mpg is not a bad unit per se, people are just interpreting it wrong. if you only have 1 gallon for every car, mpg is the correct unit and you want the highest mpg (scenario 2). if you say every car has to drive 1 mile, then you want (essentially) the reciprocal of that so you want the lowest gpm (scenario 3). but you cant mix the two numbers cause then it's nonsensical.
The basis of this video is flawed. Averaging fuel usage across multiple vehicles does not give any useful information. Miles per gallon lets an INDIVIDUAL car owner know how far they can travel on a tank of gas; THAT IS ALL!
The only imperial units that make more sense than metric are feet as it's naturally relatable. I mean meters and yards are close and it's essentially three feet but still. I'm used to miles and everything else but it would not be that hard to think in metric terms. Already do with wrenches.
The guy that invented tyre size convention was just trying to keep everyone happy : Width in metric, sidewall height in dimensionless ratio, wheel diameter in imperial and speed rating as an arbitrary letter to a code. Good effort.
@@Lawrench00 It is a funny saying, but we can’t malign the camel. An animal that can haul heavy loads vast distances in extreme heat or cold, without food or water. I’d say the camel was designed by a specialist.
@@kiddster2112 Weirder still is that according to one of the PBS science channels, the first camels evolved in North America and their adaptations were for extreme cold rather than heat and drought...
@Steve Dave Yeah, US gallons and UK's imperial gallon is different Go figure. Not as bad as my country tho, some people uses cents per km traveled when calculating fuel economy.. I never understood why that matters.
@@xocomaox by his math 3.03 gallons per 100mi vs 3.77 so in USD $9.09 vs 11.31 with the current price of gasoline in the USA ($3 per gallon) and in USD $17.54 vs $21.83 with the current price of gasoline in the UK (London @ $5.79)
SAE it when you hadn't enough problems in life, you getting used to this strange numbers and then live you cursed life converting thing one to another, when rest of the people just multiplying by 10.
@@NeoMK that doesn't have much to do with biden more so with saudi arabia and others reducing their oil production a while back and the market is now catching up to the lower supply. We were very lucky to have such low prices for about a year because supply was high and demand low. Right now it seems to be the other way around that's the market for you.
@@ByteFilm Actually it can be both. But maybe it would be better described as "slowness" instead of "speed", since a higher value means you're going slower.
@@ByteFilm Both can be used, but depending on the speeds being measured you might pick one over the other. For example: for stuff going less than 1 mph, it might make sense to measure it in hours per mile.
So what you really want to do is realize that if you're getting 5 mpg, then you've got a Class 8 truck. Just stack all those little commuter cars on a trailer and tow them all with the Class 8. Double your 5 mpg to 10 mpg. Then you're moving the whole fleet that 100 miles for only 10 gallons of fuel.
Holy mackerel, that's an incredibly long time to wait! Even with a defrost grid and the ridiculous radar and crap I find hanging off of them, I'm not certain I've ever seen a replacement take even half that long. That shop better have _really_ good pricing!
The system was designed around walking and measurements based on the human body. A mile was originally 1,000 paces where a pace was 5 feet, so 5,000 feet. When the English system was standardized, they changed the lengths of feet and yards, which made the mile slightly longer, so now it’s about 1,050 of the original Roman paces.
That's not really the point of this video though. Everyone I know (including myself) still calculates fuel consumption in km/l which is affected in the same way (to a different extent) as MPG. And I still think Nautical Miles are a better standard for navigation at sea or in the sky because 1 minute on a meridian is 1 Nautical Mile. When calculating large distances it is more useful than km (though the introduction of GPS made it much less relevant). Though I don't get why we still use 360° as a full circle instead of 100° or 1000° or just 1 for a whole circle and 0.5 for a 180° "angle" but that's a whole different story. For the rest of the calculations the metric system is pretty good. 1kg of water = 1liter = 1 dm^3 is a bit off because the mass unit of water begins with kilo- while the volume begins with deci- but it being 1=1=1 as long as you know which unit to use is still easily doable. The disadvantage being that many people think 1 liter of anything equals to 1kg which of course isn't true as it's dependent upon density. 1 liter of petrol for example is about 0.73kg (if I remember correctly). Still people can all consider themselves lucky they don't have to use imperial tools every day like I do. Actually it's alright once you get used to it. Though it still occasionally happens to me when I want a socket one size smaller than 3/8 and I accidentally grab the 11/32 socket (which I hardly ever need) instead of the 5/16. My work toolbox has all the sizes I could need regularly so they go from 1/4", to 5/16", to 11/32", to 3/8", to 7/16", to 1/2", to 9/16", to 5/8" etc. So nearly every size goes up per 1/16" but that 😖 11/32 is the annoying exception. Honestly I don't understand who would ever think simplifying the fractures would simplify anything. Just going with 4/16", 5/16", 6/16 (and getting rid of any intermediate size) seems much easier to me.
@@CheapBastard1988 Some time ago I bought this Pin Punch Set from aliexpress, they don't know where it will go so they put both systems on it. So I have 1.5mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm and 8mm punches in it, in imperial it's noted as 1/16", 1/8", 5/32", 3/16", 1/4" and 5/16", I can't imagine who would prefer that notation and why, it's really hard to sort it. It's interesting what you wrote about the nautical mile, I did not know that, but I don't have much to do with the seas. And I agree with the degree too, that 360 makes no sense to me. Radian is more interesting even though I'm not that used to it. Although the τ notation would make more sense to me, if you know Vi Hart's channel she's a big advocate of using τ instead of 2ⲡ.
I've lived and driven in 4 countries so far and I have to adjust my mind to these systems every time I move: km/l, l/km, l/100km, mpg . Someone please take this to ISO and standardize it.
Unfortunately, ISO will never be able to standardize it. In fact no one will. Not in America at least. I'm so glad I get to live in Australia where everything makes sense.
Yeah, take it to ISO who will standardize it after which ANSI will create their own standard :D (check out ISO vs ANSI keyboards for example. If you live in the US, I bet you have non-ISO keyboard)
Reminds me of Steven Wright- "I was going 70 miles an hour and got stopped by a cop who said, "Do you know the speed limit is 55 miles per hour?" "Yes, officer, but I wasn't going to be out that long..."
Clearly the real best approach is to consider that we’re trying to measure “volume per unit distance”, and volume divided by distance is nothing but area. Thus the proper metric for fuel economy is square inches.
I've always found it culturally illuminating that an American would ask how far they can go on their tank, whereas a European would ask how big a tank they need to reach their destination.
Logically as a single user with a single card mpg makes more sense. You don't go to a gas station and buy "100 miles". You buy gas by the gallon. To a fleet manager yes g/100mi is easier to determine how efficiently they are spending their money but if you have a fixed amount of money you can buy a fixed amount of gas you have to ask "how far can I go with this"
@@noahluppe And with MPG you just multiply the volume you can purchase by that number. This whole video honestly seemed to be clickbait, deliberately using a situation that should not exist with 1/10 of the vehicles getting 1/10 the efficiency. Any fleet would not be using such disparate vehicles the same amount.
@@noahluppe You yourself admit they've got no advantage over the other in mathematical figuring. Simply put neither is strictly "better" as they both are used best in DIFFERENT scenarios. The actual units used in this do not matter.
That’s not a problem for the US. We chose the gallon we would use half a century before Britain decided to use a larger gallon throughout the Empire. Now, all the Commonwealth countries are abandoning the Imperial gallon, so if individuals don’t want to use the metric setting in their cars (because they drive miles), they should just use the US setting which computes miles per US gallon. Is the gallon used anywhere else in the UK now? Just don’t change the “pint” in the pubs, though, or you will have an uprising.
Mrs. Codere would have thrown a chalkboard eraser at me if I turned in a quiz with a 9 on it that looked like that my Sr. year of High School - back in the 80's of course. :) Then I would have had to walk up to her desk (picking up the aforementioned thrown eraser so that I could return it neatly to its spot on the chalkboard behind her), erase the sloppy 9 on my quiz and write a good 9, and then quietly return to my desk. All this would have been done under a gaze of such disapproval that everyone in the class - friend or enemy - would not look up from their desks. My parents would not have called the school to complain. Best Teacher I ever had. ;)
The example I use is racecar driver Bubba needs to average 100 MPH or faster over two laps to qualify for tomorrow's race. Unfortunately he doesn't see the flag to start his qualifying run and completes his first lap at 50 MPH. How fast does he have to drive on the second lap to average 100 MPH and qualify? (Answer is he can't. Doing one lap at 50 MPH uses all the time he had available to drive two laps to qualify. So he would have to travel infinitely fast on the second lap to average 100 MPH. Going 150 MPH only results in an average speed of 75 MPH.)
The averages of miles per gallon are like parallel resistors, and the averages of gallons/100 miles (or liters/100km) is like average in series... I was wondering, at the beginning, if you were going to get into how to ACTUALLY calculate average mpg. I'm glad you did. I shouldn't have expected otherwise.
Yea I was confused at first with the title of the video. I'd assumed he was just going to make a clickbait video about bashing the imperial system or something. But once I saw the the white board and all the different entries for column #1 "Variable". I knew what he was going to explain, and it's a real important thing to explain when talking about any type of unit. His analogy at the end, talking about "what if you had a car with a billion miles per gallon" is the exact same thought experiment I use to help understand any concept, taking things to the extreme often makes the correct answer easier to intuit without having to do all the math to arrive at the same conclusion.
