Nobody can have failed to notice the incredible rise in the price of gas in recent months. This has come after years of slowly increasing prices and we are now at a point where everybody is feeling the pinch. The rise may mean you are driving a bit less or perhaps it means you have cut back on your spending. Few people are able to just ignore it.



Is there anything that we can do about this? That is the question everybody wants answered so I will try to answer that here. We cannot change the price of oil. Maybe the politicians can do something but for now we are on our own. There are ways to use less gas in the way we drive and the type of vehicles we drive or we can make our own cars and trucks run further on what gas we have.

One of the first things we should think about is how often we use our cars. If we can do fewer trips then we will use less gas. Doing several jobs while you are out will save you having to drive again later to get those things done so you will use less gas. You could think about doing car sharing with a neighbor for shopping trips and you both end up saving money on gas and you get to know your neighbors better too.

There are ways of driving that use less gas. If you tend to drive with your foot pressed hard on the accelerator or hard on the brakes you are wasting fuel and to get the best gas mileage you should learn how to drive in a more gentle fashion. Planning ahead is the secret to this and if you see the traffic slowing ahead of you start easing off the throttle and then brake gently. Ideally you can plan ahead so well you will need to stop less often and since most gas is used accelerating you could save quite a lot of gas this way.

Next we can run our cars in a more economical way. We could buy a smaller and more efficient car, we can get our car serviced which can sometimes make it run a lot better and use less gas or we can add certain gas saving devices to our vehicles which help to reduce the amount of gas we use.

These gas saving devices have been mocked over the years. Car companies and the oil industry have been quick to dismiss them. The trouble is that these organizations have a vested interest and the oil companies wanted us to use more gas while the car companies didn't want to look like they were not bothered about our cars fuel consumption.

Maybe in the past the savings were not worthwhile. The cost of the device might have taken years to repay because gas was cheap. Now that gas is so expensive we should look again at these devices to see if there is a case to be made for them.

We have all heard talk of the future economy being based on Hydrogen. It is probably a few years away yet. It will take time to devlop the infrastructure and the supply sysems to get hydrogen to every gas station and hydrogen cars will be a while coming too. In the meantime there are a lot of people who have developed their own hydrogen systems to use on their cars and save on gas.

Enthusiasts working away in their garages and workshops have come up with systems that are easily built from regular parts available at local hardware stores and can be put together in a few hours. They explain how to build these kits and fit them to your car and you could be reducing your gas usage in next to no time all thanks to a simple guide you can get online.