Garage % Over EPA - Question

[Matt Herring]

Why does the garage only post each car's 90 day % over EPA on the fleet list MPG and on the sig? Shouldn't it be posting lifetime % over EPA and MPG instead?

My current garage listing is 19.36 MPG and 14.1% over EPA (90 day) but it would be ideal if it posted 20.69 MPG and 17.8% over EPA (lifetime). I say this only because when comparing my car to similar vehicles in the garage I have to click through the fleet listing and into each car individually to see what their lifetime MPG is (since 90 day averages only reflect recent history which could be marred by weather, outside forces, etc).

Also, a cool garage feature would be to have vehicles grouped by combined EPA so that cars in my range (15-19 EPA) could be grouped and viewed together to compare my MPG vs. theirs. It would be a great way to compare apples to apples and draw on similar vehicles to improve my own car and driving skills. A search function on the garage would be great. My car is combined EPA of 17 mpg so if I could type in a min and a max combined EPA and pull up x number of vehicles in that range as well as sort them the same way the current garage fleet set up works would be cool too.

Just a suggestion, not trying to make more work for the moderators...thanks guys!

[Mogal]

It looks as thou there is enough room in the sig to get both 90 day and lifetiime MPGs...
Move the 'ecomodder.com' to the right hand side, and drop in the lifetime MPG?

Beyond my skill set to do it thou

[Matt Herring]

From the Garage Fleet Listings
Vehicle Bone's Toyota
Owner Matt Herring
Make & Model 2005 Toyota 4Runner
EPA 17
Rating* 17
MPG (US)** 19.36
% over EPA +13.9%

* EPA Combined rating; ** User's fuel economy from fuel log entries in the past 90 days

There is a legend at the bottom of the fleet that notes with "*" and "**" that its EPA combined and 90 day fuel economy but I just realized it today. Recently I set a goal of getting to 25% over EPA lifetime (which would be 22 mpg for me) and I was getting frustrated seeing 14% over EPA on my sig (which really is about 18% at this time for lifetime).

It might be alot of work for the moderators to adjust everything at this point but if they are working on some new garage features the one I would like to see is a search function for epa combined (set a min and max in the search) so I can see cars similar to mine for EPA combined and what they are getting for % over EPA and what their mods/driving styles are so I can work on mine as well. (While it's cool to see a 100% over EPA car listed on the garage fleet view it's not realistic for me to compare my 2005 4runner to them and try to achieve those numbers...looking for a more realistic "carrot").

[MetroMPG]

NO MORE WORK!!

Kidding. I think these are good ideas.The garage data will be sortable/searchable on a wide variety of variables.

Ben is driving the bus on the garage rebuild - I'll bug him about it.

[hummingbird]

If it's suggestion season, let me add one, needed to sift through the walrus-beach that is the ecomodder garage....

Could there be a field that specifies bikes, biodiesels, EVs and other odd-balls (I respect them all, just not relevant to my searches) so that I can separate them out and check vehicles that fall in my bracket , to zero on mods and techniques to learn from and adopt.

I also impose a 'figure of merit, composed of a combination of parameters of my choice (usually absolute MPG * % over EPA) but it may be too radical to impose constraint like this

That's how I figured out my Guru in the form of PaleMelanesian...

Maybe tranny type (AT/MT) can also be included as a parameter.

All these parameters can be gathered in the same page as that used for gathering the vehicle info now, just by modifying it for these fields.

[RobertSmalls]

I like the Top 10 Vehicles leaderboard on the homepage, but most of them are beached walruses: Cars that are not actively driven, electrics that are oranges to the fossil-fueled apples that most of us are modding. A Top 10 Vehicles by 90 day mpg would be more engaging and competitive.

Disclosure: if you take my suggestion, my next project will end up on the board if all goes well. ;-)

[MetroMPG]

Robert: that's also in the plan.