Posted on 07/13/2010 8:04:34 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Drop 'miles per gallon' as fuel measure, says US National Research Council
The US National Research Council has said that "miles per gallon" should not be used on its own in measuring a car's fuel use, backing a green motorist's group which called the measure "stupid".
By Tom Chivers Published: 2:57PM BST 13 Jul 2010
The NRC said that the measure caused consumers to overestimate the importance of changes at high miles-per-gallon (mpg) values, and underestimate it at small ones. Particularly, it says: "Fuel economy data cause consumers to undervalue small increases (1-4 mpg) in fuel economy for vehicles in the 15-30 mpg range."
The panel urged that fuel use be displayed as fuel consumed - perhaps as volume of fuel used per 100 miles - alongside the traditional miles-per-gallon measure. This standard is used already in Europe, with fuel use being given in terms of litres used per 100 kilometres travelled.
An environmental motoring website, GreenCarReports.com, welcomed the move, saying that it had been calling for the change for over a year and describing the mpg measure as "stupid". It asks the question: "Do you save more gasoline by going from 10 to 20 mpg, or going from 33 to 50 mpg?"
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Mostly, but many people also commute a fixed difference every day to and from work. That doesn't change much. Or they know how far they need to travel. With gallons/100miles, it's easier for the average person to reason about the economic consequences of buying a particular vehicle.
The amount of fuel saved over a particular distance becomes obvious when comparing gallons/100miles among vehicles. It's simple subtraction.
I bought an HHR for business. 156k miles in three years. The cost of tires, brakes, and other ancillary costs make it more expensive to drive than my Trailblazer was over the same period.
The reason is that it was simply not built for work—it looks like it was—and it was positioned that way. But it really is a lightweight peice of junk.
Good mileage though.
They just want to restrict anything labeled: “Uses Gasoline”.
Fuel used per 100 miles doing what? Driving on the hwy or sitting at stop lights in city traffic? This is just as stupid as MPG....
MMMM Pi! Apple's my favorite.
“The self righteous greenies want to move to mileage tax.”
I don’t much like taxes. Or self-righteous ‘greenies’. But I think a ‘greenie’ would prefer a consumption tax to a milesage tax. A milesage tax would hit equally whether driving a prius or a hummer 100 miles, right? So you might have misidentified the motivation.
And using that dumbed down math Neil Armstrong would have taken one small step for man into a pile of dung in Texas!
Nannies love negative measures.
You have to cut your calories!
You have to lower your blood pressure!
You have to reduce your take-home pay!
You have to decrease your L/100KM!
Free People love positive measures.
You want to increase your enjoyment of food!
You want to improve your health!
You want to make more money!
You want to increase you MPG!
Who do you like better? Nannies or Free People? Europeans or Americans? Bunnyhuggers or Drivers?
That’s why I think miles per tank is more useful. Because if they know how far they travel most days then if given miles per tank they can easily work out how long between fill ups, which in the end is what people really care about.
Gallons per hundred is really just MPG reversed, it really doesn’t give any different information. A fixed mile driver sees MPG and knows how their drive relates to a gallon, and it’s just as simple a subtraction as gallons per hundred. If you’ve got a 14 mile round trip to work and a 32MPG listing (my stats) that’s 2 trips a gallon and it’s easy to work out, and no harder to work out than if they listed it as 3.1 gallons per hundred. What you don’t necessarily know, because they tend to be pretty cagey about tank size for whatever reason, is how do I have to fill the thing. Which really is the data that matters, when push comes to shove what people really care about is how often they have to visit the gas station.
Europe is not better. I just came back from there.
They move from their cramped apartments to their government jobs in hot, Smelly underground tubes. Those fortunate to have their own transportation have tiny little smart cars.
I never felt so free as when I returned and drove, alone, in my huge SUV with air conditioning, surround sound stereo, satellite navigation and cell phone.
I guess hectokilometer could be used.
If they want to talk liters per kilometer, well, that makes sense. Or maybe milliliters per kilometer, if they want to deal with intergers. Thirty MPG would be 12.75 km/liter or 78 milliliters per kilometer.
Using ounces and feet is sometimes interesting.
30 mpg would be about 0.234 miles/ounce or 1,237.5 feet/ounce, or 4.267 ounces/mile.
16 mpg would be about 0.125 miles/ounce or 660 feet/ounce, or 8 ounces/mile.
An ounce of fuel for just 660 feet really doesn't sound that impressive.
IT IS EASIER to understand how much fuel and thus money you can save when fuel economy is expressed as gallons per hundred (or thousand) miles driven.
In fact, I did some quick math to figure out the savings when moving from 30 to 40 mpg and when moving from 15 to 20 mpg, assuming 1000 miles driven per month. You save twice as much going from 15 to 20. I did not intuit that. The relevant calcualtion is, essentially, an expression of gallons per thousand miles driven.
Or to put it another way, L/KM makes sense if you see fuel as being rationed. “I only have one Liter of fuel this week, so how many KM can I go?”.
On the other hand, MPG makes sense if you see fuel as being an unlimited commodity. “I want to go 100 miles this week, so how many gallons am I going to need?”
It’s a different mindset, and in this respect the units used by Americans and Europeans suit their cultures very well.
The bunnyhuggers want us to start looking at fuel as a rationed commodity, because they want to ration it. It’s about political motivation and power. Free people naturally resist that idea, and cling to the MPG measure.
Next time you go to a dealership have a good look at the window sticker.
They already estimate gas cost per year for the vehicles based on $4 per gallon gas (if I remember correctly).
All they would have to do is add in cost of basic maintenance, insurance and registration (annual taxes if you prefer). The insurance and registration vary drastically from state to state, but I still think that this would be a much better yard stick to give people for comparing cars.
I memorized it in 6th grade as 3.141592654.
Yes, drams per fortnight would be a better way to measure fuel economy.
How about Furlongs per fortnight?..............
How many cubits in a furlong?
I thought the same thing.... these people are, IMO, idiots.
Or, to put it still another way, when you have figures like this, you want the number you control to be the numerator and the dependant value as the denominator.
In America, I control how many miles I drive. I want to go a certain distance, so I calculate consumption using Miles as the numerator and the dependent value of my consumption as the denominator.
However, if gasoline is rationed, I no longer control how many miles I drive. I can only drive until I run out of fuel, and then I’m hoofing it the rest of the way. Under this regime, it makes sense to use Liters as the numerator and the dependent value of miles traveled as the denominator.
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