10 to 12 mpg improvement is the same as 30 to 60 mpg

[NachtRitter]

Just imagine if you go from 10mpg to 60mpg... !!!

[NachtRitter]

Originally Posted by Kodak

In truth, and they articulated this in the video, mpg is a poor measurement of FE, for the simple fact that it isn't linear.

Did they propose a better measure?

[tortoise]

Originally Posted by NachtRitter

Did they propose a better measure?

Turn it upside down. Gallons per mile. Make it gallons per 100 miles so you get a more useful number. That's the way (metrically, of course), the Europeans do it. Of course, if Americans did anything the Yurpeein' way, we'd turn into a goldang bunch of socialists or queers or sumthin.

[JacobAziza]

Perhaps people who know this choose not to emphasis it because it might encourage Joe Public to buy a 10mpg SUV and drive it slightly more modest to get 12mpg on the grounds that they are "saving" lots of gas that way.

Ecomodder may be focused on getting more mpg out an existing vehicle, but driving a car that gets 30mpg stock and then getting EPA estimate saves more gas than driving a car that gets 10mpg stock and then hypermiling it all the way up to 20mpg

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by briank

So I got my spreadsheet out and low and behold it works out that Vehicle A going from 10 mpg to 12 mpg at X miles/year will give the same reduction in number of gallons/year as Vehicle B going from 30 mpg to 60 mpg, when both vehicles travel the same number of miles.

Demonstrating only that you've completely missed the point - which is that a vehicle that gets 12 mpg burns one gallon of gas to travel 12 miles, while one that gets 60 mpg travels 60 miles on a gallon. Duh!

[tortoise]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

. . . you've completely missed the point . . . Duh!

THE point? Maybe there's more than one point to be seen? Could YOU even possibly be missing one?

[ecomodded]

It truly shows how terrible a vehicle with 10 mpg economy is.
A measly 2 mpg gain for the road pig and a bright 30 mpg gain for the econo box.

[D.O.G.]

It's fun to get high numbers in the percentage race, but you have to remember what those numbers really mean, in the real world.

Both my cars, Baa and Zed, are running about 31% above EPA.

Driving Baa to work costs around $9.30 a day.

Driving Zed to work costs around $15.75 a day.


Driving Baa will save me around $1548 a year.

[niky]

While the statement is true... it only matters in terms of reducing OEM's efficiencies. A 2 mpg gain for stock trucks versus direct competitors and the previous year model is a pretty darn good thing.

But if you measure it in terms of gallons per 100 passenger miles... if you're using a 12 mpg car to deliver one person to their destination versus using a 30 mpg car to deliver one person to their destination, you're using five gallons more per passenger.

[Kodak]

Originally Posted by NachtRitter

Did they propose a better measure?

Aye, tortoise nailed it. Gallons per X miles (with x being something easy and divisible by 10, like 1,000)

Check out the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2XSuw02vKA