your MPG system sucks!!

[GRU]

Originally Posted by me and my metro

Or on a trip that is 1700 miles and the Navigator gets 17 mpg and gas is $4/gal.=$400/trip.

now let's try something a little harder.

trip is 560 miles and your havigator gets 17mpg.......go

[bandit86]

Originally Posted by GRU

now let's try something a little harder.

trip is 560 miles and your havigator gets 17mpg.......go

And gas is 3.57


I don't doubt they're are pros and cons to any type of measurement, but the metric just makes so much more bloody sense. Can add, multiply any unit. How many quarts is 192.4 oz? How many thou is 5/8 plus 1 7/16? It's just math but. Don't need it that complicated

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by GRU

now let's try something a little harder.

trip is 560 miles and your havigator gets 17mpg.......go

33 gallons, of course. Or 32.94... worked out to however many decimal places you like.

[me and my metro]

You want that in imperial gallons or liters? Canadian $ or US $?

[gone-ot]

...both ME and my CALCULATOR are "multi-lingual" -- both of us can do both SAE and SI calculations--except when going to Mars (wink,wink)!

[slowmover]

The conceptual point is the key.

I "blame" Teddy Roosevelt. Had we changed to metric at that point we'd be well set. If anyone could have made the effective persuasive argument it would have been him. Now all it does is hinder us with obsolete tools.

[Fat Charlie]

The conceptual point has nothing to do with metric, but with how you want to see your results. I spend my time by the hour, and speed limit signs tell me how far I can legally go in one of them. It doesn't matter whether or not I think in metric to understand them. I buy gas by the gallon, and our system that sucks tells me how far one of those gallons can take me. Simple math can convert that to metric without having to rethink everything.

MPG, MPH and KPH are all on the same page, no matter what yardsticks they use. To be consistent with L/100KM, speed limits would need to be expressed in H/100KM. I can't see a cop saying Sir, I clocked you at 49 minutes per 100 km. That's eleven minutes under the posted minimum! I'm in a good mood today, so I'll only write you up for 51 minutes. That won't add as many points to your license.

I generally go through CND once a year, and I'll make you guys a promise: when you change your speed limit signs to match the backwards math you use to express fuel economy, I'll start writing letters to my congresscritters pestering them to change our signs to the same format.

[bheadrick]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

poe-tay-toe vs. poe-tah-toe

flavor vs. flavour

color vs. colour

liter vs. litre

meter vs. metre

...ad nauseum

let's call the whole thing off!

[Kodak]

Originally Posted by bandit86

ever since I started to use it, it hasbeen a pain, now why cant you Americans simplify it a little, like gallons per sixty miles, or gallons per 100 miles?

This is good information, but it's not new. Google The MPG Illusion. I think it's been posted here on EM too. Gallons per mile is far more effective of a measurement, but mpg is embedded in our brains. It will be hard to change, despite the current method's flaws.

Gallons per 1,000 (one thousand - not one hundred with a typo) miles would be my vote, for mathematical ease, and fewer decimals in terms of gpm.

At least the EPA lists both values.