Because that's 8 furlongs, of course. Since I'm one step ahead of you, that's 40 rods. And my car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it.
Because the King (who defined the foot by having the national foot) went for a walk one day, did 5,280 and then decided everyone would stop for yet another meal, one spring day in 1423. Duh.
I was thinking about the diminishing rate of return on speeding the other week. Going 5 over in a 30 is so much more rewarding than going 80 in a 75. I didn't think about this relating to fuel economy, but it's really cool
It's partly mathematical (the time you save diminishes) and partly physical (the air resistance goes up with the square of speed, so it skyrockets; also your engine works at unfavourable RPM, unless the gearbox is specifically designed for very high speeds).
@@em_the_bee I was thinking purely mathematical, but I see where those other factors come into effect with fuel efficiency. I was purely thinking about time and its diminishing ROR. Guess speeding at high speeds is just worse all around
@@brandonspurlock8059 there's also kinetic energy going up with the square of speed as well; harder to control your vehicle and the consequences are grimmer. If there's just one lane for each direction, you need to overtake more and more often etx.
@@TheEpicSponge It does but in order to work out the cost of a journey (my OBD always liesss) you have to convert. If we bought fuel in Gallons using your example. At least I'd know at 30mpg, it'd cost me £5.855 for every 30 miles. Job done.
You know what, that's still perfectly usable. Converting to the rest of the world is just a factor of ten. Still can't get over why the mile exists -_-
My main takeaway from this video, which you didn't explicitly say, was that 1 MPG is a much higher percentage of a lower MPG than a higher MPG; an increase by 1 MPG at 5 MPG is a 20% increase, whereas an increase of 1 MPG at 50 MPG is a 2% increase.
an increase by 1 MPG at 5 MPG = a decrease by 3.4 gal / 100 mi (20 gal / mi -> 16.7 gal / mi) an increase of 1 MPG at 50 MPG = a decrease of 0.039 gal / 100 mi (2 gal / mi -> 1.96 gal / mi)
I think that's already self-evident when doubling the nine 50 mpg cars to 100 mpg works out to be worse than doubling the one 5 mpg car to 10. The doubling is the part where it becomes interesting if you hadnt considered it already, everyone should hopefully know 1 is a higher percentage of 5 than of 50.
No, he explicitly said that (9:20). What he also said, which was also the actual main takeaway from this video, is that the gallons/100 miles unit of measurement is immune to this kind of tomfoolery with percentages, or in other words fuel economy improvements are much more intuitive than worrying about percentages and whatnot (9:36).
While everyone else commutes a fixed distance, Americans drive until their fixed tank capacity runs out. The use of imperial units hides this much bigger difference.
I like imperial. It is just total chaos:) Imp: Yes that is one feet three pounds and a small hedgehog Metric: 1 Meter Imp: Three nods one foot and 11/2 inch Metric: 2 meter
The two units serve different purposes. - The gallons per 100 miles tells you how much fuel you need to get to a destination. - The miles per gallon unit tells you for the amount of money you have, the exact place you will become stranded in the desert.
You are incorrect. In no situation for the user is the gallons per 100 miles the superior unit. If my destination is 280 miles away and my car gets 30 MPG, all I do is divide 280 by 30 to get the answer. Here, I divide 28 by 3 and the nearest whole number I get, without rounding down, is 10. Low fuel light comes on in my vehicle. I know that when the light comes on I have 3 gallons of fuel remaining. If my current fuel burn is 20 MPG, I can instantly tell that I have at most 60 miles of fuel to get to a gas station. In any real world situation, the calculations are more complex if your unit of fuel economy is gallons per 100 miles.
@@Crosshair84 If your unit is gallons per 100 miles, you just switch the operations: In the first case you multiply instead of dividing and in the latter case you divide instead of multiplying. So with gallons per 100 miles the first calculations is slightly easier, while with MPG the second is slightly easier. I would argue though, that the second calculation is getting less common as most cars nowadays can show the remaining range directly. Additionally G/100mi has the benefits mentioned in the video. While I agree that the need to average the values for multiple cars is quite uncommon for individuals, it’s definitely an advantage to be able to intuitively compare these values when buying a car and argue e. g. this car needs 20 % less G/100mi so it’ll cost me 20 % less on fuel per year.
Right, MPG tells you easily how far you can get on a known quantity of fuel (e.g. a fuel tank). So it's useful for the odd very long trip as it helps plan your fuel stops along the way: multiply MPG by size of the fuel tank, take a compass, you will need to find a fuel stop within the circle. The flip side is it's a pain to compare relative efficiency, and is less convenient to know how much fuel you need for a given distance e.g. you need to drive from A to B, how much fuel will you need. GPM is, obviously, the reverse: it's a linear unit so comparing relative efficiency is utterly obvious, and it's easy to know how much fuel you will need for a known distance (a multiplication, and a trivial division for the likely g/100m), however it's harder to know how much you can travel on a given amount of fuel. In that sense MPG does make some sense in the US, as the saying goes americans think 100 years is a long time and europeans think 100 miles is a long distance, most european countries you can cross on a tank or two (Aberdeen to Southampton is 600 miles) so it's not much of a concern; crossing the US however is a very different proposition, and there are wide areas of nothing in the middle (same with Australia I guess). Still, MPG mostly seems like something that's really useful when you're actively planning and have a lot of time anyway, and it's not *too hard* to get that information from GPM, whereas the non-linear relation between MPG and efficiency makes *reasoning* abour relative efficiencies in MPG much less intuitive.
@@JS-oh2dp "without too much extra effort." That's the problem. You should use a unit that requires NO "extra effort". MPG does that for the VAST majority of the people. Calculating with it involves ONLY using multiplication, which is far easier than division for most people. Real world example: "My car has been averaging 24 MPG of real world fuel economy between fillups and I have a quarter tank left. A quarter tank is about ~3.5 gallons of usable fuel in this car. The road sign says the next major town is 80 miles away with some smaller ones between. Will I make it to the next major town?" The person takes the 3.5 down to 3 and considers that .5 gallons as either reserve or fuel gauge error margin. 3 gallons of fuel left. 3 x 24 means 73. Meaning you'd likely just barely make it by including the .5 gallon in the calculations, but you'd be cutting it close and might not. You might as well refuel at one of the smaller towns. MPG is used because that is the unit that has the information in the format that is most relevant for people. What works best for 300,000,000 people takes precedence over what works best for 200,000 engineers.
The classical math problem: a customer goes in to a car dealership an buys 10 cars... Then he drives to a grocery store and buys 50kg of carrots and 500 eggs..
Sounds more like a mental problem than a maths problem. He'd be better buying one really good/big car than 10 cheaper cars. What's he going to do with them all? Maybe he's planning on transporting all 500 eggs, but who's going to drive them all? Wouldn't he be better with a lorry? And who's going to eat them all? That's a lot of eggs. And they don't last very long before they go bad.
For me, it went the other way around 😁: - First throw: **missing the camera** - my first thought: "How many times did he have to repeat this to _not_ hit the camera 😄?" - Second throw: **BONK** - "Okay, I withdraw that question 😂..."
A sneak peek into Jason's favorite activities besides writing stuff in many colors on whiteboards and driving cars : throwing one gallon jugs at cameras
I am a software engineer dealing with real-time graphics. Maybe I can use this video to explain to some stubborn colleagues why frames per second is inferrior to milliseconds per frame as performance metric.
@@lanceareadbhar maybe if you're marketing stuff. But if you try to measure parts of your computer program in order to optimize it, then presenting your measured values in time is better than in frequency.
This actually is kind of mind blowing. When you realize your unit of measurement is a ratio... you realize that more efficient parts in the old V8 rebuild is actually worth while.
Thank you for saying it, US has lots of weird units, I always use L/100KM, and when I talk to to people from US and some fr Canada they use weird terms like corn syrup on cheeseburger per bald eagle or mpg
Nope, the US has units. Every country has units. NOBODY measures the area of the USA in square inches, so converting square inches into acres is a nonsensical demand.
as a french canadian i know my L/100km thank you. and i also have 2 gallon of maple syrop in the kitchen. 😂 we use both system because we sell alot to america so yeah we use metric on the road. but we mesure with the english system. its really rare to find a shop that mesure in Metric.
@@Bowtie4me It should be quite abhorrent to you to see people calling for the US to drop their imperial units, because it would be like telling you that you should change your signs to English only, and that everyone should abandon French, or any other language, to use the widespread interoperability language: English.
Thousand times thank you for making the case so succinctly, I've tried to explain how distance per volume is super-misleading many a times, I'll now finally have a video to direct people who 'just want to know how far I can travel for my money'...
@jon27d Well.. most people can't even remember their high school algebra.. so having numbers that are intuitive to compare actual costs is a big deal. That is the bigger point here.
Which then tells you how much it's going to cost you, which is what most people want to know anyway. On a day to day basis, your commute distance is fixed. So that's the independent variable in the equation.
Amazing how similar this is FPS in games, where improving very low framerates can make a big difference rather than improving on framerates that are already very high. That is why the unit of frametime (seconds per frame) is a much more useful to look at.
