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As a car owner, finding out your average gas mileage will benefit you in many ways. It will, first of all, aid you in budgeting how much you’d want to spend for gas over the course of a week or a certain period of time. Besides that, it will help you alter your manner of driving as to not waste too much gas. So take the time to learn this particular subject.

Figuring out your car’s gas mileage is easier than it sounds. Some newer cars will have multi-information displays that automatically tell you your current mileage. Not all cars have this feature, though, so you will need to learn how to do it manually.

Follow these six easy steps. You may need a calculator, pen and paper, or you may calculate mentally.

1. Fill up your gas tank until it is full or until the fuel pump stops automatically. Take note of the number of kilometers currently displayed on your odometer.
2. Keep track of how many KMs you have driven until the next time you fill up your tank with gas. To do that, simply subtract the number of kilometers you had when you filled up your tank from the number of KMs displayed this next fill up. For example, your mileage was 10,000 on your first fill up, then 10,200 on your next. Therefore, it should be computed like this: 10,200 – 10,000 = 200. The total number of KM you have driven is 200.
3. Gas up and take note of how many liters of gasoline you have bought. Then the total number of kilometers should be divided by the amount of gasoline you purchased. For example, 200 KM / 20 liters = 10 kilometers per liter or KPL.
4. It is ideal to do this counting on a long road trip since you will be traveling continuously and it will get your mileage to easily increase as opposed to driving short, separate trips within your town or city.
5. Repeating this over a period of a couple of weeks will help you garner an average over this span of time.
6. Take several measures to efficiently make use of gas—several measures, such as, obeying speed limits.

Note that you can also reset your trip meter to zero to help you count the number of kilometers you travelled. This will be more accurate, since the trip meter counts to the nearest 100 meters, while the odometer will only count to the nearest kilometer.

Doing this is not just another one of those difficult math problems that you have to solve for over an hour. Although getting the variables take quite long, solving it is as easy as counting 1-3, especially with the help of a calculator.

It is important to be familiar with such a seemingly petty issue such as this—finding out your gas mileage. This may seem insignificant at first but in the long run, it will be of good use to you. Not only will it make an impact on the way you handle your car but it may also unknowingly help you in taking better care of it and encourage you to obey traffic laws. So go grab a pen and a piece of paper and get driving and solving now!

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