Know Gas Costs In Miles Per Dollar, Not Just MPG
Saving Fuel Knowing Distance in Cash Terms, not Fuel Consumption
Motoring fuel costs tend to be lumped together as part of the general monthly cost of living in many household budgets. Getting a handle on how much common journeys really add to expenditure on fuel is the start of reducing costs or driving smarter by combining trips. This simple step makes considering the cost of alternatives easier.
Surprisingly few people know how much it costs in fuel to drive ten miles. They may know the fuel consumption of their vehicle, and in many modern cars the trip computer can tell them the average miles per gallon or kilometres per litre for any given trip. This is particularly an issue in Britain, where fuel consumption is normally quoted in miles per gallon but fuel is priced in litres, so there is a disconnect between the imperial and metric values. It is instructive to take a little time with a calculator to work this out.
US readers, paying, say, $2.60 a gallon and an EPA average light vehicle fuel consumption of 21mpg will get about eight miles to the dollar. Looked at another way, the cost per mile is about 12 cents.
UK readers have a harder time. The key is knowing that there are 4.545 litres in an Imperial gallon. (US gallons are significantly smaller, containing 3.79 litres). Thus an urban commuter achieving about 30mpg in town gets 30/4.545 or about 6.6 miles per litre. At just over a pound a litre he will be paying approximately a pound every six and a bit miles. Alternatively, the cost is about 15 pence a mile, approximately twice as much as their American counterpart, despite the poorer typical fuel efficiency of American light vehicles.
Miles per Dollar or Dollars per Mile?
There are two ways to approach this, one is to find out how far one can drive for a monetary unit such as a dollar. This is a good way to instantly be able to weigh up alternatives for short trips which are usually responsible for most journeys. If using the car costs $1 for eight miles and a return ticket to a mall ten miles away is $2 then the train is a little cheaper, since $2 will only take the car 16 miles, less than the round trip. The convenience of the car comes at a small premium of $0.40. On a commute these small differences can add up over a year - it is instructive to work out just how much it costs to get to work and back each day.
Knowing how much it costs per mile is a good way to get a handle on the cost of long road trips. For instance, to go from London to Edinburgh is about 400 miles, so the journey will cost about £120 is fuel alone for the round trip.
Fuel costs are of course not the only variable costs of running a car, and there are fixed costs such as insurance, tax and maintenance. However, being able to quickly estimate the fuel costs of a car journey makes it easy to get a baseline cost for that option against other alternatives, or even non-travelling alternatives like ordering an item on-line and paying mailing costs as opposed to travelling to pick it up. Driving differently can reduce fuel consumption dramatically, further reducing the cost fo motoring.
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