It's time for another update on car information.

My 2007 Honda Civic LX sedan with Automatic Transmission (all that is included to help out the search engines) is now 16 months old. The odometer currently reads 9813 miles.

The efficiency has been better this summer which I assume is a matter of the equipment being broken in and operating more efficiently than last summer. The hot temperatures mean that it takes less time for the engine to warm up to the most efficient temperature range. So I don't get hit quite as badly when only doing short cross-town trips (but still hurt a little, see July on the graph for MPG). I was pleasantly surprised to find that my highway mileage is close to the 40 MPG advertised on the sticker. My city mileage is also very close to the 30 MPG advertised. But, let's look at the graphs, they're more fun than my words.

First up is the Price Per Gallon. This has nothing to do with my car, but is interesting to look at, and now that I'm driving it's something I care about. This graph reflects the price I paid per gallon of 87 octane gas, mostly filling up in Provo, with some fill-ups from Idaho. Hopefully we'll see the same $0.50 drop in price this fall that we saw last fall.

This is my real-world Miles Per Gallon. This summer has been pretty good with MPG upwards of 35 most of the time. The blip down below 30 (this summer) was July when I filled up on July 1, and then not again until Aug, 1; which tells me that I didn't do a lot of driving, so I must have been only doing in-town driving which will, of course, result in lower mileage. The numbers overlaid here are for the approximate odometer reading at the indicated date; this is to give you an idea about the mileage as the car gets broken in.

And now, let's look at how much it's costing me to drive. This is the Price Per Mile, based on gas alone. When I first got my car it was costing about 9-10 cents per mile now it is up to about 11-12 cents per mile.

I hope you enjoyed analyzing this information as much as I did. I like to know how I'm doing with my driving efficiency. I try to drive in a manner to minimize gas consumption. There's no need to lay on the gas all the way up until 30 feet before the red light. It just burns your gas and causes more wear-and-tear on your brakes.

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