"MPG is just stupid"

[roncachamp]

Same diff.

Au contraire. For example, there are 3.785 liters to a US gallon and 4.546 liters to an imperial gallon. That's a difference of 0.761 liters.

 

[roncachamp]

Meh, its the same thing.

In your mind, perhaps, but not in reality.

 

[roncachamp]

i dont really know for sure what kind of mileage my cars get. i just put gas in them when they get empty.

I add gas before they're empty.

 

[AuntPeggy]

Meh, its the same thing.

Not exactly.
128 ounces = 1 Gallon (US)
160 ounces = 1 Gallon (Imperial)

You get an extra quart (US) with every gallon (Imperial)

 

[roncachamp]

Not exactly.
128 ounces = 1 Gallon (US)
160 ounces = 1 Gallon (Imperial)

You get an extra quart (US) with every gallon (Imperial)

But 1 US fluid ounce is about 1.041 imperial fluid ounces.

 

[Dan Thomas]

What the rest of the world needs to do is realize that the imperial measurement system is so much better and convenient and drop that retarded metric system.

Then we can be on an international standard. And there can be no more fights over the proper pronunciation of kilometer (or spelling for that meter).

The metric system IS better. It's us old Canucks and all "Murricans" that grew up with the feet/inches/gallons things (either Imperial or US) that suffer from Primacy issues. Primacy says that things first learned are the strongest, and when we Canucks were forced into the metric system (and there are more than one metric system, too) we had to learn a lot of new terms, and 35 years later us old guys still mentally correct the metric numbers to Imperial so we can understand them, and we use tape measures with inches and feet.

In the metric system, everything is based on tens. No 12 inches to a foot or three feet to a yard or 5280 feet to a statute mile or 880 feet to a city block, and the inches are divided into 8ths and 16ths and so on, except in precision machine work. The Imperial/US systems are a real hodgepodge of units that make mental calculations difficult. A US gallon of water is 8 pounds, an Imperial is ten pounds. It really is dumb. A litre of water is a kilogram, and that litre is divided into a thousand millilitres that weigh a gram apiece. That water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C. Similar easy conversions are made into cubic measurements; 1000 litres is a cubic meter that weighs one metric tonne, or 1000 kilograms.

It's a lot simpler but we're too lazy to relearn such stuff, and we Canucks also have to have two complete sets of hand tools, too, for our metric vehicles.

Dan

 

[SkyHog]

The metric system IS better. It's us old Canucks and all "Murricans" that grew up with the feet/inches/gallons things (either Imperial or US) that suffer from Primacy issues. Primacy says that things first learned are the strongest, and when we Canucks were forced into the metric system (and there are more than one metric system, too) we had to learn a lot of new terms, and 35 years later us old guys still mentally correct the metric numbers to Imperial so we can understand them, and we use tape measures with inches and feet.

In the metric system, everything is based on tens. No 12 inches to a foot or three feet to a yard or 5280 feet to a statute mile or 880 feet to a city block, and the inches are divided into 8ths and 16ths and so on, except in precision machine work. The Imperial/US systems are a real hodgepodge of units that make mental calculations difficult. A US gallon of water is 8 pounds, an Imperial is ten pounds. It really is dumb. A litre of water is a kilogram, and that litre is divided into a thousand millilitres that weigh a gram apiece. That water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C. Similar easy conversions are made into cubic measurements; 1000 litres is a cubic meter that weighs one metric tonne, or 1000 kilograms.

It's a lot simpler but we're too lazy to relearn such stuff, and we Canucks also have to have two complete sets of hand tools, too, for our metric vehicles.

Dan

You're wrong. If god wanted us to use meters, he'd have attached meters to the bottom of our legs instead of feet.

 

[Obi Heed Kenobi]

Over on the red board, some guy wants to know why aircraft engines are so inefficient because when he uses an ice scraper between the seat and gas pedal to run his car up to 2500 rpm, the car doesn't use nearly as much gas as his airplane does flying at 2500 rpm.

I can't decide which smilie thng to use: or or or or even

You've got to be kidding me....

 

[Unbeliever]

The article is just presenting what Computer guys have known about for years. They call it "Ahmdal's Law". Go to the "speedup in a sequential program" section. The MPG article writer isn't being very clear about it.

