website, is certainly a great resource.

Fuel-efficient cars save you, the driver money, and the environment in terms of less consumption of finite fossil fuel resources, and probably a lower emissions score. So if you are in the market for a new vehicle, or you want to find out more about your existing car, pay the EPA website a visit, and check how your wheels stack up.

Make informed choices, learn how to save on fuel costs, find out how alternative fuels can help you save money or emissions, and start making a difference, and saving money by getting more mpg out of your car or truck today.