Tracking Your Car's Fuel Economy in an Excel Spreadsheet Is Completely Normal

As you can see, in the upper-left-hand corner is a summary of MPG metrics (including the average, median, best and worst fuel economy between fill-ups), in the upper-right is an embedded line graph of the Mystery Ship's fuel economy over time, and below that is a running log of all fuel stops that I've made since I purchased the car in December 2004:


That's about it. Nothing too special... I mean, I didn't bother to do a 3D plot fuel economy versus fill-up location over time or anything.

So, what does your spreadsheet look like?

Update (6/5/2008): If you are interested (and are completely normal like me), you can can download my spreadsheet template here to get started with your own fuel economy log.

I'm sure you'll note that there is clearly a general upward trend in fuel economy (taking into account seasonal variations in fuel composition and ambient temperature), mostly due to a recent increase in the proportion of highway driving relative to city driving (as reflected by the increase in fill-up frequency). Although some might ask whether the 2007 federally-mandated availability of ULSD fuel (which boasts a 97% reduction in sulfur content over LSD fuel, and therefore which I use exclusively) might have had an impact on these numbers, the 2007 data clearly indicate that the switch to ULSD had a negligible effect (if any) on fuel economy. Of course, you can't really see much of the 2007 data in the screenshot above, so you'll have to trust me on this one.