Resource of the Week -- fueleconomy.gov
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
This site -- jointly maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection -- is kind of a no-brainer choice for a Resource of the Week, given what is going on at the nation's gas pumps. I will soon be working just five miles from home on a daily basis, and I downsized my motorcycle to a little guy who gets close to 60 mpg, so I am officially opting out of this mess as much as I possibly can.
On the other hand, I've used information found on this site to easily answer several ready reference-type questions in the past week alone. It's a remarkably decent mix of educational and practical content. So even if you're getting around on foot, bicycle or public transit, you'll definitely want to have a look around here.
There's even a "social media" element here -- the Your MPG feature allows you to post the actual fuel mileage for your vehicle(s) and see how it compares to what other owners are getting. And you can get a detailed "energy impact score" for your vehicle that shows -- among other things -- average mileage (including that reported by other drivers), petroleum consumption, air pollution, and safety. You can even do a side-by-side comparison of up to four different vehicles.
Oh, and mobile device users get their own version of fueleconomy.gov, which offers:
Fuel economy ratings for all cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. back to model year 1985
Annual fuel cost estimates
Annual petroleum use (barrels of domestic and imported petroleum)
Carbon footprint (tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually)
Especially in "these troubled economic times," we think fueleconomy.gov is an excellent use of tax dollars. E-government at its best.
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