Machiavelli Wrote:I think 5 gp100m would be the better choice, but I get your point.

You can tell I'm not a marketing guy. Would it be .05gpm, 5gphm, 5gpM? Another indication that Europeans are more sophisticated ... the simplicity of the metric system.

Actually, in popping back and forth to Europe this is the one area where I find metric more confusing.

As for your hypothetical, if you run the numbers out I think you'll find that in most cases at current gasoline prices, it's hard to justify trading either vehicle just to save gasoline. Now if you need to trade it anyway, you should favor the one that is more economical. But I think you can figure that out as easily from mpg as from gpm.

As for how much the change would cost, I believe it would cost more than the benefit.

I don't mind driving 55mph but usually I am in a 35mph zone when I am doing it.

Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:Actually, in popping back and forth to Europe this is the one area where I find metric more confusing.

Probably due to being more accustomed to the US way of doing things. The fact is that you buy gas, you don't buy miles, so it's easier to understand the maintenance cost if things are stated as gallons per hundred miles or gallons per 10,000 miles.

Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:As for your hypothetical, if you run the numbers out I think you'll find that in most cases at current gasoline prices, it's hard to justify trading either vehicle just to save gasoline.

That's an important point, but the unstated presupposition is that someone is going to buy a new car in any event. In my case, parting from my $2k Jeep that gets 12 mpg is a viable option for another relatively cheap car.

Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:Now if you need to trade it anyway, you should favor the one that is more economical. But I think you can figure that out as easily from mpg as from gpm.

As for how much the change would cost, I believe it would cost more than the benefit.

If the choice is between going from 15mpg to 20mpg or going from 35 mpg to 50 mpg, you'd save roughly twice as much on gas costs with the first option than the second (6.67 gphm vs. 5 gphm against 2.86 gphm to 2.00 gphm). Going from 15-20mpg even provides more benefit than going from 30-50mpg. With the choices framed like that, why the fascination with the 40-50 mpg Prius when there are so many trucks and SUVs around?

Granting that I think most people posting here would have a prudent sense, I'm not sure the same is true amongst the general population.

As for the cost-benefit, making a change in standards like this seems preferable to CAFE standards. As inefficient as the government is, it seems like the government expenditure would be pretty small, absent the involvement of lobbyists.

There has been some publicity about this recently - I think due to a study out of Duke. Somewhere I came across a graph of mpg versus gphm that makes the difference more intuitive.


http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/07..._illu.html
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=257
http://www.physorg.com/news133108289.html

Machiavelli Wrote:I'll use the Cato institutes numbers and say we will ONLY cut it 1-2%. THAT"S a huge freakin number.

Look at this

Over 20 million barrels per day, up from January 2002, when demand was about 18.5 million barrels per day, = 777 million gallons. If lined up in 1-gallon cans, they would encircle the earth at the equator almost 6 times (about 147,000 miles of cans) — every day. Here's another image: EVERY DAY, the US consumes enough oil to cover a football field with a column of oil 2500 feet tall. That's 121 million cubic feet. 55-60% of US consumption is imported at a cost of $50 billion+ per year, amounting to the largest single element of our trade deficit.

So if we could cut that. 2%. It would have a tremendous effect. I want a fiscally healthy America. I want to drill to offset, but I also want people to understand that conservation has to be a part of the solution and many of you fail to get that.

Is there somewhere that the Cato Institute says that reducing the speed limit to 55 would save 1-2%?? Using anecdotal evidence like how much we used in 19xx versus 19xx+1 is dubious at best

Besides... 2% of 400,000 BPD if I'm following your numbers... didn't Saudi Arabia recently increase their output bu 500,000 bpd and oil and gas prices yawned??

Considering how much driving is done at less than highway speeds (not to mention the OTHER uses of oil), 2% sounds like an awful lot to me. Not saying you aren't right... just that I'd like to make sure the what the data appears to say is actually what is DOES say.

It's hard to vote in your poll when you put the rationale behind it that doesn't necessarily represent my reasoning.

No, unless you can show me that the savings is justified by the loss in productivity... or yes, assuming that the loss in productivity is offset by the savings.