In a world of rising fuel costs, nearly everyone is looking for ways to save money on gas.  There are many techniques to achieve this.  Some are conventional, like emptying your trunk of unnecessary clutter.  But there are some more “out there” methods that claim to help you save money on gas.  The one that jumps out is filling your tires with pure Nitrogen instead of regular old air.

While Nitrogen’s main claim is to be a fuel saver, there are many other bold claims, some of which include improvement of vehicle handling, better tire pressure retention and a longer tire life.  Race Car Drivers certainly get it.  However, we are not all racers.

Have you noticed the green valve stem caps?  Nitrogen is everywhere!  More and more people are using it.  Costco fills every tire they sell with nitrogen.  Discount Tire has nitrogen as an option.

While statistics have proven that most (if not all) of the bold claims are true, the question remains:  is it worth it?

It costs in general about $5-7 per tire to fill with nitrogen, and air (yep, you guessed it) is free.  You can go almost anywhere to find air for your tires, but good luck trying to find a nitrogen dispenser.  In our local area, Costco has nitrogen available as does Discount Tire.

There are also a handful of car dealerships that offer Nitrogen.  My family has first-hand experience with a new car purchase that came with nitrogen.  The dealership the car came from had nitrogen, but the dealership that we purchased from did not.  We paid a significant amount more than $6 per tire for the nitrogen.

A month into the purchase, and the dash lit up with no fewer than 4 tire pressure warnings.  Way to go Nitrogen.  The supposed “pressure change resistance” is seemingly non-existent.  We lost a whole 2 PSI from 40 degrees to 30 degrees.

All in all, given all the subtle performance enhancements and the substantial comparative cost, my humble opinion is to save your money and just fill your tires with regular old air.

Next thing you know, they’ll be selling water in bottles!!