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Time for a pop quiz. Which of these trades saves more gas:
A) Swapping a car that gets 25 miles per gallon (MPG) for one that gets 50 MPG, or
B) Replacing a car that gets 10 MPG with one that gets 15 MPG.
If you said that A conserves more gas, you’re mistaken. And it’s not even close.
Here’s why: In the first scenario, the old vehicle getting 25 MPG uses four gallons of gas to travel 100 miles, while the new one at 50 MPG uses two. In the second scenario, the vehicle getting 10 MPG needs 10 gallons to traverse those 100 miles, while the one at 15 MPG uses 6.7, saving 3.3 gallons — fully 65 percent more than in scenario A.
If you answered wrong, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ve succumbed to the MPG Illusion, a widespread fallacy that can easily distort perceptions of a car’s efficiency and muddle debates about transportation and climate policy. Providing the basis for federal fuel economy rules, MPG is a foundational automotive metric in the US.
“Americans are very familiar with MPG,” Richard Larrick, a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, told me. “But I think that familiarity means that we don’t recognize what it’s not answering, which is the question of how much gas we’re using.”…..Story continues…
By : David Zipper
Source: Why “miles per gallon” is so deceptive – Vox
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