6,000,000 Miles… and Still Counting
Six million miles. Our FuelClinic.com users have recorded over six-million miles of real-world driving records. Quite amazing.
Every “million mile mark” is a cause for a little celebration, considering the humble beginnings and modest means that have so far contributed to the building of this community of conscientious consumers. All of our members wanting to learn a little more about their habits, all seeking to improve their efficiency – and save some money at the same time.
Some of you have entered a few receipts and moved on, some of you have been keeping records for over a year. All of you have suffered with this prototype site, it’s shortcomings, and my own fits and starts.
Thank you for you time and continued patience as we build FuelClinic into the foundation of a wonderful tool that will help even more people save some money and help improve the quality and safety of our travels for all of us.
- Michael
Congestion Challenge Awardees Presented at 2009 ITSA Annual Meeting
Source ITSA:
ITS Congestion Challenge
The first global ITS Congestion Challenge, announced in June 2009, was open to entrepreneurs, commuters, transportation experts, researchers in all fields, universities, and citizens around the world. Three winners and six finalists from Hungary, Ireland, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States, were selected by an open global community of more than 4,000 people, including transportation industry professionals and the general public.
1st PLACE
iCarpool provides commuters and other travelers with comprehensive travel choices for modes of travel other than driving alone. Read more.
2nd PLACE
FuelClinic, for their “Eco-System” and “Eco-Driver On Board” programs, which provide tools and certified eco-driving training to improve, track, and manage driver performance for increased fuel efficiency, increased driver safety, and reduced accident rates. Read more.
3rd PLACE
iCone Products, LLC, for an ITS concept to beam real-time traffic information over the Internet to a central web site for use by government officials, emergency response personnel, trucking fleets, the public and information resellers, including media outlets and GPS services. Read more.
FuelClinic in the Orlando Sentinel today
Today there is a nice article about FuelClinic by Steven Cole Smith in the print edition of the Orlando Sentinel (Section G2), our big hometown paper.
…In a nutshell, FuelClinic.com is “a driver-improvement system that helps create safer, smarter, more efficient drivers,” according to the company Web site. “In consumer applications this system helps families save money on fuel, reduce [carbon] emissions, find deficiencies in inexperienced or young drivers, and helps motorists become generally safer and more professional drivers.”
Bragg also is working on a professional application targeted at businesses and fleet managers that, he said, helps them train employees, reduce fuel expenses and reinforce safety initiatives.
Bragg said one of his goals is to take the idea of fuel savings more mainstream, away from the traditional dedicated, hybrid-driving environmentalist who makes a second career out of saving fuel. Bragg is not telling people that they have to buy a Toyota Prius — he still has that four-wheel-drive truck, in fact — but he is saying that by modifying your driving habits, your routes and other easily manageable changes, you can save a lot of fuel, and a lot of money… ( read the rest )
Judging from new user sign-ups, the article is a huge hit. I’d like to welcome all of the new members, and ask that you let me know what you enjoy about the site, and what you’d like to see changed or improved.
More details and a video from the IBM Sponsored ITS Congestion Challenge
A few more details today about the ITS Congestion Challenge as well as a video from the conference. Apparently there were 116 startups from over 20 countries – not the 90 that I had been quoting in this blog and in our press release. Some additional details about how it all worked from the Spenser Trask blog:
The challenge from June through August. The VenCorps community reviewed and rated the 116 participating startups on five criteria: the speed and efficiency of their solutions; behavioral impact; safety; sustainability; and economic competitiveness. Based on community ratings, nine finalists were picked for the 30-day Showdown. During the Showdown, community members allocated VenCorps Points to their favorite challengers.
In this video Gerry Mooney, IBM General Manager Fiscal Stimulus & Economic Recovery, talks about IBM’s commitment to helping solve traffic congestion problems and their intention to support some of the innovative new ideas that made it into the final round of the Challenge.
This sounds like an outstanding opportunity.
FuelClinic is a Finalist in the ITS Congestion Challenge
Today I learned that FuelClinic.com was selected to be one of the finalists in the ITS Congestion Challenge over at Vencorps.
What happens next?
Over the next 30 days each solution provider will answer common questions investors ask, share detailed biographies of their teams, make slide presentations, perform due diligence calls and get publicly rated by expert judges.
During the Showdown the community will pick the winner through a predictive market. That means you can allocate your points to one or more solutions. The solution with the most community support wins a $50,000 investment and 50,000 points.
It’s very encouraging to be selected as a finalist – we are up against some very well thought out solutions, some obviously well funded and nearly production-ready.
If you’ve been following this project for any amount of time, you’ve seen us struggle and change in several ways, always growing and refining the concepts along the way. This is another great opportunity for growth, and with recent partnerships and changes – and your continued support – I believe we have a real chance of winning this contest.
Again a huge “thank you” for those of you who have supported FuelClinic this far!
“Cash for Clunkers” vs. “Cash for Un-Clunkers”
[Updated: New link to "Cash for Un-Clunkers" added]
Far from a model of energy-efficiency, the CARS (Cash for Clunkers) program creates a system that encourages mind-boggling waste of energy, money, and natural resources.
The word “clunker” makes you think of cars with no real value left, in poor mechanical shape, incredibly inefficient, outdated, unsafe, and already a problem for the owner. The government program assumes the clunker is such a problem that the it requires that the “trade-ins” drive-train be destroyed within 2 days, else the dealer is fined $15,000. In reality, there are perfectly good vehicles with lots of value remaining – and can get measurably much better mileage if driven efficiently - being turned in and destroyed.
