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Finding cheap gas on the Web
Given still-stratospheric gas prices, I decided to test drive a few Web sites that promise to help you find the lowest gas prices in your area. Our colleagues in the Cars franchise listed several such sites a few months ago when regular unleaded cost &
#34;only" $3 per gallon. Comparison shopping online is faster than cruising the neighborhood for a bargain, and you won't be burning any gas. But it's useful only if online prices are accurate and there are significant variations among local stations. As a reality check, I drove around my north New Jersey neighborhood recently, jotting down credit card prices for regular unleaded at 15 stations. (Disclaimer: Approximately one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was consumed in the production of this blog post.) The highest price I saw for regular was $4.06 and the lowest was $3.89 (for credit cards; cash prices were a bit lower at a few stations). If that seems like a bargain compared to your neck of the woods, it's because New Jersey has some of the lowest gas prices on either coast. If you drive 12,000 miles a year (the national average) and get 24.3 mpg (the average we found in a random nationwide survey last month), buying the cheapest gas would save you about $84 a year—nothing to get excited about, though it's a psychological boost to pay even a little less for gas these days. And if you drive more than average or have a less fuel-efficient vehicle, your savings could be greater. After my station tour, I went to four free Web sites to see whether their price listings were accurate: GasPriceWatch.com, MapQuest, MSN Autos, and NewJerseyGasPrices; (associated with the national site, GasBuddy). These sites display interactive maps that show the price at each station's geographical location, and they usually tell you how recently each price was updated. MapQuest and MSN get their price information from Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), which tracks more than 90,000 retail gasoline prices daily. GasPriceWatch and GasBuddy get them from volunteer “spotters.”
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