He's optimizing on total fuel use. If you have a 10mpg and a 33mpg pair of cars, what will cut the most fuel usage? Upgrading the 10mpg car to 20mpg, or the 33mpg car to 50mpg? That's where he's getting the "five times more fuel" savings statement.

--Carlos V.

 

[ScottM]

What the rest of the world needs to do is realize that the imperial measurement system is so much better and convenient and drop that retarded metric system.

Then we can be on an international standard. And there can be no more fights over the proper pronunciation of kilometer (or spelling for that meter).

Let me get this straight.

km/hr bad, Furlongs per fortnight good?

All the systems are arbitrary. You get used to whatever you were brought up in. I can truly get my head around Celsius for temperature. It makes sense is easy to remember and I can convert to Farenheit in my head. I can even get my head around kilograms and liters. But km mess em up. Meters, no big deal. But in thinking of distance in km my brain goes into a Windows like trance where nothing happens until a reboot.

 

[Ghery]

It's a lot simpler but we're too lazy to relearn such stuff, and we Canucks also have to have two complete sets of hand tools, too, for our metric vehicles.

Dan

Not just you Canucks. My 1981 Buick had a mixture of metric and SAE fasteners. I've have US and metric sockets for years.

 

[Trapper John]

Not just you Canucks. My 1981 Buick had a mixture of metric and SAE fasteners. I've have US and metric sockets for years.

Isn't that a load of fun! I just changed the alternator and serpentine belt on my son's 2001 Ranger. 1/2" socket too small, 9/16" too big, must be 14mm...only SAE fastener was on the battery terminal clamp.

 

[sba55]

You have two different starting points. Doing that, I can make numbers say anything I want.

Of course I do - because that's what you're really interested in measuring most of the time. I can think of two scenarios:

- You're weighing the cost of gas for a few cars. In that case, you do have different starting points. You want to know the cost of gas for the various cars.

- You're interested in reducing CO2 emissions. You're trying to make a policy decision re. emission taxes and such. In that case, it makes much more sense to get rid of the 10 mpg trucks on the road first than to try to improve gas mileage from 35 to 40 mpg. Sadly, we're mostly working on the latter....

-Felix

 

[jesse]

Of course I do - because that's what you're really interested in measuring most of the time. I can think of two scenarios:

- You're weighing the cost of gas for a few cars. In that case, you do have different starting points. You want to know the cost of gas for the various cars.

- You're interested in reducing CO2 emissions. You're trying to make a policy decision re. emission taxes and such. In that case, it makes much more sense to get rid of the 10 mpg trucks on the road first than to try to improve gas mileage from 35 to 40 mpg. Sadly, we're mostly working on the latter....

-Felix

Problem is that those 10 mpg trucks are used to do work and that work is pretty damn important to our society. If they aren't used to do work? So what? We're not about telling people they can't have something because they don't need it. Could you improve the mileage on them? Probably.

In the end - you're fighting a losing battle. You can make the mileage better but the problem really comes down to the fuel.

 

[EdFred]

Of course I do - because that's what you're really interested in measuring most of the time. I can think of two scenarios:

- You're weighing the cost of gas for a few cars. In that case, you do have different starting points. You want to know the cost of gas for the various cars.

- You're interested in reducing CO2 emissions. You're trying to make a policy decision re. emission taxes and such. In that case, it makes much more sense to get rid of the 10 mpg trucks on the road first than to try to improve gas mileage from 35 to 40 mpg. Sadly, we're mostly working on the latter....

-Felix

But you flipped the numbers in the article which is why doubling the mileage in your example wasn't the better savings.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

i dont really know for sure what kind of mileage my cars get. i just put gas in them when they get empty.

You can use my gas mileage if you want.

 

[astanley]

Problem is that those 10 mpg trucks are used to do work and that work is pretty damn important to our society. If they aren't used to do work? So what? We're not about telling people they can't have something because they don't need it. Could you improve the mileage on them? Probably.

In the end - you're fighting a losing battle. You can make the mileage better but the problem really comes down to the fuel.

Or (just because I'm in a bad mood) we could choose to subsidize a more fuel-efficient (but less time-efficient) mode of transport, keep total cost the same and move more freight (an order of magnitude more) for similar fuel consumption.

