Category Archives: Commute

Traffic to Cost2Drive Surpasses AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator!

Cost2Drive December 2010 TrafficWhen you envision a product you often have an existing product in mind where you see opportunity to improve or enhance it in a way that will better serve the marketplace.  Validation can come in many forms, such as user feedback, press attention or, if your product is a Website, traffic.  When we first launched Cost2Drive.com back on October, 2008 AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator was the product we had our sights on.  So far we’ve received a great deal of validation from our users and the press that we built a superior product.

Today  we’re very excited to report that we’ve achieved our third point of validation as for the first time since launching Cost2Drive traffic to the site has surpassed AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator.  As gas prices have soared in the past few months Cost2Drive is taking a disproportionate share of the market with Unique Visitors up 184% in December over November and up a stunning 271% from December 2009!  Meanwhile according to Compete.com, a site that reports Website visitation numbers,  traffic to AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator plummeted as Unique Visitors were down 58% compared to November and down 55% from the prior year.

Based on internal traffic data it appears this trend is continuing in January as recession-battered consumers try to better plan and budget for rising gas prices, and according to a recent US Energy Information Administration report there doesn’t appear to be much relief in sight as gas prices could surpass $4 by this summer.    That’s why we continue to innovate by providing new tools like the Facebook application we launched last month that calculates how much money you’d save driving an electric car to work.

We still believe there is tremendous opportunity for further innovation in this space so look for more exciting news from us in coming months!

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Electric cars hit the market…will they save you money?

As prospective owners of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf begin receiving their eagerly anticipated cars in the coming weeks, a growing debate is raging over the actual cost of driving these vehicles.  A few weeks ago the EPA finally released the official fuel efficiency ratings for both the Volt and the Leaf, and it couldn’t have come at a better time as this past week gas prices in the US hit a 2-year high.   However instead of settling the issue it appears the EPA may have  added fuel to the debate (pun intended) by attempting to apply an MPG rating to an all-electric vehicle like the Leaf.

Chevrolet Volt EPA Sticker

Nissan Leaf EPA Sticker

Amidst the confusion one thing is becoming crystal clear; the primary motivation for purchasing an electric car will be cost savings.  Recent consumer research by J.D. Power and Associates and Consumer Reports confirm this indicating that the most important “green” factor in purchase decisions will be the greenbacks in your wallet.

So the question foremost in  consumers’ minds is ‘How  much money will I save in fuel costs by driving an electric car and does it justify the premium price of the vehicle?’.

Today we’re excited to announce the launch of an application that helps answer this question: C2G’s Commuting Calculator.

The Commuting Calculator determines the amount of money you’ll save by commuting to work in an electric car compared to your current vehicle. It does this by calculating the fuel cost of your daily work commute  and subtracting the electricity costs associated with driving an electric vehicle to arrive at a monthly and annual cost savings.

Although simple in appearance, there are actually some sophisticated processes running behind the scenes.  For example, the Commuting Calculator identifies gas prices near your home address from 80,000 stations across the US which makes the commuting cost personally relevant to you.  It also identifies the proper grade of fuel for your vehicle (regular, premium or diesel) from a vehicle database of more than 20,000 vehicles going back 20 years.  The electricity costs are determined by the EPA’s cost-per-mile findings for both the Volt and the Leaf.

You’ll note we’ve also built the application on the Facebook platform to make it  easy to share with friends, but you don’t have to be a Facebook member to use it as its available for free to anyone with access to the Internet.

I'd save $523 per year driving an electric car to work. Is it worth the $5,000 premium price of an electric car?

 

How much would you save driving an electric car to work? Find out here and let us know what you think!

Happy Driving!

What Does it Cost to Commute?

How much does it cost you to drive to work each day?  Most people don’t realize that transportation costs to and from work can end up being one of their largest monthly expenditures, and so here at C2G we’re working on tools that make it easy for people to quickly obtain this information.

When we built the ‘galculator’ back in 2008 we wanted to make the engine behind C2G’s applications versatile enough to address multiple audiences.  The focus of our initial product,  Cost2Drive, hit its mark with travelers as nearly 50% of the more than 1/2 million routes entered by users have been for trips over 1,000 miles (each way).  This makes sense as its a perfect tool for planning car trips, especially given the innovative ‘flight vs. drive’ cost comparison feature on Cost2Drive.com.

Another audience we always believed to be relevant was people shopping for new homes. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the second largest consumer expenditure is transportation, of which gasoline and motor oil comprise a sizable chunk at nearly 5% of all expenditures.

With so much money at stake we felt there was value in creating a tool to help consumers better anticipate these expenditures when buying a new home, and so it didn’t come as a surprise when we were approached to build a commuting calculator for RE/MAX, a global real estate network of franchisee-owned and -operated offices with more than 90,000 affiliated independent sales professionals.

The RE/MAX Commute Calculator provides the estimated time of your daily commute and the estimated monthly cost of your commute.

Today we’re delighted to announce that the Commute Calculator is now live on remax.com and all of their affiliated websites across the US.  To try out the application visit a property listing page on one of these sites and click on the ‘Calculate Commute’ link in the upper right hand corner of the page.  The property listing address will automatically appear as the Home Address, so all you need to do is enter your work address and vehicle information and the Commute Calculator will determine how long your daily commute will take and how much it will cost in monthly fuel charges based on current gas prices near the property address.

Not in the market to buy a house but still interested in discovering your monthly commuting costs?  No problem, simply visit one of these pages and  replace the property address with your own home address.  Add in your work address and your car information and you’re set to go.

Check it out and let us know what you think.  Meanwhile stay tuned for some other exciting new tools we’ll be releasing in the coming weeks.

Happy Driving!