Has your Scangauge/Kiwi paid for itself yet???

[natethegreat38]

I have owned my Kiwi for about 2 weeks now and have saved about $23.50 in gas since driving more economically and watching my mpg more diligently.

Obviously the machine hasn't paid for itself yet, but I wanted to see what others were experiencing with their Scangauge- How long did it take (do you expect) for your Scangauge/Kiwi to pay for itself??

[Mikeb Yaris]

Hi Nate,

How are you figuring your savings exactly?

[natethegreat38]

lucky for me, I can program in the price of gas (per gallon) and the Kiwi spits out the $$ savings per trip, then keeps a record of all the $$ that I have saved since installing the Kiwi.

If you have the scangauge, I guess you would do the following:

Drive "normally" (as though you are not trying to save gas- A/C on, heavy acceleration from stop light, etc...), and see what kind of MPG you are getting. Then, compare it to the way you drive when trying to conserve gas. After taking the difference between the two, you can estimate the $$ saved.

Example: Lets say your "normal" driving yields about 32 MPG and your conservative driving yields 41 MPG. Assuming gas is $2.90 per gallon, the cost of driving would be .09062 cents per mile and .06904 cents per mile, respectively. The difference would be .02158. Now you would multiply this by the number of miles you approximate that you have had the scangauge. Say you have had it 12,000 miles. Multiply 12,000 x .02158 and you would have saved $258.96. (note that this example assumes that gas stayed $2.90/gallon for the entire 12,000 miles).

Of course you would have to keep adjusting the formula per tank as you fill up because the price of gas may change, but this gives the basis on how to calculate the savings. I hope I didn't confuse you, I was just wondering how much people have saved since purchasing their device...

[Mikeb Yaris]

Nate,

I was mainly curious about how you're doing it with the fluctuating gas prices - whether you could change the price with each tank or not on the KIWI.

I don't mean to complain about falling gas prices, but it makes it a task to do these calculations - not to mention that for the last three tanks, each time I tell you, the price of gas here has dropped ten cents AFTER I filled! grrrrr!

I do occassionally calculate how many gallons I've saved over my previous vehicle, and it's HUGE. Going from 20 - 23 mpg up to 38 - 43 mpg is a great savings no matter the price of gas plus learning about efficient driving and trying new techniques is a very fun hobby - almost enough to go out driving (wasting fuel) just for the purpose of learning / honing skills! lol

[natethegreat38]

I feel you on being frustrated that the gas prices drop AFTER the fill up!! And I feel the same about wanting to get in my car and just drive around a while to "better my technique"!! I never looked at improving my driving style (for FE reasons) as a "hobby" but I guess it is a good way to put it!

Calculating it would be quite a hassle if you had to do it that often. One of the selling points of the Kiwi for me was just that feature- you could put in the gas price and it would tell you how much (in $$) i am saving.

[Mikeb Yaris]

That's a nifty feature.

I like the looks better than the SGII. The SGII reminds me of a movie I saw about Steve Jobs building computers in his garage. But I have to say I'm pretty turned off by the price of the KIWI. The only way I think I'd go that high on the device would be if it could be plugged into your PC and came with graphing software. Now THAT could be handy!!

[natethegreat38]

It can be plugged into your computer, but I haven't done it yet, so I don't know if it can upload data. I know that it did not come with any software disc for a computer, but there is a download section on their website... I'll have to look into that!

[natethegreat38]

I wrote an email to PLX about the Kiwi asking them about the data download feature. They said that it is a feature that is in development and will be implemented sometime in the near future. I would guess it will be able to chart/graph the data as you would like... PLX seems like a pretty cool company. I can't speak on their behalf, but if you got enough people to buy, I'd bet that they would do a group buy for you guys!