OBD2
Those of you with more modern cars will probably have displays or trip computers that give you a lot of information on how the car is running plus data on how you are driving, like mpg (or lpk). On my 2006 Mondeo you get an mpg reading but I think it is just a long term average rather than real time or average over the last minute.
I'm not an aggressive driver in terms of flying away from lights but I'm not a cloth cap man type either! Given that petrol prices seem to be creeping up again I was curious to see if I could change my driving habits and save a bit of fuel.
The car has an OBD2 port so I thought about getting a dongle and app that I could use to monitor realtime fuel use. Being an older car it doesn't have the same array of sensors that a lot of modern cars have. But after checking I found that it should have most of the important or useful ones.
If you search for OBD2 dongles you can pay anything upwards of £4! You then need to get an app for phone or tablet. Some work over Bluetooth and some over WiFi and as I have an iPhone most seem to be WiFi.
I noticed that TomTom do a dongle and have an app that is designed to work together and the app has a simple interface to graphically show your driving. This cost £56 so I ordered one as I thought it would save the hustle of finding a dongle and then a suitable app. After ordering I found the TomTom web site only to discover my car is not compatible (not tested). However, the car uses the same protocols as other Ford models of the same age and that they were "approved" I was hopeful.
Once it arrived I plugged it in, paired it, installed the app and.... Nothing. It did tell me the battery charge but that was it. Even after the usual reinstall/reset nothing so back it went. TomTom didn't even know Amazon sold it!
He one I went for is Amazon product ASIN B011O69946 which cost £9.50 but it does seem to vary.
Plugged it in and connected to the WiFi and then used a free app to check connectivity and found it seemed to work OK. I then bought an app call Dash Commander (£7.99) after checking most that were available. This app gives loads of info, possibly too much. But for fuel economy the flow rate is easy to watch and gives a decent idea of how much you are using. It does display fuel use over several time intervals but that gets confusing and not safe to watch and drive!
Apart from fuel and other data you can also get error codes and for some reset them. So far it seems to be worth getting it. Since I have had it I've only done short journeys so it will be interesting to see how it works on longer runs. Even if fuel consumption doesn't drop too much it still should pay for itself after a short while.
Those of you with more modern cars will probably have displays or trip computers that give you a lot of information on how the car is running plus data on how you are driving, like mpg (or lpk). On my 2006 Mondeo you get an mpg reading but I think it is just a long term average rather than real time or average over the last minute.
I'm not an aggressive driver in terms of flying away from lights but I'm not a cloth cap man type either! Given that petrol prices seem to be creeping up again I was curious to see if I could change my driving habits and save a bit of fuel.
The car has an OBD2 port so I thought about getting a dongle and app that I could use to monitor realtime fuel use. Being an older car it doesn't have the same array of sensors that a lot of modern cars have. But after checking I found that it should have most of the important or useful ones.
If you search for OBD2 dongles you can pay anything upwards of £4! You then need to get an app for phone or tablet. Some work over Bluetooth and some over WiFi and as I have an iPhone most seem to be WiFi.
I noticed that TomTom do a dongle and have an app that is designed to work together and the app has a simple interface to graphically show your driving. This cost £56 so I ordered one as I thought it would save the hustle of finding a dongle and then a suitable app. After ordering I found the TomTom web site only to discover my car is not compatible (not tested). However, the car uses the same protocols as other Ford models of the same age and that they were "approved" I was hopeful.
Once it arrived I plugged it in, paired it, installed the app and.... Nothing. It did tell me the battery charge but that was it. Even after the usual reinstall/reset nothing so back it went. TomTom didn't even know Amazon sold it!
He one I went for is Amazon product ASIN B011O69946 which cost £9.50 but it does seem to vary.
Plugged it in and connected to the WiFi and then used a free app to check connectivity and found it seemed to work OK. I then bought an app call Dash Commander (£7.99) after checking most that were available. This app gives loads of info, possibly too much. But for fuel economy the flow rate is easy to watch and gives a decent idea of how much you are using. It does display fuel use over several time intervals but that gets confusing and not safe to watch and drive!
Apart from fuel and other data you can also get error codes and for some reset them. So far it seems to be worth getting it. Since I have had it I've only done short journeys so it will be interesting to see how it works on longer runs. Even if fuel consumption doesn't drop too much it still should pay for itself after a short while.
