Perhaps there is too much reliance on the dashboard, or people in general are just accepting what the gas pump says. The fact is vehicles should be doing a better job of informing owners how much fuel is consumed and spent.

Something like this quartz/LCD display should be standard and affixed to every vehicle by the gas cap. This will tell you A) How much fuel you are putting in B) How much mileage you can expect to get from what is in the tank C) How much mileage you got since your last fill and D) Odometer and other maintenance info that might be timely when you are at the gas station - like oil, washer fluid, tire pressure, etc.

This would serve to do a few things:

1.) Ensure you are getting the correct amount of fuel. Yes there may be some disagreements with the pump, but it should be within a single percent. If this was a standard device, then multiple vehicles would detect that a particular gas pump is incorrect and ripping-off customers.

2.) You can better plan your vehicle’s usage to fit your economic or travel needs. Knowing what you can expect from your tank would be so handy, really takes the guess work out of it.

3.) Monitor your vehicle’s fuel consumption. Are you getting fewer miles for every fill? The vehicle could alert you when it is not using fuel in an optimum fashion, and direct you to some remedies, like tire pressure or changing oil.

I’m going to say there are ZERO excuses for why this doesn’t exist or isn’t already standard. The means to create this type of gadget with a quartz/LCD display is dirt cheap. Monitoring equipment is also inexpensive, and your car is already stuffed to the gills with sensors, this would be just tapping into the existing network.

The only people who wouldn’t like this are gas station owners who illegally tamper fuel pumps to steal from people.