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Think you’ve reached your personal breaking point because of high gas prices? Well GasBuddy.com is now thankfully on hand to lend a little bit of perspective to your fuel-bill fury, unless you live in one of those bright red areas anyway.

Using this rather clever Gas Temperature map, the fuel finding resource can tell you just how high or low your local prices are when compared to other counties in the nation. Ranging from green (cheap) to red (spendy), users can see which motorists are facing the worst of it.

Even better, the map allows you to zoom in to take a more detailed look at what’s happening in your area of the country, county, or even city block (check out the gallery above). In the closest view you can even find out what nearby stations are charging, so as to pick out the right one when you need to fill up. There’s even a Canadian version, though without any data for those prickly northern provinces.

+ GasBuddy.com

Long before gasoline rocketed through $4 a gallon many people were dismayed to see a significant percentage of their income disappearing into the tank of their car. Today, a wobbly economic outlook, increases in the cost of most other forms of energy, as well as the cost of life’s staples, have prompted folks to look for every possible way to cut back on spending. “Can I save money by running my car on Regular?” “Will it hurt the engine?” my friends ask. More than one person driving a car the manufacturer has spec’d for Premium has told me “I use Regular and my car runs fine.” Are there consequences of “down grading” your fuel? It is definitely a timely question, so we sent e-mail inquiries off to a half dozen manufacturers asking about their technology and their policy on the matter.

While waiting for their reply let’s review some internal combustion engine characteristics. Fuel does not truly explode in a cylinder, at least it isn’t supposed to. It burns smoothly, albeit very rapidly, across the cylinder. The octane rating is a measure of the propensity a given fuel has to burning, rather than exploding. Gasoline “exploding” in the cylinder is frequently called “detonation” or more colloquially, “knocking” or “pinging”. These explosions, because they happen as the piston is rising during the compression stroke and try to shove the piston back down the bore, can do damage over time. In the case of severely stressed motors, such as in race cars, a few seconds of serious detonation can destroy the engine. Two of the mechanical considerations affecting how smoothly a fuel burns are compression and cylinder head configuration. Two variable considerations of great importance are the temperature in the cylinder and the ignition timing. Every manufacturer designs and builds their engines to operate most efficiently for the application intended with a gasoline of a particular octane rating.

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Honda Civic

Honda Civic

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As car buyers research fuel-efficient vehicles in the wake of sky-high gas prices, more and more are asking if the price premium for a hybrid is worth the savings they'll realize in fuel costs. A recent study from NADAGuides finds "that only a handful of hybrid vehicles make financial sense." The group looked at ten different cities and a number of different driver mileage profiles to determine the true dollar value of hybrid savings.

Not surprisingly, hybrids pay for themselves faster when gas is more expensive. That being said, if you live in an area such as California, a hybrid makes more financial sense than if you lived in, say, Missouri, which has the lowest gas prices in the country as of today. But even given the local cost of fuel where you live, your commute distances should be taken into account.

"Drivers near major cities often have a wide range of commute distances, which means that the break-even point can be dramatically different from one person to the next," said NADA's Tara Baukus Mello, senior writer and lead market analyst for NADAguides.com. "For example, if a Houston-area commuter travels 12 miles one way to work, driving 10,000 total miles annually, while a Los Angeles-area commuter travels 25 miles one way, driving 15,000 total miles annually, the Los Angeles commuter recoups his investment almost 80 percent faster."

Even for the high-mileage California driver, however, only a few hybrids actually allow the driver to recoup the cost if they hold onto the vehicle for five years and track 15,000 miles a year.

The cars that have shortest time to break even are featured in the gallery above:

1. Toyota Camry Hybrid
2. Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid
3. Nissan Altima Hybrid
4. Toyota Prius
5. Honda Civic Hybrid

The Prius's spot at number four on NADA's list is somewhat debatable as they used the four-cylinder Toyota Camry LE as a comparison benchmark for fuel, whereas we'd probably compare it to a Toyota Corolla instead.

Out of the above choices, which one would you earmark if you were shopping on fuel savings alone?

+ Top Hybrids by Fuel Cost Recovery (NADA)

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/7-best-electric-scooters-prototypes-prod...

It's no surprise that the rising cost of fuel has been a huge topic of conversation within the automotive industry as of late. Because of this, more and more consumers are looking to hybrids and small car offerings as an alternative to larger gas guzzlers. Our friends at Consumer Reports are also showing that there is a growing interest in motorcycles and scooters from consumers around the nation.

According to Forbes, people care about fuel economy more than they did ten years ago. Ok, that’s obvious. However, CNW Marketing Research says while fuel efficiency is a growing concern, consumers still care more about interior features, like cup holders. Yup, cup holders.