Gas Mileage Secrets; Will Cold Gas Save You Money?

With the fuel crisis still raging and the cost of gasoline going up on a nearly weekly basis, people are on the lookout for any way to achieve gas mileage improvements on their vehicles. There seems to be a resurgence of quite a few of the old gas mileage secrets popping up. Most of these so called gas mileage secrets seem to concern driving techniques or fuel additives as ways to save on gas.

These are all well and good and most of them seem to make sense, but what if you could save on gas right at the start when you are filling up your tank? One of the oldest tips for saving on gas is to fill up your fuel tank in the morning. When gas is cooler you get more for your money thus giving you gas mileage improvements of a few cents per gallon. Why do you get more gas when its cooler? Read on to find out.

It seems that a gallon is not always a gallon when it comes to gasoline, as what's inside that gallon is subject to change at different temperatures. The tiny molecules that make up a gallon of gas are tightly packed and condensed when they are cool, but when the gas heats up they expand and separate. This will mean that the warmer the gas the less molecules per gallon and the less fuel you get for that gallon.

The actual science of this is true and experts have claimed that warm gas has in the past cost people more at the pumps than they would have paid for cooler gas. While the oil industry experts say that this is no longer true due to the way that gas is stored in underground fibreglass tanks, how come oil companies outside of the United States are giving drivers a price break on gas in hotter weather?

That's right gas stations in Canada get a price break from the oil companies in hot weather, these discounts are then passed onto the motorist by using pumps that monitor the temperature of the gas. They actually deliver more gas, a ("Bigger Gallon") when the gas is hot. This practice is known as "temperature compensation."

While the amount of compensation received by an individual driver may not be great, (around about 9 cents on a gallon) it does soon add up, and this small saving helps a little with the ever increasing cost of gas at the pumps. Take that 9 cents per gallon discount over a period of 12 months and you will realize what gas mileage improvements you could be making if this system was available in the United States.

But alas it seems that this system is not going to be available to us, even though groups like the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights and web-sites like Turn Down Hot Fuel have been calling for compensation for American drivers. In fact gas company executives insist that this system would not work here because if retailers sold larger gallons then they would charge more for it.

So it seems that if you are one of the many drivers looking for gas mileage secrets or any little way at all to get gas mileage improvements from their vehicles, then you will have to look further than trying to get savings at the pumps through "temperature compensation." Perhaps we should after all be filling up out gas tanks in the morning when the gas is cooler.