Energy/distance informs you on cost, distance/energy informs you on range. On a day to day basis I can't do much about my costs but I always want to know my range, hence mpg (or km/kW) is a much more useful thing to know.
@@kirknay Yes but, as the video points out, only on a relative scale and not an absolute one. 1mpg improvement on a 5mpg car is 20% while 1mpg on a 25mpg car is only 4%. Once you've bought the car then mpg is used to simply determine range before refuelling, and "gallons per 100 miles" is an awkward metric to use for that.
I hate km/L, hard to know exactly how much fuel is left and range, where knowing L/100Km and the trip meter you can quickly calc the remaining fuel left in L in your head and not have to rely on the inaccurate fuel gauge.
@@viniciusbraga9881 On my daily car it's meaninglessly. I can drive super careful and like a granny I get 8.5L/100 over a full tank, drive like a maniac, flat out every opportunity I get, it results about 9-9.5/100. It's no appreciable difference really. What makes more of a difference is the ambient temp, in summer I average low 8s and in winter it averages high 9s but driving style makes far less of the difference. That's my daily driver. My weekend car, same model/engine but the engine is hotted up. If I cane it everywhere its about 16L/100 but if I only thrash it a little bit I get about 10L/100. For that engine combo it does make a difference but being a car I only drive a few times a year it doesn't matter how much it uses.
You can also cancel out one of the meters in l/(100km) (you have to remember that l == dm³, of course), which gives you your fuel economy as an area, a cross section. Sort of how thick a line of fuel you need laid out on the road if you supplied your car that way.
Of course my dude, I'll make sure the next car I buy is able to snort a line of fuel from the road. Thanks for the tip, it will definitely come in handy then!!
That reminds me that the standards for weight in the US is actually metric, i.e. Kilogram. All scales are actually calibrated to that. When we switched over to L/100km in Canada, it was weird. But once I got my head around it, it was actually easy to understand.
Funny, isn't it. I was used to L/100km from Europe when I came to Thailand where they are used to km/L. It was very strange, but my car dashboard can dot both ways. So I can chose, and guess what I'm using... km/L. Ha,ha,ha. After having seen this video, maybe I should switch back to the good old European way.
The key insight is that most people have a more-or-less fixed amount of distance they need to drive per day/week/month and will use as much fuel as they need to drive that distance. They don’t get a fixed amount of gas per day/week/month and vary their amount of driving based on how efficient their vehicle is.
Right, makes the user maths way easier, which ultimately is what matters. I know I have to drive 100 miles per week, my car gets 28 miles per gallon, thus I need 3 and a bit gallons per week. Take that and multiply it by 4 weeks and the price of gas and you have a budget. Have fun doing that with consumption numbers.
Made up example. My car gets 11 L/100 km economy, and I have to drive 150 km a week. 11 times 150/100 = 16.5 L of fuel. That was some pretty difficult math Eh gramps?
@@letsgobrandon416 What! Did you even try to do the math for volume/distance? Or did you just assume it would be more difficult? Take your example of 28 MPG which is 8.4 L/100km and your weekly commute of 160km. You just devide 8.4 by 100 and multiply by 160 (or if you have 2nd grade math skills just 8.4 x 1.6) to get 13.4 liters used, simple as can be.
@@ErrorCDIV It's hilarious that you think that is simple when you had to do 4 different conversion back and forth to make it work. With MPG there is no conversion, it simple multiplication/devision for each parameter.
@@letsgobrandon416 of course I had to convert it. We're talking about this particular measurment. I don't have to convert anything in my life because that's what I use in the first place. It's like saying meters are worse than feet because you have to do a conversion first. I'll try to tell you again in a way you might get, here goes. It's as simple as (fuel economy x distance) It works for gallons per 100 miles just as well.
This is why the Escalade Hybrid never took off. A “mpg” going from 9 to 10 is worth a lot. That same “mpg” going from 49 to 50 is practically meaningless.
The funny thing is that gallons per hundred miles is a cube divided by a length, so it is an area. The area of the cross section of the fuel stream that you are kind of squirting behind your as you drive.
There is more than one gallon unit of measurement in common usage as well, Imperial & US. So MPG is reported differently in different parts of the world (Namely the UK as we like to mix imperial and metric for some inexplicable reason). Sometimes when comparing specifications from cars from multiple manufacturer's, it doesn't clarify which one is used so you could be comparing two completely different units.
@@GH-oi2jf On this forum as in youtube comments? The reason is we stopped part way through our 'metricisation'. It takes funding and political will to mandate the change and we just stopped dead. Older generations are just so familiar with their old units that they will vehemently oppose any further changes, so political parties stay well clear of the issue. Road speed signs for example, it is a long and costly process to change all of these from mph to kph. Driver re-education wilol be required. Cost will easily be in the billions. In the long run it will be worth it, to align with global standardisation of units. Many other large countries have already done it. Kilometres are the superior unit to miles.
@@seismica kilometers superior? Depends. Nautical miles are superior to kilometer in aviation and marine navigation therefore they are standard unit of length in those areas. Also aviation uses feet for altitude, again superior to meters but this would take a bit longer to explain.
@@skiptastic1000 No problem. Or "hundredweight" - 1 cwt = 8 stone or 112 pounds. I remember that many years back someone calculated the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight. It made perfect sense. :)
Bare in mind the US gallon (3.78l) is less than the UK Imperial gallon (4.54l). US Quart is around 946ml and UKQ is 1,136ml UK and half quart or US pint 473ml and British pint 568ml which are both half quarts.
This is a bit of a mistargeted argument dealing with large fleets of cars, while the average viewer probably has at most 2, more likely 0 or 1. The better argument, i think, is that the driver in almost all cases has a predetermined target they are driving to. Say you are driving to your parents', who live 200km away (or 200 miles, doesn't matter) and you have a car that can do 10l/100km. Then you need 20 liters of fuel for the journey. It is almost never the case that you think "I'll tank up 30 liters and just drive as far as that takes me". Ergo, the volume/distance measurement is better. Bonus point: the v/d measurement simplifies nicely to area, while the other way only goes to 1/a, which while not really relevant to this is something my mathy brain enjoys.
Okay. For human use (weather, indoor temperature, etc) the Fahrenheit scale is much useful than Celsius. In F, zero is very cold and 100 is very hot. Below zero and over 100 are meaningful and useful. It was designed this way with humans in mind. In addition, each decade of F temperature makes a lot of sense. Forecaster will say "temperatures will drop down to the teens". I will usually characterize the outside temperature by decade F. It was in the 90s means it was pretty darn hot. The 80s is hot but quite bearable. And so on. The mistake the US made in trying to convert to metric is they first tried to force people to switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Since C was much less useful than F for everyday use, people rejected the temperature conversion and this scuttled the overall conversion to metric. Where I live water boils at a little over 200F which is 94C. I feel sorry for my European friends who are stuck with Celsius and miss out on the expressiveness and usefulness of Fahrenheit. I want to tell them it was a beautiful day in the 60s and this is meaningless to them. Telling them the temperature was between 16C and 21C falls flat. Perhaps in this case "upper teens" could be used. In addition, since degrees C are almost twice as big as degrees F, Celsius lacks the precision of Fahrenheit unless you use a decimal point. For everyday use decimal points are almost never used with Fahrenheit because one degree F is about the smallest temperature change I can feel. I'm a scientist. I'm used to using the metric system. In many ways it makes the US system seem silly and arcane. But I would accept all that silliness and arcanity if it allowed me to use Fahrenheit for everyday temperatures.
@@BitJam Lol that's a great comment. I'm all for metric in engineering contexts, but this vid failed to give a compelling reason why I would want to switch from mpg and it is very similar to why I have no reason to switch from Fahrenheit. I'm sure it makes plenty of sense in a lot of contexts but if you ask me, it's better to see bigger numbers as you go up. Everyone who has been exposed to the mpg ratings has a feel for what they are and it's a good thing that people consider 20's as low, 30's as ok, and 50's as good. And among the top it's a lot easier to distinguish. I just don't really see the problem unless you're doing math.
@@BitJam Also for human use Celsius is perfectly fine: 20s are comfortably warm (summer temps where I live) 22C is typical room temp 30s are hot 40s are very hot 10s are mild (spring/autumn temps where I live) 0-10 cold but not freezing
@@jblecoz I think that the idea is to change your mindset and make driving your personal car so expensive that you'll look for a cheaper alternative like a bicycle. And so this is more eco friendly. Fine by me as I live near a city where I can bike to work, but for others it's more challenging.
Harmonic average also applies to other averages: for example, the average speed of a trip consisting of successive legs with different individual speeds. The slowest legs (e.g. traffic jams) prevail disproportionately.
That's why speeding on the highways doesn't save you much time. Speed through school zones, that actually makes a difference. For legal reasons thats a joke
Really interesting. I am one that enjoys distance/volume. It makes calculating on the road a lot easier. I always wondered what the idea was behind using volume/distance. Thanks!