Take for example this video of a decidedly “un-clunky” Volvo S40 or S80 being destroyed as part of the CARS program. All of the energy used to produce that car is completely wasted, even if it would still have value in the used car market.
WARNING: This is a surprisingly graphic video – especially if you are a “car guy”. This top-quality machine literally screams as the “liquid glass” solution (used in place of motor oil) scours the moving parts inside this engine, eventually overheating it enough to start a fire in the engine compartment, and puking it’s last remaining ounces of red-hot oil out onto the ground in front of it as it finally seizes up.
Some thoughts on this video:
- That’s a well engineered, safe, and fairly efficient high-quality car that apparently ran well when turned in.
- It has obvious value remaining (KBB says around $13K).
- I can’t believe it ran for over 4 minutes with sodium silicate instead of oil.
- Thank goodness it didn’t puke up that red-hot oil all over the young man as he reached across the engine to put the oil fill cap (?) back on.
On Wednesday it was announced that the program was suspended – some say it was because dealership couldn’t get their paperwork filed fast enough to not go bankrupt in the short-term, others said it was because the program was too successful and already “spent” all of it’s funding. Then yesterday it was announced that the program would be re-funded, using grants previously slated for other energy-efficiency improvement programs.
I propose a different plan called: “Cash for Un-Clunkers”
Can anyone answer me “why” we should scrap perfectly good cars instead of invest in improving driving habits?
Case Study: John’s Jetta
A few weeks ago Kathy called me and told me she needed a “case study” to add to the new press kit she was developing – something that illustrated the benefits of using FuelClinic.com from a member’s perspective.
I went to the database and back to my feedback emails, and found a few members who were obviously using the system regularly, were interested enough to communicate with me about the site and ideas or problems they had, and might possibly want to participate in a case study. I sent a few requests, received a few responses, including one from John Guercio.
From logs and emails I knew John had been using the system a long time, and when I asked him if he’d be interested in talking with Kathy he said “sure”. While I knew he was a “regular”, and I had assumed he was benefiting from using the site, I didn’t have any idea how he had been using the system – pushing it to it’s limits, and saving himself thousands of dollars.
Here’s how it starts:
John was used to receiving an occasional $2,000 expense check for his mileage. But when his company put him on a strict $750 a month expense plan, John knew it was time to take control of his MPGs and start paying better attention to the pain he would soon being feeling at the pump.
To do this, he turned to FuelClinic.com, the Web’s premiere online fuel efficiency tracking and driver improvement resource. His main interest was in tracking his Jetta’s miles per gallon for work-related trips to determine whether or not the new stipend was helping him make money, or causing him to lose it.
Find out how well it worked out for John, how he was able to track his expenses, improve his fuel mileage, decide NOT to get that new car he was looking at, and saved thousands of dollars in taxes last year.
Read the rest of it online, or download the PDF version.
If you are interested in participating in future case studies, please send a note to me at feedback@fuelclinic.com - we are currently looking to create a case study detailing how a small business w/ a small fleet of vehicles has used FuelClinic.com in some way to save money, improve mileage, or track consumption.
Thanks John! Thanks Kathy!
FuelClinic at Wired.com Autopia Blog
Yesterday FuelClinic was featured on WIRED Magazine’s Autopia Blog – one of the major player automotive technology blogs online.
Included were some fresh details about our planned eco-driving training event later this summer…
Recent teaming efforts with driving instructor and test driving big-wigs John Henry and Steve Garrod are on track, quite literally. In conjunction with Digital Eye Systems and their EcoRoadCam fleet management technology and the Driver’s Instructors Association, Fuel Clinic is bringing an eco-driving course to Central Florida Racing Complex in September. With a combination of track-time and classroom instruction, students will learn smart eco-driving techniques. The technologies behind Fuel Clinic and EcoRoadCam will document and compare their performance lap-to-lap.
We’ll bring you more information right here as these plans develop.
FuelClinic at CNET
There’s a nice piece concerning IT tools that help manage your vehicles, including FuelClinic – over at CNET’s Webware.
FuelClinic determines how well your car is managing its fuel consumption. After you sign up for the site, you need only to input your car’s information, tell the service how much you spent the last couple times you filled up, and the site will return calculations on your miles per gallon and how much you will be spending on gas going forward. It’s not the most advanced fuel-monitoring service in this roundup, but it’s simple, which might make it attractive to some.
We certainly are trying to keep things as simple as possible. Thanks for the great write-up Don Reisinger.
Update: Two Million 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. Thank you!
No More Chasing Investment (for now)
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 foreseeable future, and development of new features (as opposed to seeking funding sources) will again be the focus of our limited resources.
KillerStartups Reviews: FuelClinic.com
FuelClinic.com was recently reviewed at KillerStartups.com, a website that collects information about young web startups and publishes short reviews. People can show their support by “voting” for their favorite site – just click the “+” sign under the vote tally near the top left side of the page. Sites with more votes get more prominently displayed.
MJK Racing Qualifies and Races in National Championship
While I was away, Mike Kern of Mike Kern Racing (a SCCA GT-1 racing team that we sponsor), qualified for the SCCA National Championships in Topeka Kansas.
He raced as a rookie nationals driver, starting 17th and moving up to 15th by the end of the race.Â
Mike said in a recent email: “Well the race was a real adventure. We started 17Th out of an 18 car field and finished 15Th., so at least we went the right direction. What a tough race week, if something can go wrong it will, but I glad we went and it created memories for a lifetime.”Â
I wish my wife and I could have been there in person for the race, but we had a wedding to attend (ours!).
We congratulate Mike and his crew for his success in overcoming all obstacles getting to and qualifying for the championship, and look forward to next year’s racing season!
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