GasBuddy

This post is a topical and quite relevant Public Service Announcement on an “Oldie-But-Goody” website: GasBuddy.

These days, who among us isn’t interested in getting the best deal on their fossil fuels?  Anybody doesn’t want that? The premise behind GasBuddy is quite simple: maintain an up-to-date database of gasoline prices for major markets in the US and Canada by enlisting the help of your volunteer user base and provide capabilities to search this database for your geographical location of interest. It is certainly not a unique concept – there are other sites just like it. But it works for me: I find the user interface acceptable, and most importantly, the data accurate and current.

The advanced search option on GasBuddy is quite functional and pleasing. You start by selecting one of the GasBuddy sub-sites based on a City, State, or Zip. This links you to the specific website associated with your market (for example, Durham-Chapel Hill in my case). From within that context you can then filter the gasoline prices using a couple of attributes:

• You can filter based on the type of fuel you are interested in: Regular, Midgrade, Premium, or Diesel.
• You can filter based on the oil and gas companies you wish to patronize. For example, if you are still pissed off at the Obama Administration for (like a bunch of Chicago thugs) shaking down BP, you can elect to filter only on BP stations.
• Within the market, you can select one or more areas within that market that you are interested in. So, in my Durham-Chapel Hill Market, I can indicate that I am only interested in Hillsborough and North Durham stations.

Once you have your search where you want it, you can save it with a name for later recall. You can create multiple saved searches. So I can define and save a search for Home (identifying the cheapest gas nearest my house) and a search for Work (identifying the best options in The Park when I need to fill up after work). Good stuff and worth a look before you fill up.

I’ve been pondering a Use Case that I would love GasBuddy to support. (Caveat: I deeply apologize to the GasBuddy site programmers if they already have implemented this feature function. As a developer, I know there are few things more annoying than RTFM.)

In my Use Case, I would like to provide to GasBuddy my current geographical location (or have it detected from a smart phone) and then have GasBuddy calculate the “best deal” for me – even if that deal involved me driving farther to get to a cheap station. The algorithm would not just take into account the cost of the gas at the target station, but the cost to me to get to that station and back from my current location. This latter cost would need to be calculated using at least the following factors:

• The cost of gas at the target station.
• The gas mileage my vehicle gets (EPA Highway and City). I should be able to tell GasBuddy what I am driving and its mileage attributes. I should be able to define multiple vehicles as well.
• The distance between my current location and the target gas station.
• The nature of the route between my current location and the target gas station (is it predominantly Highway or gas-swallowing City driving?).
• The cost of the gas that is currently in my tank – this could get a little tricky since, at any one point in time (unless you actually run out of gas), you will have gas in your tank that was purchased from multiple trips to the pump (each of which could have been at different price points).

That would be some fun software to develop.

By all this ink I am spilling about GasBuddy, you might think that I am getting crushed by the cost of gas, but that is really not true. I have been averaging recently about 350 miles a week of driving and a roughly once-a-week fill-up. My daily commute to work is about 45 miles roundtrip – probably 90% of that is “Highway” driving and the 2009 Honda Civic that I roll in gets good gas mileage. Don’t get me wrong though – I would love to get back to that $1.56 per gallon we saw back at the end of 2008.

As an aside, GasBuddy also allows you to graph historical gas prices across different markets and time periods. Here is a graph I created for the average retail price of gas in the US, Canada, and Durham over the last six years or so.

Now, mind you, I haven’t vetted this data, but that is certainly interesting, isn’t it? Especially in this silly season where, apparently, presidential administration policies are directly responsible for domestic gas prices, but somehow that same administration’s policies have no direct correlation to (and certainly can’t take credit for) the booming stock market. This certainly isn’t a partisan thing - anybody remember the Unhinged Left’s absurd claims during the Bush Administration? You know, the one about W raising the price of gas so his Saudi boys would benefit? Idiots – all of them.

I am left with three observations when I chew on that chart. I have no idea which one is correct:

1. The US and Canada are conceptually the same market.
2. The US and Canada are different markets, but across both Democratic and Republican administrations, the US and Canada have perfectly synchronized their individual policies that impact the cost of gas. (Right.)
3. It is a global supply-and-demand market. We are just along for the ride.