«--Previous Post | Blog Index | Next Post--»
Why Miles Per Gallon Suck
Our calculations about car efficiency tend to be wildly off the mark. The Fuqua (I am not making that up) School of Business at Duke University studied it every which way and found that improving the most energy inefficient cars with ones that are even slightly more efficient saves WAY more fuel than trading in your not-so-bad Honda Civic for a hybrid. Most of us assume otherwise. The problem arises from the fact that we're talking miles per gallon when we should be talking gallons per mile. The video explains all.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
Comments
This insight should lead to incentivizing one's trade in. Gotta 10 MPG SUV? Document your trade-in to a 25 MPG model and you get an incentive based on the % increase of your MPG upgrade.
The thing is that technology exists to make Hummers much more fuel efficient than they are. They are big enought to carry lots of batteries. That "Motorhead Messiah" in Kansas is customizing gas guzzlers with both more HP and better fuel economy using off the shelf components -in one case, a military surplus diesel turbine.
Trust Mother Jones' "independent" coverage?
visit:
boycottmotherjones.com
Posted by: Andy on 06/21/08 at 7:56 PM Respond
I seem to remember that the "Car Talk" brothers had a similar feature on their website--without the cool graphics.
Yes, how information is presented makes a tremendous difference. I have a lecture on "how to lie with statistics" that I present to freshmen in Intro Psychology classes.
Posted by: Nancy on 07/05/08 at 3:14 AM Respond
ARCHIVE
RECENT COMMENTS
Living Green in Denmark (4)
Frisco Kid wrote:
The average resident in metropolitan San Francisco emitted...
[more]
Greenland's Ice, Going, Going. . . (3)
Olaf wrote:
La Nina and El Nino always was, always will be. This is ju...
[more]
What's the Most Polluting Car? (32)
john carter wrote:
hey china is the worst polluter,just look at the olympics,...
[more]
Primary Sources: The 1940 Census on "White" (7)
AA wrote:
Racial categories are necessary for Affirmative Action pro...
[more]
Here Be Arctic Dragons (2)
The IceMan wrote:
An expert from the National Autonomous University of Mexi...
[more]
Running From The Waves in Beijing (4)
Serginho wrote:
And that RED join Sen. Inhofe.......
[more]
More Cell-Phone Wariness From Docs (4)
joffan wrote:
I like the snarky photo.
What the evidence says, and will...
[more]
McCain Recycles His Green Image...From MoJo? (8)
laptop battery wrote:
Could you imagine trying to feed all the bills into that m...
[more]
Solar Superhighways (3)
Get It Straight wrote:
Asphalt can Store energy, as anyone who has tried t...
[more]
Antarctic Sea Ice Increase: Fodder for Global Warming Skeptics? (25)
not nakis wrote:
nakis you ignorant but. Your sentences are incongruent and...
[more]
RSS
Feed
Movable Type 3.33
Posted by: Egalitare on 06/20/08 at 4:38 AM Respond