Funny enough, it doesn't. What I realized after watching the video: the way brains outside the US work is in chunks of 100km. So you know your car uses 7l per 100km, then you count in multiples of 7. Have a 35 liter tank? Makes 500km. 5l per 100km? Makes 700km. The rest is rounding error :-D
@@fizzlmerde640 Yeah I can do that math too, but it's too many steps (I'm a little lazy 😅). It's just the way my brain chooses to work. I'm in South Africa, btw. My car uses volume/distance too, but I barely use that
@@justinbecker1813 if you felt dumber that means you were getting smarter because you could begin to see the lack in your knowledge as you were progressing
Before I watch this i have to say the biggest issue is that a "5mpg difference" is not really all that meaningfull. If you go from 10 to 15 mpg then that's massive in terms of fuel cost. If you go from 30 to 35mpg the difference in cost is not all that impressive (in comparision) Edit: 9:01 I knew this was comming
Yes, and that is why Jason is arguing that using a volume over distance measure is way more meaningful! Going from 10mpg to 15mpg is a 50% improvement in economy so over a fixed distance you would spend 1/2 as much money on fuel simple right!
@@johncanalese588 you are wrong i think (or I don't get what you are saying) over a fixed distance, let's say 60mi you would have to buy 6gallons with 10mp or 4 gallons with 15mpg, so you are not spending " 1/2 as much money on fuel" Or was that a joke?
I’m still surprised that kwh/mile is a thing. They combined a metric unit with an imperial unit to create that abomination, and I can’t classify it as either one.
Well, we do use watts (lightbulbs, microwave, etc) and kWh (electricity bills) in the US, so it kinda makes sense for us. Thankfully there isn't much use of BTUs outside of HVAC discussions.
The video hasn't really convinced me that volume over distance is somehow the superior measure (it gives exactly the same information), but it finally made the harmonic mean click for me. Thanks!
Agreed, I don't see how the issues he pointed out would cause trouble for typical person in the real world. I mean, who is looking at the average mpg of their vehicles? What would even be the use of that information (for a typical person)?
@@Cyberguy42 Best I can guess is hypothetically if you were considering paying more for increased fuel efficiency when buying a car. The jump from 10-20 is worth a lot more than the jump from 40-50 and you shouldn't pay the same markup for both. But realistically that's not how cars are bought or sold. Other factors are going to land all your options in a similar range of price and fuel economy anyway.
@@Cyberguy42 Because the average American has trouble making sense of numbers, and somehow an increase of 40 to 50 mpg seems more impressive than 4 to 3 l/km. Also see why third pounder burgers didn't make it in the US.....
For fleet logistics, there is a missing part of this as well This is assuming that all the vehicles are going to same miles in a given time period, If the 9 cars are actual fleet cars doing 500 to 1000 miles per week and the one doing 5 mpg is only an executive doing 100 kiles a week then is would actually be better to do option 1, improve the fleet
Liters per 100 km is the best way to know how much your fuel economy is. Don’t know why it should be so strange. You travel 550km and you have an average liter/100km value, you already know how much you need to fill, or how much you can push your car.
This is exactly why we need to have Light-Duty Truck and larger vehicles meet stricter regulations, it provides more benefit than forcing a Prius to be more efficient
Where I am in Canada we use km for the road but we still use feet and inches along with centimeters and meters, so even though its liters at the pump a lot of us use miles for fuel measurement in our cars.
I'm turning 39 this month and find myself shaking a fist when people drive by too fast in my neighborhood. Haven't yelled at kids for walking on my grass yet.
I’ve hated speeding in residential since I was 14. I grilled my friends in high school over it because I didn’t want to be in the car when a kid gets hit. I don’t think this issue makes you a grumpy old man :)
Yeah, and most of these clowns do the same - expect everyone to be respectful of the speed limit in front of THEIR house, but drive by yours like Mario Andretti headed for the checkered flag at Indy.
@@scottanthony3426 often thats the case but I drive slow in neighborhoods and parking lots. Rarely above 2nd gear, slightly high RPM so any kids hear me coming.
What you stated about quickly calculating the range is the exact reason why MPG is a better metric for consumers. Yes, for fleets with varying distances traveled, g/100mi is more useful, and the same goes for equivalent comparisons. But for commuters, road trippers, and weekend warriors, the distances between our DESTINATIONS never change.
It's basically the same principle as average salary. Say the average salary is $50k, but if you ask 100 people on the street 99 of them would be earning way less, probably closer to the median of $35k. It's the 1 guy with the crazy high salary that pulls up the average. Same idea here, 9 cars have great fuel efficiency, but it's the 1 car that pulls them all down.
One mistake I made when I purchased my ford focus rs was to not look at fuel tank size. I made the mistake of assuming that cars would have a reasonable size tank. I spent one week trying to get the absolute best mpg after purchase only to then notice that I had one puny little 12 gallon tank. :(
Most new cars in Europe switch to L per hour when idling or moving below a certain speed. Going downhill would also give you infinite MPG but will show 0L/100KM.
First.. I can totally understand.. Second.. and not a negative comment on you.. more just a comment on what we get used to.. I grew up in the US which uses the english system for basically everything.. but in high school I went to a tech school with a focus in Chemical Tech, and in college took chemistry for two years as part of undergrad work in biology. So for me, metric just became easier to think in and calculate in. Many things that required a calculator in english system I could do in my head in metric (not all, obviously). Further, since I deal with a lot of Europeans in my work, metric is something I'm used to thinking in. I can obviously still think in english.. but part of me has always hoped for a conversion to metric in the US (even though now I think it is just a pipe dream).
If you enjoy watching me throw gallon jugs, you'll love this video: ruclips.net/video/MEqxaH47DTs/видео.html
I was really glad to see this happening again lol
mpg is not a bad unit per se, people are just interpreting it wrong. if you only have 1 gallon for every car, mpg is the correct unit and you want the highest mpg (scenario 2). if you say every car has to drive 1 mile, then you want (essentially) the reciprocal of that so you want the lowest gpm (scenario 3). but you cant mix the two numbers cause then it's nonsensical.
THIS, we need more of this!!!!
0:44 4:57
The basis of this video is flawed.
Averaging fuel usage across multiple vehicles does not give any useful information.
Miles per gallon lets an INDIVIDUAL car owner know how far they can travel on a tank of gas; THAT IS ALL!
The link I needed!
What's even dumber? The UK filling up with litres, into our litres tanks and our cars telling us MPG... that's different to American MPG 🤔
Or not finnishing midnight club ?
Soz :P
This!
My country uses kilometers per gallon...
The only imperial units that make more sense than metric are feet as it's naturally relatable. I mean meters and yards are close and it's essentially three feet but still.
I'm used to miles and everything else but it would not be that hard to think in metric terms. Already do with wrenches.
Then the price of fuel in the UK.... If you have a european car you can use L/100km.. I need to check if I can swap the display on my "Audi" .
The guy that invented tyre size convention was just trying to keep everyone happy : Width in metric, sidewall height in dimensionless ratio, wheel diameter in imperial and speed rating as an arbitrary letter to a code. Good effort.
Reminds me of the old saying “A camel is a horse designed by a committee”.
@@Lawrench00 It is a funny saying, but we can’t malign the camel. An animal that can haul heavy loads vast distances in extreme heat or cold, without food or water. I’d say the camel was designed by a specialist.
@@kiddster2112 Weirder still is that according to one of the PBS science channels, the first camels evolved in North America and their adaptations were for extreme cold rather than heat and drought...
@@Lawrench00 the camel is a fascinating bit of kit though. if your target is to downplay committee projects, this is not the example to do it with.
That's always bugged me too.
We have it worst here in the UK. Petrol is sold in litres and you calculate it by miles per gallon 😤
Yeah, and at least the USA had the sense to stick with one system.
@Steve Dave Yeah, US gallons and UK's imperial gallon is different
Go figure.
Not as bad as my country tho, some people uses cents per km traveled when calculating fuel economy.. I never understood why that matters.
We in the UK should start using liters per 100 miles 😅
I thought in UK mileage / efficiency is listed in litres/100kms
I thought you guys were still on furlongs per fortnight...
Aye, one minute in and I've got ten cars. I like where this is going.
Americans using miles per gallon is silly British people using miles per imperial gallon when we buy fuel in litres is insane XD
But I love it, and use MPG all the time! Daft or otherwise. :-)
British don't drive miles they drive kilometers.
@@clagueb3686 Why are all the road signs in the UK in Miles ??
@@clagueb3686 we drive Mpg I can confirm
Hahah, very true, I’m from the UK and beleive we should measure speed in KmpH and use L/100km.
So we want the best Feet-Gallon per 62 McDonalds-Inchpounds
Don't give any ideas, it may work
This nonsense made me LOL
Of course not you savage. Everyone knows metric is superior. You want Meter-Litre per asian newton-meter
Dont understand, whats that in barleycorn per quart?
Minecraft kostet auch Geld
"How's the fuel economy of your vehicle?"
People in my country: "about 100 bucks a week"
40$ a tank
@@mal3xia Mine is 60-70$ a tank and I drive just a sedan
@@thegamepz mine is $5000 (think it converts to around $45usd) for a tank. Lasts about 2 weeks depending on how fast you drive.
😂 Or the “it costs me $50 to fill the tank”. 🤦🏼♂️
My car gets 14 kilometres to a litre of petrol.
It’s a lot easier when you have only one car in your fleet like me.
