

Ford's $2 million USD plug-in hybrid fuel cell vehicle

Edmunds gets a test drive in Ford's multi-million dollar concept







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By masher2 (blog) on 2/26/2007 8:49:22 PM , Rating: 1
> "I think I recall you stating that most of the gas is being used by people commuting large distances in smaller cars..."

That may be true, but its not quite what I'm saying. My point is really very simple, and just a statement of statistics. Vehicle mileage varies anywhere from around 10mpg (Hummer) up to 50mpg (Prius). Thats a 5:1 ratio.

Miles driven in the US, though varies from below 4K miles/year to over 100K miles/year. That's a ratio of over 25:1. A far broader bell curve, and therefore a much more significant variance.

The conclusion? Total gasoline consumption in the US is driven much less by people driving cars below average on efficiency, and much more by people driving more miles than the national average. It doesn't matter why they're driving, or what they're driving in...that half of the bell curve is the one with all the weight.

That same conclusion can be proven in a wholly different manner. Vehicle mileage has increased considerably since 1950. Yet, even allowing for population increases, our total gasoline consumption is up sharply. Why? Because more efficient cars don't have nearly the impact that total miles do...and our total miles keep going up and up.

