How to Find a Car's Gas Mileage
Your car's gas mileage represent how efficiently the car uses fuel. The more miles the car is able to travel on a gallon of gas, the less gas you will have to pay for and the less pollution your car releases into the environment. The car's gas mileage is measured in mpg (miles per gallon) in the United States. With this knowledge, if you notice steep drops in your car's gas mileage, there may be a problem with the car. To calculate a car's gas mileage, you need to figure out how many miles the car drove and how many gallons of gasoline the car used to go that distance.
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Instructions
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1
Fill your car with gas until the gas pump clicks off--the car is now full to capacity. Reset the trip odometer in your car. If your car does not have a trip odometer, write down the odometer reading.
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2
Drive as you normally would until you need to refuel your vehicle.
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3
Fill your car with gas until the pump clicks off and note the amount of gas you put into the car and the number of miles on your trip odometer. Subtract the car's original odometer reading (which you wrote down in step 1) from the current odometer reading. For example, if the car started at 15,980 miles and now reads 16,280 miles, you would subtract 15,980 from 16,280, to get 300 miles.
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4
Divide the number of miles driven by the number of gallons of gas used to calculate the car's gas mileage. For example, if you used 12 gallons of gas to go 300 miles, you would divide 300 by 12 to find your car got 25 miles per gallon.
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Tips & Warnings
If you would like to look up your vehicle's reported gas mileage, the U.S. Department of Energy offers an online database (see Resources) that you can search by manufacturer, model and year.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit car image by maxuser from Fotolia.com
