Posting a vehicle’s fuel efficiency in “gallons per mile” rather than “miles per gallon” would help consumers make better decisions about car purchases and environmental impact, researchers report.
Inspired by debates they had while carpooling in a hybrid car, management professors Richard Larrick and Jack Soll ran a series of experiments showing that the current standard, miles per gallon or mpg, leads consumers to believe that fuel consumption is reduced at an even rate as efficiency improves. People presented with a series of car choices in which fuel efficiency was defined in miles per gallon were not able to easily identify the choice that would result in the greatest gains in fuel efficiency.
For example, most people ranked an improvement from 34 to 50 mpg as saving more gas over 10,000 miles than an improvement from 18 to 28 mpg, even though the latter saves twice as much gas. (Going from 34 to 50 mpg saves 94 gallons; but from 18 to 28 mpg saves 198 gallons).
These mistaken impressions were corrected, however, when participants were presented with fuel efficiency expressed in gallons used per 100 miles rather than mpg. Viewed this way, 18 mpg becomes 5.5 gallons per 100 miles, and 28 mpg is 3.6 gallons per 100 miles — an $8 difference today.
“The reality that few people appreciate is that improving fuel efficiency from 10 to 20 mpg is actually a more significant savings than improving from 25 to 50 mpg for the same distance of driving,” Larrick said. (See table above)
John was chuckling over this headline in his Tech5 podcast the other day. I decided to Post the article to lead folks to the details.
Essentially, Americans suck at arithmetic. This system is supposed to be easier for the math-challenged to understand. Even if you get the car builders and retailers to adopt the new system, I think the average American ain’t going to have a better understanding of comparative fuel consumption.
#30 – bobbo – Easy to misscommunicate on the interwebitudes.
So true. 😉
#6, Simon, I would guess you are in the UK? I forgot that in the UK the mpg standard is used instead. Right?
#1 – #32
Who the fuck cares? Miles per gallon, gallons per mile, gallons per 10,000 miles, gallons per light year, it makes no difference. They’re still going to evaluate the cars the same way, fudge the numbers as best they can, and then pocket-calculate into whatever units the new Overlords demand.
Do something that makes a difference. Recycle your car, take the train, and for short trips around town, buy a bike.
#33
But you can’t do that in America, because of the way the “Burbs” system works. Cities are much wider in America than everywhere else. Of course, the subprime collapse and credit crunch will produce some exodus back into the city. Maybe then bike makes sense again.
Hey, let’s change the speed-limit signs too.
Instead of speed limits in mph, lets change it to the number of minutes it takes to travel 100 miles.
55mph is 109min/100miles.
30mph is 200min/100miles.
Now when the police ask you how fast you were going, you can say “I’ve haven’t got a f*cking clue!”.
In Canada, fuel economy is reported in liters/100km. But nobody knows that the numbers mean, so the car stickers show both liters/100km and miles per gallon.
But it’s miles per Imperial (not U.S.) gallon, so cars in Canada appear to get 25% better gas mileage.
1 U.S. gallon = 3.78 liters
1 Imp. gallon = 4.54 liters
#9 – Nope. Dollars per mile is better, than miles per dollar. And dollars is better suited for these new hybrid and electric cars, than gallons. We really need to divorce the “gallons” term from the equation. It only serves to support the oil industry. They’d love to keep on pumping the stuff until the planet turns black. A cost per mile rating would level the playing field (electricity always being much cheaper than gasoline). Even better might be Dollars per hour (of operation). A gas fueled car can use up a lot more gas sitting in a traffic jam, than an electric car does its stored charge. But anyway it’s figured, the auto industry is bound to spin it to their benefit.
The other day I got a flier from Verizon comparing their DSL to dialup modem, as being 21 times faster. But the tiny print below revealed that was using a 28.8K modem. Who’s used a 28K modem in over ten years?!! Don’t they know about 56K modems?! What a bunch of deceitful spin artists. Besides, there’s no guarantee you typically get the 768Kbps speed they quote. Just as 56K usually ends up as 49K, most of the time I’ve connected. And they never mention that they’re packet shaping the traffic anyway. So the hardware speed is meaningless. Just as a high gas milage rating is meaningless in stop and go (or gridlocked) traffic. We’d probably all see a significant milage improvement if the states would retime the damn traffic lights. Why can’t NASA earn isn’t pay and solve that little problem too? And not how to center bowling ball holes properly. Sheesh!
#38 – Mr Lloyd
What country are you from where the cars don’t use any gas while idling, and everybody carpools?
And my sympathies for living in a place where the people are so simple that they can only figure out units of measure using a system where everything is a 10-multiple of everything else. Here in our “special olympics” culture, we have to be able to multiply, divide, add, and subtract. Keeps us on our toes, you know?
#34, tou talk of the burbs culture, but Mustard wants to eliminate that as well.
>>tou talk of the burbs culture, but Mustard wants
>>to eliminate that as well.
“as well”? What else did I want to eliminate?
#39 – “Mister Mustard”
well, mr “brucemlloyd” (#38) might be from a country w less than half the average fossil-fuel consumption than your country.
And on top of that his country might have public transportation infrastructure worth mentioning.
My sympathies for living in a place where people are so simple they can’t ditch their own irrational system(s), only are able to look to their own selfish wellbeing, and simply just don’t get that making war is a just tad annoying to others.
Seems too me you’re not quite “up on your toes”, brainwise.
(Yes yes, we know you’re the champs – certainly in the olympics of making war and polluting OUR planet Earth, at least.
Yes OUR planet – NOT yours. Get it ?)