this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Switching from a 5mpg truck to a 10mpg truck does more for the environment than switching from 40mpg car to a 55mpg car.
How is that misleading, isn't it true?
More outrageous sounding, switching from a 5 mpg truck to a 10 mpg truck saves more gas than switching from a 50 mpg car to a 100 mpg car
https://youtu.be/oLQmwOX6Xds
I still don't understand hot that statement is "misleading"?
Well a lot of people would think gaining 50 mpg is way better than gaining 5 mpg, since it's 10x as much, but really it just shows that you can't use mpg as a unit to compare like that
This is why the rest of the world uses l/100km (liters per 100 kilometers), the comparison is linear and thus comparable between different vehicles in a simple manner.
The difference between 10 and 20g is easy to see as a lot bigger than the difference between 2.5 to 1.82g. 15 is a much bigger number than 5, but that 15 is relative to the initial mpg rating
In fact going from 5mpg to 10mpg is better than going from 10mpg to 100mpg, a 10g saving vs a 9g saving......the more you know
The ask was
Environmental damage from emissions doesn't care about relative efficiency, 15 free miles is objectively more than 5 free miles.
It you travel 50 miles at 5mpg, you use 10g of fuel At 10mpg you use 5g...a saving of 5g
40mpg uses 1.25g 55mpg uses 0.91g a saving of 0.34g much less of a saving.
Yeah but if youβre already driving the more efficient vehicles to begin withβ¦
but if we are trying to save the world getting the lowest mpg vehicles off of the road first will have a stronger effect
if you already drive a 30mpg car and you are ready to upgrade then definitely look for better efficiency but I think we should have incentives in place to get cars that operate at for instance 16 mpg (my first car for instance, 1996 Chevy blazer, now deceased) replaced by even 10 year old models which are much more efficient
...you have made a smart choice, and can focus on reducing your other emissions!
but it's not like a person in a 50mpg car is likely to drive 5 times as much per year as the person in a 10mpg truck. over consistent distances, improving the shitty mileage vehicle will save a lot more gas.
swapping a 5mpg truck for a 10mpg truck will save 10 gallons per hundred miles, while switching a 40mpg car for a 55mpg car will only save 0.68 gallons per hundred miles. even going from 5mpg to 6mpg would save more than that.
And this is why l/100km is a better unit