Traffic to Cost2Drive Surpasses AAA’s Fuel Cost Calculator!

When 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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C2G Launches Electric Car Commuting Calculator for Detroit Auto Show

To coincide with the start of the North American International Auto Show (also known as the Detroit Auto Show), C2G, LLC announces the launch of the Electric Car Commuting Calculator, a Facebook application that calculates how much money you’d save driving an electric car to work.

Already a Top 10 application in the Facebook Auto category, the Commuting Calculator determines the amount of money you’ll save 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.

To visit the application go to http://apps.facebook.com/costtodrive or go to Facebook.com and type in ‘Commuting Calculator’ in the search box.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!