We've all wondered it in moments of panic - once your car starts to show your fuel tank as completely empty, how much longer do you actually have before it sputters to a halt?
Especially now that cars have so many electronic components, your vehicle might well have a digital readout telling you how many more miles you can drive, to help you plan your refueling more precisely.
However, one recent YouTube Short has underlined the fact that you can sometimes push past the recommended stopping point by a surprising margin.
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Creator Tyler Blanchard took his used 2019 Honda Civic (a pretty fuel-efficient car by industry standards) out with a tank that had an empty fuel range reading to see how far he could drive.
Impressively, the car managed to eke out another 17.3 miles before it finally wouldn't go any further, something that makes it seem like you can be far more relaxed about your fuel tank than you'd first assume.
That impressive distance causes Blanchard and his cameraman to confidently agree that "you've have to be an actual idiot to run out of gas", which feels a little like hubris.
However, people in the comments section of the video have been pointing out that there are some pretty major hidden issues with doing this sort of experiment (especially if you start to push your car to the borderline regularly).
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As one person said, "His fuel pump is SCREAMING", because that component isn't designed to run on a near-empty tank for very long.
Another comment went into more detail on this point, explaining that "The fuel in the tank cools the pump and will burn up from being too hot. So eventually you can have a full tank but the car will run poorly before it dies completely and leave you stranded. I was told to always fill up at a 1/4 tank to keep from having to pay for a pump replacement."
So, it sounds like Blanchard's video might not be the revelation you could think - while it does demonstrate that your fuel tank is a conservative estimate, designed to keep you on the road, it still doesn't seem like a great idea to push past what it suggests.
Interestingly, this same conundrum also exists for electric car drivers like those who own a Tesla Cybertruck - when the internal display says you've run out of range, you often have a little bit more battery left to drain.
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Just like with a traditional fuel tank, though, pushing past this risks completely emptying your battery, which isn't good for it, so having a shorter range estimate to encourage you to find a charging point before that happens is a pretty stellar idea.