The feds are still determined to get my car

[Louis-Alain Richard]

There was an interesting debate here about you Staters recently, a debate
about the way you express fuel consumption. About everywhere in the world,
mileage is volume/distance : liters per hundred kilometres being the
standard almost everywhere. 

On the other side, you express it in distance per volume. And this render
comparison and calculation more difficult. And this doesn't promote the
switch to a more fuel efficient vehicle.


Let see with your example : the formula for US gallon is :

235/mpg = liters/100km

Truck example :
10 mpg is 23.5 L/100km
16 mpg is 14.7 L/100km
Gain of 8.8 L/100km. 

Car example :
18 mpg is 14.7 L/100km
28 mpg is 8.4 L/100km.
Gain of 6.3 L/100km

Expressed like that, gains are obvious. If you drive 500 km a week, at 1$ a
liter (here in QC), the truck driver would gain 44$ a week, where the car
driver would only gain 32$ a week. Times 52, that's big money at the end of
the year.

But all of that will soon be superfluous since electric cars won't burn fuel
at all. Zero liters/100km? 
Or 230 mpg, as GM wants us to think of the Volt ?

No, we should harmonize energy consumption in cost per distance per country.
That would take into consideration premium/regular/diesel/ discrepancies, as
well as the real cost of the kW of electricity.

Maybe that way we'll interest people in more efficient vehicle ?

Louis-Alain




-----Message d'origine-----

At 03:00 PM 8/13/2009, you wrote:

It's a relative thing.  If you are trading in a F-250 with a 460 that 
gets 10 mpg in on a Hummer that gets 16 mpg, that's a significant 
amount of gas being saved, almost twice more per 1000 miles than a 
person with a car that gets 18 mpg trading it in on a car that gets 
28 mpg.  

George Selby