Cheers,

-Andrew

 

[skidoo]

Problem is that those 10 mpg trucks are used to do work and that work is pretty damn important to our society. If they aren't used to do work? So what? We're not about telling people they can't have something because they don't need it. Could you improve the mileage on them? Probably.

In the end - you're fighting a losing battle. You can make the mileage better but the problem really comes down to the fuel.

Yea, maybe this MPG comparison is just missing part of the formula. Perhaps, we should be looking at miles per useful load (tons) gallon. For example, say a small car can carry a load of 500 lbs (0.25 ton) and get 40 MPG, then that vehicle would get 40*.25 or 10 MPTG and a pickup truck can carry 3000 lbs and get 17 MPG, then the pickup would get 17*1.5, or 25 MPTG.

I recently saw an ad for a rail company claiming to transport one ton of load about 450 miles on one gallon of fuel. To match that with a personal vehicle that can only carry two people (total 350 lbs), the vehicle would have to to get about 79 MPG.

 

[jesse]

I recently saw an ad for a rail company claiming to transport one ton of load about 450 miles on one gallon of fuel. To match that with a personal vehicle that can only carry two people (total 350 lbs), the vehicle would have to to get about 79 MPG.

A train engineer friend of mine confirms that numbers like that are very realistic. Of course some routes are less efficient than others but all in all rail is really damn efficient.

 

[astanley]

A train engineer friend of mine confirms that numbers like that are very realistic. Of course some routes are less efficient than others but all in all rail is really damn efficient.

For rough planning purposes:

300 BTU/ton/mile: rail and large shipping
3000 BTU/ton/mile: OTR truck
9000 BTU/ton/mile: LTL/local truck
21,000 BTU/ton/mile: jet air freight

I don't have any numbers for prop air freight.

Cheers,

-Andrew

 

[Dan Thomas]

For rough planning purposes:

300 BTU/ton/mile: rail and large shipping
3000 BTU/ton/mile: OTR truck
9000 BTU/ton/mile: LTL/local truck
21,000 BTU/ton/mile: jet air freight

I don't have any numbers for prop air freight.

Cheers,

-Andrew

Makes sense. Railroads and big ships are impossible to beat. In the 1970s I sold heavy truck parts in a city about 300 miles from the West Coast. We had wheel hardware shipped in from Japan; the trucking costs from the coast to our city were about six times higher per unit weight than the shipping (like, by ship) from Japan to the coast. The first 5000 miles (or whatever it is) cost a small fraction than the last 300. Go figure.

But our society is in a big hurry. Railroads and big ships tend to move a lot slower than big trucks and airplanes, and their size means that they take much longer to load and unload. So we pay the truckers and FedEx airplanes to get it here right now. In many cases, the cost of keeping stuff in inventory (interest on the money tied up) forces an outfit to run on the Just-In-Time (JIT) supply system, where the stuff is scheduled to arrive within hours of its being either sold or incorporated into the production line. The automakers have been running this way for years now. They have to use aircraft to meet the tight deadlines. So we burn vast quantities of fuel just because we won't or can't wait.

Dan

 

[astanley]

But our society is in a big hurry. Railroads and big ships tend to move a lot slower than big trucks and airplanes, and their size means that they take much longer to load and unload. So we pay the truckers and FedEx airplanes to get it here right now. In many cases, the cost of keeping stuff in inventory (interest on the money tied up) forces an outfit to run on the Just-In-Time (JIT) supply system, where the stuff is scheduled to arrive within hours of its being either sold or incorporated into the production line. The automakers have been running this way for years now. They have to use aircraft to meet the tight deadlines. So we burn vast quantities of fuel just because we won't or can't wait.

Dan

More simply stated, the carried interest on assets-in-transit (assuming FOB/EXW terms) and assets-in-warehouse is greater than the cost of increased fuel consumption.

Cheers,

-Andrew

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

So, like, getting 30+ MPG in a 300+ HP Mustang is no big deal?

I remember back in the olden days (mid '70s) I had a Datsun 1200 POS Sedan that would get me 30 MPG driving back and forth between Chicago (where I lived) and Ann Arbor MI (where my girlfriend (at the time)) lived. I thought that was pretty impressive gas mileage.