Road Trip – An iPhone Application
One of my all-time favorite (and one of my most used) applications for the iPhone is Road Trip. It is developed soley by Darren Stone. Darren has done a great job polishing this application. One of my largest complaints about most applications is that they are not polished and they do not feel like they are native iPhone apps. This app is not that way; it has a very clean and easy-to-use interface and it has all of the features that I need.
Let me bein by showing the home page. After you add your first vehicle, this page shows up to show you all of your data. I currently have 6 fill-ups entered into the application:
This menu shows all of the statistics for your trip. It’s great for a quick glance to see how much money I spend a day on gas and what the average price of gas is. Here is a picture showing the graph that was previously covered up:
So we can see that the minimum price for gas is $1.49 and the maximum is $1.87. I have ranged between 18.3 and 32.4 mpg (although I’m not sure how I managed 18.3; maybe it was an input error). I can also glance and see how much I have spent on maintenance. Also, the paid version of this application allows me to specify certain time ranges and road trips, so that I can see how much I spent in a month or on a specific road trip. It is a really nice feature.
In the fuel tab, I can see (and edit) each individual fuel entry. If you click on the “+” symbol, it brings you to a menu where you can add more fuel. This is the best part of the application. You put in the cost of the fuel, your odometer reading, and how much fuel (in gallons or liters) you pumped and it does the rest. Optionally, you can specify a location for the gas pump and whether you were driving in city conditions, highway conditions, or mixed conditions. This is great for keeping city/highway meters.
The preferences panel:
Here you can set all of your preferences, but I want to draw your attention to some extra features. In the notes section, you can enter additional information that you may need, such as your license plate number, VIN, insurance name (and details). Also, the Export Data button is extremely helpful. You can export your data (and import it into other iPhones/iPod Touches) and then import it into Microsoft Excel or equivalent.
Road Trip is a great iPhone/iPod Touch application and I highly recommend it. A “Road Trip Lite” version is available for free from the App store. Road Trip is currently $4.99 and is well worth its price.
I have this app and use it to track my gas mileage in my wife and my cars. It works great, has a lot of features, gives lots of useful stats on your fuel consumption and vehicle expenses. Well worth the small price.
I just purchased this really great app yesterday (the paid one as I need to track for 2 cars). I already entered all the maintenance and service entries, and now I have to start tracking my gas. A question though, it doesn’t tell you how to start with your first gas entry. Do you fill up to start with? Do you enter still the number of liters/gallons you needed if you fill up? Do you keep the “Filled Tank” option on for that first entry?
How did you do? Do you recall?