But it is actually nice to know that in terms of fuel consumption, my friend's car getting 33 while I get 36 MPG doesn't really matter much.
@@commiebobo 33 vs 36 would matter, though.
@@xocomaox by his math 3.03 gallons per 100mi vs 3.77
so in USD $9.09 vs 11.31 with the current price of gasoline in the USA ($3 per gallon)
and in USD $17.54 vs $21.83 with the current price of gasoline in the UK (London @ $5.79)
It's even more easier when you have no cars in your fleet like me.
@@commiebobo
Yes. It matters a lot.
My least favorite conversation: When someone says, “My car is awesome! It only costs $25 to fill up!”
just thinking about that increases my anger by the second
I wish my car cost 25 to fill up its like 80 dollars a fill up for 32 gallons.
“My car is awesome! It only costs $25 to fill up!” (every 2 blocks). What's that in Euro's?
@@cvsmith122 What kind of car has a 32 gallon tank?
@@allansmith7305 pickup truck
Jason woke up after a nightmare about converting SAE units to metric and made a rage video "trashing units"
There's gotta be a way to stop those dreams!
@@EngineeringExplained yes, swich to SI units :)
SAE it when you hadn't enough problems in life, you getting used to this strange numbers and then live you cursed life converting thing one to another, when rest of the people just multiplying by 10.
Well we can't exactly count $ per mile or Km due to Bidens genius moves in the fuel industry. Up almost $1.00 since taking office.
@@NeoMK that doesn't have much to do with biden more so with saudi arabia and others reducing their oil production a while back and the market is now catching up to the lower supply. We were very lucky to have such low prices for about a year because supply was high and demand low. Right now it seems to be the other way around that's the market for you.
“I’m an engineer, I know some stuff” will be my go to pick up line from now on. Thanks Jason!
1:05
To never get laid.
@@Ed-quadF lmao fr what an awful pickup line
Good luck with that. I use, "I'm a pilot...." I never need to say more. :)
*cop pulls me over
You know how fast you were going?
*me, an intellectual
Oh about 1.3 hours per 100 miles...
but speed is distance/time not time/distance so it wouldn't really work
@@ByteFilm 100 miles per 1.3 hours. Satisfied?
@@ByteFilm
Actually it can be both. But maybe it would be better described as "slowness" instead of "speed", since a higher value means you're going slower.
@@ByteFilm Both can be used, but depending on the speeds being measured you might pick one over the other. For example: for stuff going less than 1 mph, it might make sense to measure it in hours per mile.
@@Alex-lc1bv yup, just like running pace is measured (minutes/km@miles). I know the term Pace is used. you can convert it back to speed (mph@kmph)
So what you really want to do is realize that if you're getting 5 mpg, then you've got a Class 8 truck. Just stack all those little commuter cars on a trailer and tow them all with the Class 8. Double your 5 mpg to 10 mpg. Then you're moving the whole fleet that 100 miles for only 10 gallons of fuel.
The real deal
Or put 20,000 of them in 20 foot containers and stack them over the Ever Given.
That's when you realise that a train is quite effective vs cars.
@@Davmm96 Absolutely. The fuel they use versus the amount they pull is insanely efficient.
Congrats. You've invented public transportation.
That is what a bus is.
This video is what I needed during a boring 3 hour wait at the garage for a windscreen replacement... thanks Jason!
Happy to help! Fresh windshield is an awesome thing the first time driving it out!
@@EngineeringExplained until a bird takes a dump....
Holy mackerel, that's an incredibly long time to wait! Even with a defrost grid and the ridiculous radar and crap I find hanging off of them, I'm not certain I've ever seen a replacement take even half that long. That shop better have _really_ good pricing!
@@AtlasJotun A good portion of the time isn't for replacing the window. The sealant needs to cure for an hour or two before the car can be driven.
it took you 3 hours to understand it?
Ah, the great imperial units! If I walk 100 meters that's 0.1 kilometer (in car-ish unit) but if Jason walks 100 yards that's 0.0568182 miles. Lovely.
The system was designed around walking and measurements based on the human body. A mile was originally 1,000 paces where a pace was 5 feet, so 5,000 feet. When the English system was standardized, they changed the lengths of feet and yards, which made the mile slightly longer, so now it’s about 1,050 of the original Roman paces.
@@toranp.8942 Ahh.. that will be Texan paces then ?
Jason Walk 3 yards, 2 duck steps and 3 inches with 2 moths arms
That's not really the point of this video though. Everyone I know (including myself) still calculates fuel consumption in km/l which is affected in the same way (to a different extent) as MPG.
And I still think Nautical Miles are a better standard for navigation at sea or in the sky because 1 minute on a meridian is 1 Nautical Mile. When calculating large distances it is more useful than km (though the introduction of GPS made it much less relevant). Though I don't get why we still use 360° as a full circle instead of 100° or 1000° or just 1 for a whole circle and 0.5 for a 180° "angle" but that's a whole different story.
For the rest of the calculations the metric system is pretty good. 1kg of water = 1liter = 1 dm^3 is a bit off because the mass unit of water begins with kilo- while the volume begins with deci- but it being 1=1=1 as long as you know which unit to use is still easily doable. The disadvantage being that many people think 1 liter of anything equals to 1kg which of course isn't true as it's dependent upon density. 1 liter of petrol for example is about 0.73kg (if I remember correctly).
Still people can all consider themselves lucky they don't have to use imperial tools every day like I do. Actually it's alright once you get used to it. Though it still occasionally happens to me when I want a socket one size smaller than 3/8 and I accidentally grab the 11/32 socket (which I hardly ever need) instead of the 5/16. My work toolbox has all the sizes I could need regularly so they go from 1/4", to 5/16", to 11/32", to 3/8", to 7/16", to 1/2", to 9/16", to 5/8" etc. So nearly every size goes up per 1/16" but that 😖 11/32 is the annoying exception. Honestly I don't understand who would ever think simplifying the fractures would simplify anything. Just going with 4/16", 5/16", 6/16 (and getting rid of any intermediate size) seems much easier to me.
@@CheapBastard1988 Some time ago I bought this Pin Punch Set from aliexpress, they don't know where it will go so they put both systems on it. So I have 1.5mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm and 8mm punches in it, in imperial it's noted as 1/16", 1/8", 5/32", 3/16", 1/4" and 5/16", I can't imagine who would prefer that notation and why, it's really hard to sort it.
It's interesting what you wrote about the nautical mile, I did not know that, but I don't have much to do with the seas. And I agree with the degree too, that 360 makes no sense to me. Radian is more interesting even though I'm not that used to it. Although the τ notation would make more sense to me, if you know Vi Hart's channel she's a big advocate of using τ instead of 2ⲡ.
I've lived and driven in 4 countries so far and I have to adjust my mind to these systems every time I move: km/l, l/km, l/100km, mpg . Someone please take this to ISO and standardize it.
Unfortunately, ISO will never be able to standardize it. In fact no one will. Not in America at least. I'm so glad I get to live in Australia where everything makes sense.
@@rx-heaven8934 well, yes but you also live in Australia
Do your own standardization. Pick one and, when the need arises, do the requisite conversion just as you would with currency.
Yeah, take it to ISO who will standardize it after which ANSI will create their own standard :D (check out ISO vs ANSI keyboards for example. If you live in the US, I bet you have non-ISO keyboard)
mpg (US) or km/l for me
anything else is just wrong
Reminds me of Steven Wright-
"I was going 70 miles an hour and got stopped by a cop who said, "Do you know the speed limit is 55 miles per hour?" "Yes, officer, but I wasn't going to be out that long..."
Very good VERY GOOD!
Yeah, but how different would that be in kilometers per hour? Still weren't going to be out that long...
So what would you suggest? Distance per second?
Meter per second is actually the official SI unit for speed!
@@brunob45 And Miles per hour is the imperial unit for speed!!!!
Jason: MPG is trash
Me: _Happy_
Jason: GPM is better
Me: _Not happy_
Gold per minute?
Yeah, but don't worry! There will be a few metric Vs imperial arguments further down in the comments 😂
Well at the very least gp100m doesn't have asymptotes
I like Gallons per Hour, like the gauges in aircraft
square feet per freedom eagles....
MURICAAAA
Clearly the real best approach is to consider that we’re trying to measure “volume per unit distance”, and volume divided by distance is nothing but area. Thus the proper metric for fuel economy is square inches.
I like the way you think.
I've always found it culturally illuminating that an American would ask how far they can go on their tank, whereas a European would ask how big a tank they need to reach their destination.
Logically as a single user with a single card mpg makes more sense. You don't go to a gas station and buy "100 miles". You buy gas by the gallon. To a fleet manager yes g/100mi is easier to determine how efficiently they are spending their money but if you have a fixed amount of money you can buy a fixed amount of gas you have to ask "how far can I go with this"
@@lovermillion but coming from litres/100km and the litres of fuel you can calculate that really quickly. you just divide litres fuel by litres/100km
@@noahluppe And with MPG you just multiply the volume you can purchase by that number. This whole video honestly seemed to be clickbait, deliberately using a situation that should not exist with 1/10 of the vehicles getting 1/10 the efficiency.
Any fleet would not be using such disparate vehicles the same amount.
