Brian Gulbis
October 14, 2015
Recent events have revealed that some auto manufacturers have created certain modifications to their vehicles which resulted in falsely-high fuel efficiency ratings during government testing.
Many consumers are left wondering just how accurate the information provided by the manufacterers really is, and whether than can trust the information when purchasing a vehicle.
Given this, consumers need an independent way to estimate the fuel efficiency of a vehicle and verify the claims of the manufacturer.
To resolve this situation, a simple web-based app was created to estimate a vehicle's fuel efficiency (in miles per gallon), using only three characteristics of the vehicle:
Based upon the mtcars data set, linear regression was used to estimate the change in a vehicle's fuel efficiency as the horsepower, weight, or number of cylinders are changed.
model <- lm(mpg ~ hp + wt + factor(cyl), data=mtcars)
Below are the coefficients for each parameter which are used to calculate the effect each has on fuel efficiency.
(Intercept) hp wt factor(cyl)6 factor(cyl)8
35.84599532 -0.02311981 -3.18140405 -3.35902490 -3.18588444
The app is available by going to:
Users can input the three parameters for a vehicle they are interested in, and the app will calculate the estimated fuel efficiency (in miles per gallon, or MPG).
If the user adjusts one of the parameters, the app will automatically recalculate the fuel efficiency in real-time.