Fuel Economizers - Crap or Cool?

These fuel economizer gadgets have been floating around for years. They promise the moon - Better gas mileage! Lower emissions! Stop global warming! Ok, maybe not the global warming part, but some of these claims are a little too much to believe. As you can see, I'm in an overly polite mood. Since gas prices are skyrocketing and look like they'll remain in the stratosphere for a while, let's take a look at some of the sites offering these gadgets and see what they're all about.

FuelMaster.com - Well, they don't get any points for site design. Oops, my polite mood just went right out the window. They boast of selling 750,000 units and what do you know, they actually do claim to stop global warming. This site claims that an: "Independent, U.S. EPA Accepted Lab which showed results for FuelMaster showing an average of 11.6% better highway fuel economy." Ok, so far so good. But wait, there's more! The claims start to go downhill when they try to explain just how the FuelMaster works. Anytime a company starts a sentence with, "There are many theories regarding this. Yes, there is a patent on FuelMaster but even still we continue to research this phenomenon, to get closer and closer to a more definitive answer," I tend to back up a little.

They could tell you more, but hey, they're busy people. When a company doesn't know how the heck their gas saver works…Houston, we have a problem. The FuelMaster isn't cheap - the starter kit will cost you $50, but you also get handy little fuel treatments (which may explain the results their lab found.) Of course, you could save money if you joined their reseller team, which bears more than a passing resemblance to an MLM scheme.

FuelMaster doesn't have my vote. So let's move on to the FuelMiser.net site and see what they have to say. They at least offer a money-back guarantee on their gadget, and they even have a section on how it works. Brace yourself, this one is a doozy: "FUELMiser™ works on the principle of magneto-hydrodynamic technology, which is the effect of magnetic fields on fluids in motion." Oh, I get it. Instead of not explaining what it does, they figure they'll just bore the pants off of you and work the shock and awe technique. I'd share the rest of their description, but my cursor is comatose.

This one is priced a little bit higher at $85 bucks a pop, but hey, buy two and you'll only have to shell out $83 a piece. That's a savings of $2 or little less than a half a gallon of gas. Imagine the possibilities! In all fairness, this company actually has some pretty good testimonials, but they are all about six or seven years old. One interesting point, in these articles, their guarantee used to be for five years, and now it is ninety days. Scratch this one.

To round things out, let's finish up with the cleverly named Fuel OptiMiser. Wonder where they got the idea for that one? They also have a handy-dandy "affiliate program," but their money-back guarantee drops down to thirty days. They claim their model is a "proven fuel saver," achieving up to 24% better gas mileage, but they have that little star next to this claim to indicate, well, something. Unfortunately, they don't provide the "something" at the bottom of their page. This one apparently works by breaking up fuel molecules to allow "better oxygen exposure." They also threw in that hydrodynamics thingamajig to make it sound nice and techy. The one thing going for this model is its price tag - dirt cheap at $20. If you can believe their claims, not only will you experience better gas mileage, but it will actually increase horsepower. Now, that is something I would like to see.

The bottom line? None of these sites were able to convince me that this technology is something that deserves my hard earned money. What I found interesting was that each company claimed that their almost identical device had better results in the lab than the competition. Their figures vary from 11.6% all the way up to 24% better fuel economy, when they're all based on the same principle.

My advice? Wait until some actual (provable) studies are turned in by some real labs that are actually named. There is no magic bullet when it comes to improving fuel economy, unless you utilize sensible (and proven) methods like car pooling, switching to a hybrid vehicle and minimizing your trips.