Tech Savvy: Apps and websites for curbing fuel costs
With gas prices in record territory for this time of year, consumers are turning to their mobile devices and Web browsers to drive down costs.
Several apps and websites, such as Cheap Gas, Fuel Finder, iGasUp and Local Gas Prices, promise to help consumers find the cheapest fuel prices.
And just in time: As of Wednesday, a gallon of regular in California cost $4.35 on average. Nationally, it was $3.76.
One of the most popular of the gas apps is GasBuddy, available free on Apple and Android smartphones and tablets as well as other devices. A user can type in city, state or ZIP Code, or search by current location. Prices for regular, mid-grade, premium and diesel are listed, and users can organize results by distance or price.
“Most of the time you can save 20, 30 cents per gallon without driving too far out of your way,” said Jason Toews, co-founder of GasBuddy.
Sometimes the savings are even more: A search on the app this week turned up a result for $5.10-a-gallon gas at a Chevron on Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles. Just a mile away on the same street, it was $4.30 a gallon at a Valero station.
Nearly 11,000 Apple users have rated the GasBuddy app, which has a five-star rating, and Toews said the company has seen website traffic and app downloads jump in recent weeks. “Daily downloads are basically double what they were a couple of months ago,” he said.
GasBuddy began as a website more than a decade ago and launched its mobile app in August 2010. The company’s data is primarily crowd-sourced, meaning fuel prices are contributed by gas station customers and people driving by. To encourage people to report gas prices, the company rewards users by doling out points toward prizes, such as gas gift cards.
Other apps, such as Gas Cubby, track gas mileage and send vehicle maintenance reminders so drivers’ cars can operate at their peak. Gas Cubby — which comes in a free version or $2.99 without ads in Apple’s App Store — also enables users to chart gas expenses.
Another digital tool for gas prices can be found at the directions website MapQuest. It tracks 100,000 gas stations around the country and updates prices five times a day. At gasprices.mapquest.com, Web users can type in their address or intersection and select the kind of gas from a drop-down menu.
The site also shows the lowest and highest prices nationwide for gas ($2.85 a gallon in New Orleans and $5.29 a gallon in Bakersfield on Wednesday).
MapQuest obtains its gas data from a partner company that collects and aggregates prices based on credit card transactions.
“Prices are rising, and so is our traffic to our gas prices tools,” said Ann Koerner, director of product management at MapQuest. Web traffic to MapQuest’s Gas Prices site has risen 58% since the beginning of the year.
“We definitely know that users are cost-conscious,” Koerner said, “and are looking for ways to save money.”
MapQuest also offers gas prices on a free mobile app for Android devices; it will soon update its iPhone app to include gas prices, Koerner said.
And the company plans to soon release an online feature to enable users to calculate their fuel costs from one place to another based on their vehicle’s fuel economy and other information, such as whether the route is hilly or flat. The tool will also provide alternate routes that have stations with cheaper gas along the way.
“Users expect to have this information available,” Koerner said. “When they’re thinking of MapQuest and trying to get directions for a place, calculating their fuel costs and finding cheap gas nearby is one of the logical pieces of information we can provide.”