@@shineko79 See? With both it's just one simple operation, while litres/100km has more advantages. Thus it's the preferable system.
@@noahluppe You yourself admit they've got no advantage over the other in mathematical figuring. Simply put neither is strictly "better" as they both are used best in DIFFERENT scenarios.
The actual units used in this do not matter.
I measure everything in "Freedoms per Bald Eagle".
Good for you
My favorite unit
😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Stars per stripes
France: white flags per surrender
The absolute worst part about the US MPG is that it is different to the UK MPG but they have the same common name for extra confusion
what? how thay're different?
That’s not a problem for the US. We chose the gallon we would use half a century before Britain decided to use a larger gallon throughout the Empire. Now, all the Commonwealth countries are abandoning the Imperial gallon, so if individuals don’t want to use the metric setting in their cars (because they drive miles), they should just use the US setting which computes miles per US gallon. Is the gallon used anywhere else in the UK now? Just don’t change the “pint” in the pubs, though, or you will have an uprising.
@@8paolo96 The imperial gallon is bigger than the US gallon. If I remember correctly it's 4.2l to the US 3.8l.
@@ErrorCDIV weeeeeeeird
@@ErrorCDIV or 160 ounces for an imperial gallon and 132 for a u.s. gallon.
The 9 you wrote in scenario 2 is causing me anxiety.
Which one there's for of them...😜
The one that looks like an 8.
You silly. Me too! And I don't think I will ever sleep the same again))
Me not too swift... ??? Whata 'bout the 9?
Mrs. Codere would have thrown a chalkboard eraser at me if I turned in a quiz with a 9 on it that looked like that my Sr. year of High School - back in the 80's of course. :) Then I would have had to walk up to her desk (picking up the aforementioned thrown eraser so that I could return it neatly to its spot on the chalkboard behind her), erase the sloppy 9 on my quiz and write a good 9, and then quietly return to my desk. All this would have been done under a gaze of such disapproval that everyone in the class - friend or enemy - would not look up from their desks. My parents would not have called the school to complain. Best Teacher I ever had. ;)
Glad to see you mentioned the harmonic mean. It's the same for calculating an average speed, you can't just take the arithmetic mean.
The example I use is racecar driver Bubba needs to average 100 MPH or faster over two laps to qualify for tomorrow's race. Unfortunately he doesn't see the flag to start his qualifying run and completes his first lap at 50 MPH. How fast does he have to drive on the second lap to average 100 MPH and qualify?
(Answer is he can't. Doing one lap at 50 MPH uses all the time he had available to drive two laps to qualify. So he would have to travel infinitely fast on the second lap to average 100 MPH. Going 150 MPH only results in an average speed of 75 MPH.)
The averages of miles per gallon are like parallel resistors, and the averages of gallons/100 miles (or liters/100km) is like average in series... I was wondering, at the beginning, if you were going to get into how to ACTUALLY calculate average mpg. I'm glad you did. I shouldn't have expected otherwise.
Yeah! Investing the sum of the inverse of the numbers hahaha. Total madness.
@ice cool story bro.
I was going to say the same. And he calls himself an engineer...
Yea I was confused at first with the title of the video. I'd assumed he was just going to make a clickbait video about bashing the imperial system or something.
But once I saw the the white board and all the different entries for column #1 "Variable". I knew what he was going to explain, and it's a real important thing to explain when talking about any type of unit.
His analogy at the end, talking about "what if you had a car with a billion miles per gallon" is the exact same thought experiment I use to help understand any concept, taking things to the extreme often makes the correct answer easier to intuit without having to do all the math to arrive at the same conclusion.
Here in Canada we do LITRES/100 kms.
like in most of the world.
I like km/litre
@@sys-administrator
Did you watch the end of the video?
I think people missed the point of your comment... For those who did, litres vs liters.
@@sys-administrator moot point, not worth the text you just typed.
I lost it at “this is a foot, a mile has 5280 of these”
WHYYY?!
Because that's 8 furlongs, of course. Since I'm one step ahead of you, that's 40 rods.
And my car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it.
Because the King (who defined the foot by having the national foot) went for a walk one day, did 5,280 and then decided everyone would stop for yet another meal, one spring day in 1423. Duh.
As is every answer to anything America does...why not?
@@Suileron
Or.....because we can. 😊
@@pequaboy1210 haha same difference I suppose
I was thinking about the diminishing rate of return on speeding the other week. Going 5 over in a 30 is so much more rewarding than going 80 in a 75. I didn't think about this relating to fuel economy, but it's really cool
It's partly mathematical (the time you save diminishes) and partly physical (the air resistance goes up with the square of speed, so it skyrockets; also your engine works at unfavourable RPM, unless the gearbox is specifically designed for very high speeds).
@@em_the_bee I was thinking purely mathematical, but I see where those other factors come into effect with fuel efficiency. I was purely thinking about time and its diminishing ROR. Guess speeding at high speeds is just worse all around
@@brandonspurlock8059 You forget the "fun and satisfying" metric.
@@brandonspurlock8059 there's also kinetic energy going up with the square of speed as well; harder to control your vehicle and the consequences are grimmer. If there's just one lane for each direction, you need to overtake more and more often etx.
@@em_the_bee Etx???
In the UK we drive in MPH, consumption in MPG but we pay/fill up by the litre!
£1.299 per litre sounds cheaper than £5.855 per gallon to us penny pinching Brits!
@@TheEpicSponge It does but in order to work out the cost of a journey (my OBD always liesss) you have to convert. If we bought fuel in Gallons using your example. At least I'd know at 30mpg, it'd cost me £5.855 for every 30 miles. Job done.
And consumption is of course in miles per (imperial gallon), not miles per (US gallon). At least miles are identical in both countries! (Since 1959…)
@@TheEpicSponge exactly, there would be civil unrest, if they listed the price in gallons! No one would want to pay it.
@@thejamiestarbuck Yep, no contest to your logic there. It'd make calculating your own MPG significantly easier!
Fun fact:
Fuel consumption is Sweden-
LITERS/SWEDISH MILE.
1 Swedish mile = 10 km
(1 Swedish mile = aprox 6.2 US mile)
In China we have common mile which is 0.5km and with with weight we have common weight which is 0.5kg.
You know what, that's still perfectly usable. Converting to the rest of the world is just a factor of ten. Still can't get over why the mile exists -_-
Then what’s a Swedish Kilometer?
@@gqh007 1/10 of a mil !
@@gqh007
Swedish km = 1 km.
Speed is calculated in km :)
During the UK lockdown's, I've been getting 2 months per gallon
I bought a larger sedan in October of last year. We put 3,000 KM on it. A solid third of that was me just getting computer parts from 3 cities away.
@@the_kombinator I think OP was talking about whiskey
Per gallon of milk? XD
@@the80386 no pretty sure he means since he hasn't been driving to work and back he hasn't even used a gallon of fuel over 2 months
@@davidweatheritt3108 There was a month in there somewhere where I didn't finish a tank, yes.
My main takeaway from this video, which you didn't explicitly say, was that 1 MPG is a much higher percentage of a lower MPG than a higher MPG; an increase by 1 MPG at 5 MPG is a 20% increase, whereas an increase of 1 MPG at 50 MPG is a 2% increase.
an increase by 1 MPG at 5 MPG = a decrease by 3.4 gal / 100 mi (20 gal / mi -> 16.7 gal / mi)
an increase of 1 MPG at 50 MPG = a decrease of 0.039 gal / 100 mi (2 gal / mi -> 1.96 gal / mi)
Obv he doesn’t literally word it exactly like that but that’s the concept he’s pushing so I’d argue he kinda did explicitly say it.
He didn't say the exact words you typed there but he did absolutely say that.
I think that's already self-evident when doubling the nine 50 mpg cars to 100 mpg works out to be worse than doubling the one 5 mpg car to 10. The doubling is the part where it becomes interesting if you hadnt considered it already, everyone should hopefully know 1 is a higher percentage of 5 than of 50.
No, he explicitly said that (9:20). What he also said, which was also the actual main takeaway from this video, is that the gallons/100 miles unit of measurement is immune to this kind of tomfoolery with percentages, or in other words fuel economy improvements are much more intuitive than worrying about percentages and whatnot (9:36).
Ah yes, the daily imperial bashing video, my body is ready
It's terrible though. Let it go already.
YESS i love these videos
*Laughs in metric*
While everyone else commutes a fixed distance, Americans drive until their fixed tank capacity runs out. The use of imperial units hides this much bigger difference.
Countries using KM/L have the same issue as well. The issue is with order and not the actual unit
I like imperial.
It is just total chaos:)
Imp: Yes that is one feet three pounds and a small hedgehog
Metric: 1 Meter
Imp: Three nods one foot and 11/2 inch
Metric: 2 meter
The two units serve different purposes.
- The gallons per 100 miles tells you how much fuel you need to get to a destination.
- The miles per gallon unit tells you for the amount of money you have, the exact place you will become stranded in the desert.
You are incorrect. In no situation for the user is the gallons per 100 miles the superior unit.
If my destination is 280 miles away and my car gets 30 MPG, all I do is divide 280 by 30 to get the answer. Here, I divide 28 by 3 and the nearest whole number I get, without rounding down, is 10.
