Why "Gallons Per Mile" (or L/100 km) makes more sense

[Volones]

Originally Posted by LostCause

Hey! You got it.

...unless you have a DeLorean and a Mr. Fusion handy.

- LostCause

I did?
YaY!
What did I win?

And for the record, I was 100% confused by that, and was trying to figure out if my calculations were even close.

[Doofus McFancypants]

"You're on a TV show and there are three doors: Door 1, 2, & 3. Behind one is a brand new car. Behind the others, nothing. You make your choice and the host opens an unchosen door that he knows is empty. He gives you the option to either stay with your original pick or change to the other unopen door.

What is the smartest choice? Stay, switch, or does it really matter? "

Answer is Chose the other door.
The door you chose had a 1 in 3 chance of being Correct (33%)
so there is a 66% chance the OTHER doors are correct
Knowing that one of them is now INCORRECT - that 66% chance is now on the OTHER DOOR.

one would think that once the other door is opened the odds change to 50/50 but they do not - it is not like a coin flip - the past decision effects the current decision.

Take the other door. ( unless the car in question is an H3 - then you might be better off Losing"



steve

[Doofus McFancypants]

for an extreme example - imagine there were 1 million doors and the Host opened all but the one you chose + one other door. Do you really think you are better off staying with your door or switching. in the 3 door case the change in odds is not huge but the 1 million door example shows it is not really indepandant

[Unklecueball]

I like MPG. It is very easy to figure that if I increase my MPG by 2 and I have a 12 gallon tank I can get 24 more miles out of my tank. My normal round trip to and from work is roughly 36 miles. It would take me 2.77 days to get to the 100 mile mark, yet I know when I am over 36mpg each day's trip is less than a gallon of fuel. I guess when you are used to something it is difficult sometimes to embrace change. I'm willing to bet it would be difficult to get people to change because everyone wants to see that ever increasing number pushing itself to 40, 50, 60 or more MPG. Just my 2cents.

[sickpuppy318]

Efficiency of any vehicle and any fuel could be compared be BTU at set rates of acceleration:

BTU at .5 g, BTU at .75g, BTU at 32ft/second/second.

Even better would be a nice curvy graph with BTU needed on the Y axis and Steadystate through 3gs on the X axis.
Of course, relative speed would vary it, but that should be common knowledge by now.

[MetroMPG]

"Gallons per 100 miles" has hit the mainstream.

From the NY Times:

The United States uses the most energy per passenger mile among the 18 rich economies surveyed by the energy agency. In 2006, the American auto fleet used, on average, a little less than five gallons of gas to travel 100 miles. The Irish went the same distance with under four gallons, the Italians with less than three, basically because they use smaller cars that get better mileage.

This story (of gal/100 mi.) has gotten a lot of exposure since this thread originally started.

[some_other_dave]

Bah, they're all equivalent; you just have to fiddle the units to make it work out.

I'm used to MPG, and don't see a compelling reason to switch. I also find it more motivating to try and improve my car's MPG by 5 MPG than to try to reduce its consumption by 0.2 l/100 km.

And for some reason, not folding the extra decimals into the units bothers me. If it were cl/km, I would be less annoyed. Yes, I know that doesn't make sense.

-soD

[vetter1]

Originally Posted by Cd

I found this the other day in a magazine ad :

Hmmmm....

Mercy !! "45 - 55 gallons of gas per mile"? Is this car big enough to hold 55 gallons of gas ? ...to go a mile ? Ah gots to git one of these !

[Peter7307]

Interesting discussion.
Here we changed from the Imperial Miles Per Imperial Gallon to litrs/100 kms a number of years ago.

Basically people just changed over and now metric measurement is the norm.

A few rallied against the change but the general bulk of the population just made the adjustment.

The perception now is any vehicle in double numbers ( ie: 10 ltrs/ 100 kms) is pretty poor fuel efficiency and anything below is relatively good.
Anything around 5 is worth talking about and somewhere around 7.5 is still worth talking about but the bragging rights are not quite as prestigious.

Speaking of bragging rights I had a Prius driver pull in next to me on a highway service centre (gas station) recently.
The car was brand new and the driver was obviously desperate to tell someone ( other than the passengers he had who seemed bored to tears with it all going by their looks when he mentioned it. One rolled her eyes skyward when he began talking to me) about the "fantastic fuel economy" of his hybrid.
I was sitting drinking coffee and had the window down.

Prius driver's comments were along the lines of "my wiz bang hi tech enviro car gets seven (7.0 litres / 100 kms). Beat the hell out of your dinosaur I'll bet".

I tap the trip computer on my car and bring up my average for the trip : 6.5.

Prius driver accuses me of "rigging the display" and was very upset indeed.

Oh dear how sad never mind.

Pete.

[RH77]

Originally Posted by Peter7307

Prius driver accuses me of "rigging the display" and was very upset indeed.

Oh dear how sad never mind.

Pete.

Most people aren't willing to entertain the idea putting effort into attaining good FE. Likely in this situation, the Prius was bought with the intention to easily get the good mileage and consequently flaunt it.

The funny part, 7 isn't that good for a Prius! I know it's possible to get less than 6 without really trying, and 5.14L/100Km with limited experience in hybrids and some EcoDriving experience.

You're doing your part, and that's what matters.

RH77