We all want to help the planet - we all want to be green (well most of us).  One of the things affecting oil usage and climate change is the use of gas-guzzling cars.  Now when we consider buying a new car we all look at the Miles-Per-Gallon ratio (MPG).

From the article (which I’ll reference in a minute!) which do you think will save the most fuel?

A) An improvement from 10 to 11 MPG (10% improvement in MPG)
B) An improvement from 16.5 to 20 MPG (25% improvement in MPG)
C) An improvement from 33 to 50 MPG (50% improvement in MPG)

The answer is that they all save the same amount of fuel!  In fact, going from 35 MPG to 50 MPG doesn’t save as much as a gas guzzling 10 MPG going to 11 MPG - more MPG gives diminishing returns.

But why do we care right?  Its just a bit of maths.  The problem is that people with gas guzzlers could do some simple things to take their 10 MPG vehicles to 13 MPG, but they think “what’s the point? Its only 3 MPG!” but 3 MPG at that level is worth an awful lot!  The MPG graph is not linear, but curve-linear.

The solution is rather than to think in Miles-Per-Gallon we should think of Gallons-Per-Mile, or as the GPM website says, Gallons per 10,000 miles.  Check out the website for more maths and a fuller description of the idea!

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