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Settings: vehicles and fuel defaults

DashPilot keeps a small set of reusable preferences so that figures a driver would otherwise retype on every shift are typed once. It is reached from the gear in the top left of the main screen.

There are two things in it: the vehicles the driver works in, and the gas price they last paid.

Settings

Vehicles
  ✓ 2020 Honda Civic
    34 MPG

  2012 Toyota Camry
    28 MPG

  Add Vehicle

Fuel
  Current gas price          $3.19 / gallon

Everything here is a default for the next shift

This is the one sentence the screen exists to get across, and both of its footers say it in as many words.

Nothing derived reads these preferences. Not an estimated fuel cost, not a rate, not a total, not a coverage count, not a period figure and not an exported value. They are read at exactly one moment — when a shift starts — and copied onto that shift, which owns its copy from then on.

So:

  • Changing the gas price tomorrow does not restate what last week's shifts cost.
  • Correcting a vehicle's miles per gallon does not re-cost the shifts worked under the old figure.
  • Deleting a vehicle leaves every shift worked in it exactly as it was, still naming that vehicle.
  • Selecting a different vehicle changes the next shift and nothing before it.
  • None of the above reaches the shift currently running either. Its panel goes on naming the vehicle it recorded when it started, which is the question a driver mid-shift is actually asking. See Which vehicle the shift is using.

That is structural rather than a rule somebody has to keep: a finished shift holds the facts it was estimated under, and there is nothing for it to follow. See Estimated fuel and net.

Why the snapshot is taken at the start of a shift

The assumptions a shift is estimated under should be the ones that were true while it was being worked. A driver who changes vehicle at lunchtime, or who notices the price has gone up, has not changed what the shift has already consumed — and reading the defaults when a shift ended would let a change made mid-shift silently rewrite the assumptions the whole shift was worked under.

Starting a shift is also the last moment those facts cannot have moved, which is what makes the snapshot honest rather than merely convenient.

Two consequences worth knowing:

  • A shift started while nothing is set records nothing, which is exactly what every shift recorded before Settings existed carries. It reports which half of its estimate is missing, never an estimate of $0.00.
  • A shift already carrying assumptions is never overwritten by a default. The snapshot may only ever fill an empty pair.

Vehicles

A vehicle profile is two facts: a name the driver recognises and its miles per gallon.

The list of what a vehicle deliberately is not is the point. There is no VIN, no plate, no make, model or trim lookup, no odometer, no service schedule, no insurance record and no purchase price anywhere in DashPilot. A vehicle exists to hold the number a fuel estimate divides by.

  • Several vehicles are supported, listed in the order they were added so the list does not reorder under a rename.
  • One is selected, marked with a check, and is the one new shifts are recorded under. The first vehicle added is selected automatically, because a driver who has entered exactly one vehicle has said which one they work in. Tapping the selected vehicle again clears the selection, which is the way back to recording no economy at all.
  • A name is required, trimmed, and kept short. A profile with no name cannot be picked out of a list.
  • A fuel economy of zero or less is refused, because it is the divisor of every estimate a shift started under this profile will carry.
  • An edit moves both facts or neither. Correcting a name and mistyping the economy in the same edit leaves the profile with the pair it already had.
  • Deleting is safe. The confirmation says so: shifts worked in the vehicle keep their own miles per gallon, their estimated fuel and the vehicle's name.

Current gas price

One figure: what a gallon costs the driver now.

  • It is a convenience, not a price history. DashPilot keeps one current figure, not a series, and nothing anywhere records when it changed.
  • Nothing is looked up. There is no network request, no station search and no use of where the device is. The only source of a gas price is the driver typing one.
  • Zero and unrecorded are different facts. A recorded $0.00 says the fuel is recorded as costing nothing; removing the price leaves DashPilot with none, so a shift that starts records none.
  • A negative price is refused.

Applying the defaults to a shift already recorded

A shift worked before the defaults existed records nothing, and nothing fills it in on the driver's behalf.

What is offered instead is one explicit control. Opening that shift's fuel editor shows Use Current Defaults under the two fields, with the figures it would fill in named. Tapping it fills the fields; the shift records them only when the driver taps Save. Abandoning the sheet writes nothing.

Correcting the shift in progress

A driver who started a shift in the wrong vehicle can correct that shift's own snapshot, from the running shift's panel, and only while its route has recorded no distance. Choosing a vehicle there copies that vehicle's current name and miles per gallon onto the shift; nothing in Settings is written, the selection is not moved, and a later change to either does not follow. The correction closes once driving has been recorded.

That is the only way a preference ever reaches a shift after it has started, and it only ever happens because the driver saved. See Correcting the vehicle.

Accessibility

  • A vehicle row is one element that speaks its name, its economy with the unit spelled out — "34 miles per gallon", not "34 MPG" — and whether it is selected, because a check mark is not a statement to a listener.
  • The gas price row states its figure as a value with the unit spoken in full, and its hint says that changing it affects the next shift rather than a recorded one.
  • Both footers carry the historical-stability sentence, so the rule is readable rather than something a driver has to infer from behaviour.

Privacy

Vehicle names are free text the driver typed and are treated exactly as pickup place names and expense notes are: they stay on the device and are never logged. The fuel economy and the gas price are never logged either. The log records only that a vehicle was added, changed or removed, that the selection changed, that a price was recorded or removed, and which rule refused one.

Correcting a running shift's snapshot logs the same way: that a correction happened, and which rule refused one. Never the vehicle, never the economy and never the price.

Nothing here reaches the network, because there is no network code in DashPilot.

In an export

The driver's current preferences are not exported. Not the vehicle list, not the selection, not the gas price. An export is a record of work done, and what a driver has selected today says nothing about the shifts in it.

What is exported is the shift's own snapshot: the fuel economy, the gas price and the vehicle name it recorded, each an explicit null where it recorded none. See History export.