FuelClinic.com Update – w/ Doc Miles

Earlier this month FuelClinic.com members climbed past 2-million-miles of tracking and managing fuel efficiency using the tools on the website. Together we’ve stopped to refuel over 10,000 times - buying just under 90,000 gallons of fuel. Continued-usage statistics for the site are very strong, as a good number of our users return every few days to continue recording mileage. 

You may have noticed that development has stalled on new features like the Twitter interface and the training modules. Over the past two months we’ve been actively seeking start-up funding so that we may go full-time in continuing the development of the site. This has taken a tremendous amount of time and effort.

While we’ve received a good deal of very positive feedback, our timing was very poor. The economic downturn since September, coupled with the dramatic drop in fuel prices since November, has made it very difficult to get past the “Gee you have a good idea, come back to talk to us in six months” stage. Overall, it was a very worth-while effort, as continued business-plan development has really helped us find and focus on our core model.

We’re keeping a few investment doors open, but are no longer counting on investment until Summer 2009 at the soonest, and are not actively chasing investment. This means we’ll continue to boot-strap FuelClinic.com development for the forseeable future, and development of new features (as opposed to seeking funding sources) will again be the focus of our limited resources.

3. 2009 New Year’s Resolutions

We’d like to encourage you to encourage your friends to take control of their fuelish! behavior and start working to reduce their fuel consumption in the New Year. There will be one more mailing this year to this list in a few days focusing on the details of our “New Year’s Resolution Reward” plan.

4. 2009 Sneak-Peak: Fleet-FuelClinic, Tutorials, Fuelishness! Book, Etc…

We have our own New Year’s Resolutions!

A commercial version of FuelClinic.com is being developed. This small fleet version will allow business owners to discover, monitor, and adjust their fleet’s fuel-efficiency characteristics. Owners will be able to track drivers, vehicles, and routes to determine how the combination of the three can be adjusted to improve overall efficiency and reduce fuel costs. Owners will use on-line training to improve their driver’s performance.

    + Info: http://www.fuelclinic.com/index.cfm/page/fuelclinic_for_fleets

As a part of the development of the commercial Fleet-FuelClinic product we will be creating on-line ”eco-driving” tutorials called “clinics” that visitors can review and attempt. Using the existing FuelClinic tool-set, you will be able to track your own real-world progress after taking any number of these online tutroials.

We are currently writing two FuelClinic related books – one is a detailed guide to improving fuel efficiency and the other is a workbook that will act as a companion to the first book as well as the website, enabling readers to improve their fuel-efficiency in a way they prefer. Much of the book material will be available for free on the website as white-papers or tutorial content. The public website will always remain free, the books will be published and available for purchase on Amazon.com as well as FuelClinic.com and Fuelishness! Blog.

Limited advertising will also be incorporated into the FuelClinic free site. This is required to offset the monthly expenses of hosting the site in a reliable way. Advertising will be limited and controlled to avoid being a nusense or promoting bogus “miracle fuel” products.    

5. Take Action Today – FLEX-FUEL Mandate

Yesterday I encouraged readers at “Fuelishness! Blog” ( http://blog.fuelclinic.com ) to contact their Senators and insist that any bailout package for suto-industry also included a mandate for FLEX-FUEL fuel systems as standard equipment in all future cars built or sold in the United States.

This simple and inexpensive mandate would create a viable bio-fuels market both here in the US and around the world, and will usher in a new era of bio-fuels investment. FLEX-FUEL cars allow consumers to chose for themselves the kind of fuel they prefer to use for transportation without having to make a huge tax-payer-funded investment in new energy-distribution infrastructure.

FLEX-FUEL cars will enable ethanol/methanol-mixed fuels to compete head-to-head with gasoline at the pump, and will keep gas prices down while reducing emmissions and keeping fuel-profits at home.

    + FLEX-FUEL Mandate: http://tinyurl.com/5hvmnd
    + About FLEX-FUEL: http://tinyurl.com/64fe8x

6. Suggestions? Comments?

Please take the time to share our website with any of these services you subscribe to.

    + Help us grow: http://www.fuelclinic.com/index.cfm/page/encourage 
    + Latest Website News: http://blog.fuelclinic.com/category/website 
    + Forgot your Password?: http://www.fuelclinic.com/index.cfm/page/Password_Reminder
    + Comments, Suggestions: feedback@fuelclinic.com

As always – thank you for your time, ideas, and help!
- Doc Miles
docmiles@fuelclinic.com

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