Low fuel light comes on in my vehicle. I know that when the light comes on I have 3 gallons of fuel remaining. If my current fuel burn is 20 MPG, I can instantly tell that I have at most 60 miles of fuel to get to a gas station.
In any real world situation, the calculations are more complex if your unit of fuel economy is gallons per 100 miles.
@@Crosshair84 If your unit is gallons per 100 miles, you just switch the operations: In the first case you multiply instead of dividing and in the latter case you divide instead of multiplying. So with gallons per 100 miles the first calculations is slightly easier, while with MPG the second is slightly easier. I would argue though, that the second calculation is getting less common as most cars nowadays can show the remaining range directly.
Additionally G/100mi has the benefits mentioned in the video. While I agree that the need to average the values for multiple cars is quite uncommon for individuals, it’s definitely an advantage to be able to intuitively compare these values when buying a car and argue e. g. this car needs 20 % less G/100mi so it’ll cost me 20 % less on fuel per year.
Right, MPG tells you easily how far you can get on a known quantity of fuel (e.g. a fuel tank). So it's useful for the odd very long trip as it helps plan your fuel stops along the way: multiply MPG by size of the fuel tank, take a compass, you will need to find a fuel stop within the circle.
The flip side is it's a pain to compare relative efficiency, and is less convenient to know how much fuel you need for a given distance e.g. you need to drive from A to B, how much fuel will you need.
GPM is, obviously, the reverse: it's a linear unit so comparing relative efficiency is utterly obvious, and it's easy to know how much fuel you will need for a known distance (a multiplication, and a trivial division for the likely g/100m), however it's harder to know how much you can travel on a given amount of fuel.
In that sense MPG does make some sense in the US, as the saying goes americans think 100 years is a long time and europeans think 100 miles is a long distance, most european countries you can cross on a tank or two (Aberdeen to Southampton is 600 miles) so it's not much of a concern; crossing the US however is a very different proposition, and there are wide areas of nothing in the middle (same with Australia I guess).
Still, MPG mostly seems like something that's really useful when you're actively planning and have a lot of time anyway, and it's not *too hard* to get that information from GPM, whereas the non-linear relation between MPG and efficiency makes *reasoning* abour relative efficiencies in MPG much less intuitive.
@@JS-oh2dp "without too much extra effort."
That's the problem. You should use a unit that requires NO "extra effort". MPG does that for the VAST majority of the people. Calculating with it involves ONLY using multiplication, which is far easier than division for most people.
Real world example: "My car has been averaging 24 MPG of real world fuel economy between fillups and I have a quarter tank left. A quarter tank is about ~3.5 gallons of usable fuel in this car. The road sign says the next major town is 80 miles away with some smaller ones between. Will I make it to the next major town?"
The person takes the 3.5 down to 3 and considers that .5 gallons as either reserve or fuel gauge error margin. 3 gallons of fuel left. 3 x 24 means 73. Meaning you'd likely just barely make it by including the .5 gallon in the calculations, but you'd be cutting it close and might not. You might as well refuel at one of the smaller towns.
MPG is used because that is the unit that has the information in the format that is most relevant for people. What works best for 300,000,000 people takes precedence over what works best for 200,000 engineers.
@@Crosshair84 i prefer the metric system generally but this is why i disagree with the video
Meanwhile some dudes in my country: How many days does your full tank last?
During the shutdown I was getting 3 months per 36 gallon tank.
@@EdBert 36 gallons?!
@@EdBert you drive 10 miles a day?
@@epanther7719 "Shutdown" yknow,,, that time you weren't allowed to go do anything and you had nothing to do anyways
I say: up until I leave the gas station. Then it's not full anymore :)
The classical math problem: a customer goes in to a car dealership an buys 10 cars... Then he drives to a grocery store and buys 50kg of carrots and 500 eggs..
more like 0.75 eggs
What’s the problem??? Lmfao
The answer is either 17, or 3:30 pm. It all depends on whether you use standard or metric units.
Sounds more like a mental problem than a maths problem. He'd be better buying one really good/big car than 10 cheaper cars. What's he going to do with them all?
Maybe he's planning on transporting all 500 eggs, but who's going to drive them all? Wouldn't he be better with a lorry?
And who's going to eat them all? That's a lot of eggs. And they don't last very long before they go bad.
I don't see a question
How many times did you have to practice throwing the jug at the camera to achieve the perfect camera shake?
What camera shake?
@@pasmuis at 4:56 he throws the jug at the camera and the camera shakes
@@clayduval1255 aah i see
The first take (beginning) took two tries. The second take (where it hits the tripod), first try! #blessed
For me, it went the other way around 😁:
- First throw: **missing the camera** - my first thought: "How many times did he have to repeat this to _not_ hit the camera 😄?"
- Second throw: **BONK** - "Okay, I withdraw that question 😂..."
A sneak peek into Jason's favorite activities besides writing stuff in many colors on whiteboards and driving cars : throwing one gallon jugs at cameras
3.96L or 4.45L?
US vs UK/CAN gallon.
@@radbaron 😳🤯😵
It's like rays truck cab, but instead of throwing piss jugs out the window, we throw empty milk cartons at the audience of science class.
I am a software engineer dealing with real-time graphics. Maybe I can use this video to explain to some stubborn colleagues why frames per second is inferrior to milliseconds per frame as performance metric.
FPS is the better single number average for the consumer. MiS/Fr is better when doing performance segmentation. Avg vs .1% lows vs .01% lows.
Isn't the answer, whatever sounds more impressive to the average person? ;)
@@lanceareadbhar maybe if you're marketing stuff. But if you try to measure parts of your computer program in order to optimize it, then presenting your measured values in time is better than in frequency.
This actually is kind of mind blowing. When you realize your unit of measurement is a ratio... you realize that more efficient parts in the old V8 rebuild is actually worth while.
Thank you for saying it, US has lots of weird units, I always use L/100KM, and when I talk to to people from US and some fr Canada they use weird terms like corn syrup on cheeseburger per bald eagle or mpg
Nope, the US has units. Every country has units.
NOBODY measures the area of the USA in square inches, so converting square inches into acres is a nonsensical demand.
Per bald eagle ?
It’s maple syrup and do you have a hate on for bald eagles?
as a french canadian i know my L/100km thank you.
and i also have 2 gallon of maple syrop in the kitchen. 😂
we use both system because we sell alot to america so yeah we use metric on the road. but we mesure with the english system.
its really rare to find a shop that mesure in Metric.
@@Bowtie4me It should be quite abhorrent to you to see people calling for the US to drop their imperial units, because it would be like telling you that you should change your signs to English only, and that everyone should abandon French, or any other language, to use the widespread interoperability language: English.
Watched this and realised 2 things.
1. I am very tired after a day of work
2. I might have the IQ of a farm animal...
That makes 2 of us. I can only think in Lt/100Km. It just makes sense to me.
3. Wrong pay grade
Mooooooo!
I'm pretty sure Jason just wanted to rant about how silly the system is... And I'm okay with that. :)
I’m surprised you didn’t use the term “diminishing returns”
A chart with MPG on the X-axis and gal / 100 mi on the Y-axis
Thousand times thank you for making the case so succinctly, I've tried to explain how distance per volume is super-misleading many a times, I'll now finally have a video to direct people who 'just want to know how far I can travel for my money'...
Just as a reminder: With km/l you run into the same kind of problem. Therefore, as explained in the video, l/100km is used.
"Make way, he's an engineer, he knows stuff" 🤣🤣
I work with engineers...50% chance either his shoes are untied or his zipper is down.
@@EdBert He didn’t know how to use a caliper when trying to measure his Tesla’s panel gaps. AN ENGINEER COULDN’T PROPERLY USE A CALIPER...
He does. He absolutely does. Engineers knows their stuff. If you think this isn't the case.. well.. then you are WRONG.
@@EdBert You work FOR the engineers
This is the most thorough example of a distinction without a difference I've ever seen.
Lmfao 😆 🤣 😂
@@lifegoeson1261 Like a precisely imprecise comment maybe?
Sounds like another 'Murica hatin' foo
@jon27d
Well.. most people can't even remember their high school algebra.. so having numbers that are intuitive to compare actual costs is a big deal. That is the bigger point here.
This kind of feels like a better title is "why no one understands what "average" means"
No he said it correctly
Exactly. It's symantecs.
I use Olympic pool of fuel per football field distance.
Are you driving an aircraft carrier?
Mpg is the answer to "I have a gallon of gas, how far will that get me?"
Gp100m is the answer to "I need to go 100 miles, how much gas will I need?"
Which then tells you how much it's going to cost you, which is what most people want to know anyway. On a day to day basis, your commute distance is fixed. So that's the independent variable in the equation.
Exactly. I think in general we travel for a purpose, so the distance is known, hence G/100m is better I think.
I think that MPG is a remnant of the very old days when fuel was hard to come by, so you had to plan in advance.
Amazing how similar this is FPS in games, where improving very low framerates can make a big difference rather than improving on framerates that are already very high. That is why the unit of frametime (seconds per frame) is a much more useful to look at.
when I hear the "hello everyone, and welcome" I know I'm about to do some learning
No no, you don't "do some learning" - you git learnt.
