Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

Just pick a choice based on your gut feeling, don't do the math unless you really want to. I'm trying to see what people's perceptions about fuel efficiency are. An article in Science found some interesting things regarding peoples perceptions versus actual fact. In a week I'll post more of what was found there.

I can't really vote here because I would keep my compact over all the other choices.
I wouldn't want a Hummer nor an SUV. I also don't want a Hybrid, at least not yet.

It'll be interesting to see what you post in a week.

Hawk: But if you did have to choose, which one do you feel would be the better? The idea here is not to see what folks WILL do, but what their perception is regarding relative fuel economy.

That was a tough choice but I made it.
I'm probably wrong though due to the maintenance costs of a Hybrid.

I voted for the change to hybrid because I know all cars exhibit a range of fuel mileage, depending on driving habits. I suspect that the variability in this range doesn't change as much as the total mpg does, from one car model to another. Thus, my car which gets 19 mpg city / 25 highway (it's always somewhere in between these numbers) might be upgrade to a hybrid which gets more like 60 mpg city / 50 highway, and because most of my driving is work commutes the hybrid would be far better. Even if it had the same variability, i.e. I went up to 44 city / 50 highway, compare 44 to 19 and you see that I'm getting better than 2 to 1 increase in city driving.

So I'm guessing that the highest total mileage vehicle is going to really save the most.

I was right! (assuming we are neglecting purchase/sales costs and maintenance) Easy calculation.

Answer below:
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Hummer uses 10000/10 = 1000 gallons
SUV uses 10000/15 = 666.7 gallons
- switch saves ~333 gallons

Car uses 10000/30 = 333.3 gallons
Hybrid uses 10000/60 = 166.7 gallons
- switch saves 166.7 gallons

-- But then it would save even more from the hummer owner to switch to a hybrid.

davion76 wrote:But then it would save even more from the hummer owner to switch to a hybrid.

Bingo!

You're better off going from 10 -> 15 mpg than from 30 -> 60 mpg.

That just doesn't make sense.

Hawk wrote:That just doesn't make sense.

That was the whole point of the article. It seems counter-intuitive, but the facts speak for themselves. Davion76 did the math (see below) and clearly shows that you will save twice as much gas going from 10 to 15 mpg compared to 30 to 60 mpg. In terms of the actual AMOUNT of gas used, the hybrid takes the cake, but it just goes to show that small increases in efficiency among gas hogs will make a bigger dent than large increases in already relatively efficient cars. Of course increasing the CAFE standard is a double-edged sword: if automakers meet the standard by increasing sales of already efficient cars it doesn't do much. If instead, they strove to make modest increases in the fuel efficiency of their larger models, a lot more gas would be saved. I ain't holdin' my breath on that one though

An AM/PM Arco station on my way to work had $3.99 gas!!!

We got it for $3.95/gal last weekend in Canton, Ohio. Here in Michigan it's a tad over $4.00.

Here in Nikiski, Alaska it is 4.74 a gallon. It comes out of the ground about twenty miles away as the raven flies. And is turned into gasoline four miles from here. Yet the stuff is cheaper in Anchorage. Which is about sixty air miles from here. That is how it always has been. Cheaper in Anchorage. The oil company tells us they ship the gas through a pipeline to Anchorage to a tank farm there, then use trucks to bring it back here to sell. Like heck they do. They have a tank farm with tankers coming in and out right on the main road. How stupid do they think we are?? Our state legislators "investigated" and found the oil company was doing nothing wrong. We just sent four state legislators to jail for accepting bribes, fraud and just plain corruption. I wonder if they was the committee that did the investigating? I'd complain more but I hope to get a job with the oil company as a tanker tail gunner.

I'm with Hawk in his first post in this thread; I'ld keep my compact. I'ld never buy a Hummer, and can't even imagine buying a big SUV. Perhaps I need more imagination.

I was happy to fill up my van (I've a family of 6, and we often provide transportation for others) with relatively inexpensive gas in Idaho last week. Only cost $4.05 a gallon, and I could have paid less than $4 in Coeur 'd Alene if I had known the local price patterns. In my part of Alberta gas is going for around $1.33 per litre! Multiply that by 3.8 and you get $5.05 per gallon. And I live only about 40 miles from the refinery. (The exchange rate on Canadian/U.S. dollars is negligible these days so I don't include that in the calculation.) So you Americans can keep enjoying your cheap gas!

I actually had to trade in my 6-cylinder '98 Explorer for a '99 Honda Civic. I figured at $3.50 per gallon the difference in the mileage would make the car payment. Lately regular unleaded is as much as $4.19 around here, so it was a smart decision. "Chitty " (the new car) is supernaturally fast, surefooted, comfortable, and gets better than 30 mpg no matter how hard I drive her. I suspect some non-stock parts in this otherwise plain vanilla commuter car.

Of course, the Civic won't tow the camper, and there's no way we can get the tent and all the camping gear in the trunk of the Civic, so vacation got cancelled.

In my neck of the woods, on "certain" days, Albertson's gives 50 cents per gallon coupons if you buy $100 or more of groceries. Safeway has something going too I think.

Hey, saw a Valero (old Diamond Shamrock) today at $3.99 - - - What's going on?

The price of a barrel of oil has dropped about $10. And surprisingly, the gasoline prices are falling almost as fast as they rose.

KevinL wrote:The price of a barrel of oil has dropped about $10. And surprisingly, the gasoline prices are falling almost as fast as they rose.

Not around here. I'm going up north this weekend, and was debating on Wednesday morning whether I should fill up in the morning with gas at $4.07. I hoped it might drop a penny or so during the day, which it often does during the middle of the week. To my surprise, it went up 20 cents during the day, and, being as I was practically running on fumes, I filled up Thursday morning at $4.21. Although I don't like the high prices in general, what really gets my goad is the way prices shoot up and down in pretty wide swings. I almost feel like buying gas is like playing the stock market; do I fill up now, or wait a day or two for prices to come down? I always seem to lose these gambles.

On the news yesterday it said that the cost of crude has dropped almost $15.00 over the last three days but the price at the pump went up. I haven't filled my truck up in about 3 weeks so I don't know what the price at the pump is here in Georgia. Last time I filled up it was $4.00.
I still have a full tank.

I heard on the news that it can take a couple of months for reduced crude oil prices to be reflected in lower gasoline prices, assuming the price of oil doesn't go up again. Funny how crude oil price increases are almost immediately seen at the pump, but price drops take a lot longer.