I recently read an article in The New York Times that claimed we’d save more fuel as a country if we stopped measuring miles-per-gallon and began measuring gallons per 10,000 miles. The sentence that got my attention was this: “The jump from 10 to 20 m.p.g., for example, saves more gas than the one from 20 to 40 m.p.g. The move from 10 to 11 m.p.g. can save nearly as much as the leap from 33 to 50 m.p.g.”
On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make sense, and I assume that’s because we’ve been brainwashed (conditioned) into thinking m.p.g. is the gold standard. After all, the government’s mandated that it appear on the window stickers of all new cars.
So I opened up a spreadsheet and tried some scenarios, and here’s what I found. It’s absolutely true.
For example, if you get 30 m.p.g. in the city now driving your Volkswagen Jetta and you switch to the Honda Civic Hybrid because it gets 40 m.p.g. in the city, you’ll save 83 gallons over the next 10,000 miles.
However, if you can convince your neighbor who drives a Ford E150 Club Wagon that gets 13 m.p.g. in the city to switch to a Toyota Sienna with 4WD that gets 17 m.p.g. in the city, he’ll save 181 gallons over his next 10,000 miles (of city driving).
In each example, the improvement in m.p.g. is 30%, but note that much more gasoline (118% more) is saved by the switch away from the worst gas-guzzler.
Thus, if we really want to burn less gasoline, the battle to make a sensible vehicle that gets 50 m.p.g. is less important than the battle to get people out of the worst gas-guzzlers and into vehicles with more average consumption rates. To do that, it helps to focus not on m.p.g., but on gallons burned per miles traveled. So now I want the folks in Washington who’ve got us all conditioned to think about m.p.g. ratings to shape up. Make us read gallons per 10,000 miles instead, and help us understand where real progress can be made. Of course, knowing Washington, doing this will take years … if it is achieved at all.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Jerry // Jan 9, 2009 at 12:11 pm
What in the world is someone doing driving an E350 or Sienna 4 WD in city traffic? That’s the problem and what makes the comparison invalid. If people only drove the right vehicle for the conditions and their needs, this would be a non-issue. I ran the spreadsheets comparing them to a Prius getting 50 MPG. Mine actually gets 52.2 for the 50K miles I’ve driven it, but I rounded down. Compared to the E350 you would save 569 gallons and to the Sienna you would save 388 gallons. When I drive to the post office, the bank, the library, etc., I see these huge vehicles next to mine with one or two people in them. They are literally dumping hundreds of gallons of fuel waste products into the air every 10,000 miles and filling the pockets of foreign oil producers with money so they can use the vehicle for its intended purpose maybe three times a year. The rest of the time destroying the environment and wasting fuel and money when compared to an economical vehicle.
At $2/gallon a person would save $1138.46 driving the Prius compared to the Ford and at $4/gallon the savings would be $2276.92. If the person is driving that gas guzzling vehicle because they like a big vehicle, not because they need it to work or do their daily activities, they should be paying the differential in price regarding wasted fuel used compared to the Prius each year to a fund to develop alternative, renewable energy sources. And that should go for every vehicle that gets worse mileage than the Prius. When we institute such a system, we will be well on our way to energy independence. As long as we don’t we are simply subsidizing foreign oil producers who have us by the throat. Check out the two recent times when Russia shut off gas supplies as the warning regarding what we face for our wanton misuse of foriegn energy–but of course are ignoring–as we always do. We are in a similar situation regarding oil and will be until we have alternatives that are not foreign-derived.
Give people an economic stimulus to drive the vehicle with the best fuel economy that will perform for 90% of their activities and we will be working to solve our energy and environmental problems. That stimulus is to charge them for the fuel they waste compared to a Prius and use the money to get us off foreign oil. Give people the ability to drive anything they want no matter what their needs, with no penalty, and we will continue to drive ourselves over a cliff.
2 John Rosevear // Jan 13, 2009 at 7:46 am
I’ve been arguing this for years — getting moms-with-kids out of Tahoes and Suburbans (14 mpg) and into minivans (19 mpg) is a much, much more significant shift (in more ways than one) than getting someone out of an A4 and into a Prius. Too many members of the Prius crowd don’t understand that; they should.
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