CarFacts is our iPhone and iPad app for car enthusiast, purchasers, and trip planners. It's for those of us who don't like "flying blind". Don't confuse CarFacts with a similar sounding app you may have seen advertised on tv - it provides completely different capability.
Let’s say you’re comparison shopping for a new car and you’ve selected several cars you like. You have a long daily commute to work and gas is expensive. So, you would like to know which car will be cheaper to drive, the hybrid or the conventional car. You will probably have to pay a premium for the hybrid, so how long will it take for the gas savings to equal the price premium? CarFacts can tell you! Just enter the miles you expect to drive in a year, month, or whatever, the price of gas, and the gas mileage of the car, and - out comes the cost. Suppose you found the car you want, you’re negotiating with the salesperson and he/she is throwing prices at you for various options. You want to know what your monthly payments will be. No problem - whip out your trusty iPhone/iPad and CarFacts can tell you. This works for mortgages too. So, CarFacts can tell you what your monthly mortgage payment will be for various interest rates and time periods.
You’re looking at an electric car whose engine is rated in kiloWatts(?), which means nothing to you. You want to know how many horsepower that baby has. Guess what? CarFacts can tell you! You remember when engine displacement was rated in cubic inches. How many cubic inches is 3.4 liters? Or, you’re looking at a truck with a torque rating of 519 nm. How many lb-ft is that? CarFacts can tell you! If there is an automobile stat that you feel would be useful, and CarFacts doesn’t tell you, let us know.
Version 3.1 adds the feature EPA. As the name suggests, this feature must have something to do with the Environmental Protection Agency. As a matter of fact it does. All new cars or trucks sold in the United States must have a Vehicle Emission Control sticker affixed to the window. Among other information, this sticker must contain the fuel efficiency data for the vehicle. It is this fuel efficiency, and in the case of EVs (electric vehicles) range, data that the EPA feature provides. In addition to each model, the manufacturer must provide data for each combination of transmission and wheel size they intend to sell. Vehicles are divided into four classes: Electic(EVs), Hybrids(HYVs), Internal Combustion Engine(ICE),and Fuel Cell Vehicles(FCV).
There are a large number of EVs combinations listed(over 150), and over 1100 ICE vehicles combinations listed. For ease of locating a particular vehicle, they are arrange alphabetically by model name.
For ease in locating a particular vehicle model, lightly flick a finger up or down in the white area of the model selection window until you see it and then select it by tapping the green model name.
The Environmental Protection Agency updates vehicle data several times a year(usually quarterly). CarFacts will also be updated with the new EPA data.
Version 3.1.1 began as a relatively minor update. My idea was to implement user keyboard input alerts for incorrect number inputs, i.e. , inputs which include non-numeric characters. What I forgot about was, this would require alert message translation for all six languages supported by CarFacts. Also, Apple from time to time, degredates (makes obsolete) certain software, requiring using something different in my code. This was one of those times. Lastly, a correction to version 3.1 notes, EPA published annual data is only updated annually.