Two Engineers Went From Tracking Beer Prices To Gas Prices
The Guinndex is a handy tool for the Irish citizen. It uses AI chatbot assistants and crowdsourced data to uncover the price of a pint of Guinness across Ireland. It's a fun, somewhat handy tool. The AI chatbots call pubs and get the cost of a pint, while users can report prices directly to the site themselves. Now, the engineers behind it, Matt Cortland and Jon Fleming, have expanded the site's capability to track something very relevant for American consumers (besides the cost of a pint of Coors).
The Gas Index applies the same principle. Three AI chatbots, clearly named for Arlen's most famous family, call gas stations to source the price of a gallon of gas. What data Hank, Peggy, and Bobby can't obtain is handled by crowdsourcing, just like The Guinndex. The Gas Index also allows you to add your vehicles and location to an account. Then, it can tell you how far you'll have to drive to get it, your car's fuel economy, and what octane you'll need to buy.
The dataset is incredibly granular. For example, we were able to find the cost of a gallon of gas halfway across the country in New York: the BP at 2430 FDR Dr Service Rd East, New York, NY. It's $7.60 per gallon, so perhaps consider driving over to Queens instead. The price at this BP station is more than $3.00 per gallon above the current national average, which the site states is hovering around $4.07 at the time of publishing.
The Gas Index
Tons of other data are also displayed on the site, including average prices for specific vehicles like the Ford F-150, Jeep Wrangler, Toyota Tundra, and others. The site tracks how much fuel prices have risen since the US began its war in Iran, and displays exactly how much more American drivers are paying for fuel since the conflict began.