Energy/distance informs you on cost, distance/energy informs you on range. On a day to day basis I can't do much about my costs but I always want to know my range, hence mpg (or km/kW) is a much more useful thing to know.
it also is good for deciding a daily driver, as each additional mpg is less money at the pump.
@@kirknay Yes but, as the video points out, only on a relative scale and not an absolute one. 1mpg improvement on a 5mpg car is 20% while 1mpg on a 25mpg car is only 4%. Once you've bought the car then mpg is used to simply determine range before refuelling, and "gallons per 100 miles" is an awkward metric to use for that.
They both inform you of both range and fuel economy.
In Australia we moved from mpg to l/100km when we went metric. But in Mexico, reports show km/l.
I hate km/L, hard to know exactly how much fuel is left and range, where knowing L/100Km and the trip meter you can quickly calc the remaining fuel left in L in your head and not have to rely on the inaccurate fuel gauge.
@@3800S1 where do you think your vehicle is getting that range number from? 😂
@@warpedfusion what range numbers?
@@viniciusbraga9881 I disagree. Besides instantaneous fuel usage is a useless metric, average is all that matters.
@@viniciusbraga9881 On my daily car it's meaninglessly. I can drive super careful and like a granny I get 8.5L/100 over a full tank, drive like a maniac, flat out every opportunity I get, it results about 9-9.5/100. It's no appreciable difference really. What makes more of a difference is the ambient temp, in summer I average low 8s and in winter it averages high 9s but driving style makes far less of the difference. That's my daily driver. My weekend car, same model/engine but the engine is hotted up. If I cane it everywhere its about 16L/100 but if I only thrash it a little bit I get about 10L/100. For that engine combo it does make a difference but being a car I only drive a few times a year it doesn't matter how much it uses.
You can also cancel out one of the meters in l/(100km) (you have to remember that l == dm³, of course), which gives you your fuel economy as an area, a cross section. Sort of how thick a line of fuel you need laid out on the road if you supplied your car that way.
Of course my dude, I'll make sure the next car I buy is able to snort a line of fuel from the road. Thanks for the tip, it will definitely come in handy then!!
my brother in christ what
My mind was definitely blown by the scenario 3 STILL being the best but it finally made sense. Neat video!
I've seen this explained before, but it seems like magic every time. Thanks for making this so clear and concise.
Any excuse to throw a milk jug! :)
Mostly why I make videos!
That reminds me that the standards for weight in the US is actually metric, i.e. Kilogram. All scales are actually calibrated to that. When we switched over to L/100km in Canada, it was weird. But once I got my head around it, it was actually easy to understand.
Funny, isn't it. I was used to L/100km from Europe when I came to Thailand where they are used to km/L. It was very strange, but my car dashboard can dot both ways. So I can chose, and guess what I'm using... km/L. Ha,ha,ha. After having seen this video, maybe I should switch back to the good old European way.
"... where the numbers make sense"
* Americans have left the chat *
The thumbs of my hands measures more or les 1 inch in diameter... or you are talking about my feets?
@@edrumsense I’m obviously talking about the circumference of your left foot
Y’all sitting here joking, I’m deadass leaving this video because this man lost me the second he said a number 😂
The key insight is that most people have a more-or-less fixed amount of distance they need to drive per day/week/month and will use as much fuel as they need to drive that distance. They don’t get a fixed amount of gas per day/week/month and vary their amount of driving based on how efficient their vehicle is.
Right, makes the user maths way easier, which ultimately is what matters. I know I have to drive 100 miles per week, my car gets 28 miles per gallon, thus I need 3 and a bit gallons per week. Take that and multiply it by 4 weeks and the price of gas and you have a budget. Have fun doing that with consumption numbers.
Made up example. My car gets 11 L/100 km economy, and I have to drive 150 km a week. 11 times 150/100 = 16.5 L of fuel.
That was some pretty difficult math Eh gramps?
@@letsgobrandon416 What! Did you even try to do the math for volume/distance? Or did you just assume it would be more difficult? Take your example of 28 MPG which is 8.4 L/100km and your weekly commute of 160km. You just devide 8.4 by 100 and multiply by 160 (or if you have 2nd grade math skills just 8.4 x 1.6) to get 13.4 liters used, simple as can be.
@@ErrorCDIV It's hilarious that you think that is simple when you had to do 4 different conversion back and forth to make it work. With MPG there is no conversion, it simple multiplication/devision for each parameter.
@@letsgobrandon416 of course I had to convert it. We're talking about this particular measurment. I don't have to convert anything in my life because that's what I use in the first place. It's like saying meters are worse than feet because you have to do a conversion first.
I'll try to tell you again in a way you might get, here goes.
It's as simple as (fuel economy x distance)
It works for gallons per 100 miles just as well.
This is why the Escalade Hybrid never took off. A “mpg” going from 9 to 10 is worth a lot. That same “mpg” going from 49 to 50 is practically meaningless.
The funny thing is that gallons per hundred miles is a cube divided by a length, so it is an area. The area of the cross section of the fuel stream that you are kind of squirting behind your as you drive.
And now I'm gonna switch to m² for fuel consumption, thank you
@@noahluppe Actually, a car uses about 0.1 mm² of fuel. Fun stuff like that is another reason american units are bad.
That's a great image. Congested highway is a river of fuel pouring out of them all.
There is more than one gallon unit of measurement in common usage as well, Imperial & US. So MPG is reported differently in different parts of the world (Namely the UK as we like to mix imperial and metric for some inexplicable reason). Sometimes when comparing specifications from cars from multiple manufacturer's, it doesn't clarify which one is used so you could be comparing two completely different units.
Let’s not even get into weighing in ‘ stone ‘ 🥴🥴
The mixed unit thing is explicable. I have explained it elsewhere in this forum.
@@GH-oi2jf On this forum as in youtube comments? The reason is we stopped part way through our 'metricisation'. It takes funding and political will to mandate the change and we just stopped dead. Older generations are just so familiar with their old units that they will vehemently oppose any further changes, so political parties stay well clear of the issue.
Road speed signs for example, it is a long and costly process to change all of these from mph to kph. Driver re-education wilol be required. Cost will easily be in the billions. In the long run it will be worth it, to align with global standardisation of units. Many other large countries have already done it. Kilometres are the superior unit to miles.
@@seismica kilometers superior? Depends. Nautical miles are superior to kilometer in aviation and marine navigation therefore they are standard unit of length in those areas. Also aviation uses feet for altitude, again superior to meters but this would take a bit longer to explain.
@@skiptastic1000 No problem. Or "hundredweight" - 1 cwt = 8 stone or 112 pounds. I remember that many years back someone calculated the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight. It made perfect sense. :)
Bare in mind the US gallon (3.78l) is less than the UK Imperial gallon (4.54l). US Quart is around 946ml and UKQ is 1,136ml UK and half quart or US pint 473ml and British pint 568ml which are both half quarts.
So if you want your US vehicle to get more MPG, just move to the UK with it lol!
@@jimbobjimbob8275 I’m sure some manufacturers do this this in their advertising.
@@jimbobjimbob8275 Still would get less mpg as the USA units are smaller. Just like a metric ton is 2205 lbs vs 2000 lbs for the imperial ton.
Back to the white board❤️
This is a bit of a mistargeted argument dealing with large fleets of cars, while the average viewer probably has at most 2, more likely 0 or 1. The better argument, i think, is that the driver in almost all cases has a predetermined target they are driving to. Say you are driving to your parents', who live 200km away (or 200 miles, doesn't matter) and you have a car that can do 10l/100km. Then you need 20 liters of fuel for the journey. It is almost never the case that you think "I'll tank up 30 liters and just drive as far as that takes me". Ergo, the volume/distance measurement is better. Bonus point: the v/d measurement simplifies nicely to area, while the other way only goes to 1/a, which while not really relevant to this is something my mathy brain enjoys.
Never have I ever been more excited to be European in a comment section. Bring it on 🔥🔥
Okay. For human use (weather, indoor temperature, etc) the Fahrenheit scale is much useful than Celsius. In F, zero is very cold and 100 is very hot. Below zero and over 100 are meaningful and useful. It was designed this way with humans in mind. In addition, each decade of F temperature makes a lot of sense. Forecaster will say "temperatures will drop down to the teens". I will usually characterize the outside temperature by decade F. It was in the 90s means it was pretty darn hot. The 80s is hot but quite bearable. And so on.
The mistake the US made in trying to convert to metric is they first tried to force people to switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Since C was much less useful than F for everyday use, people rejected the temperature conversion and this scuttled the overall conversion to metric.
Where I live water boils at a little over 200F which is 94C. I feel sorry for my European friends who are stuck with Celsius and miss out on the expressiveness and usefulness of Fahrenheit. I want to tell them it was a beautiful day in the 60s and this is meaningless to them. Telling them the temperature was between 16C and 21C falls flat. Perhaps in this case "upper teens" could be used. In addition, since degrees C are almost twice as big as degrees F, Celsius lacks the precision of Fahrenheit unless you use a decimal point. For everyday use decimal points are almost never used with Fahrenheit because one degree F is about the smallest temperature change I can feel.
I'm a scientist. I'm used to using the metric system. In many ways it makes the US system seem silly and arcane. But I would accept all that silliness and arcanity if it allowed me to use Fahrenheit for everyday temperatures.
@@BitJam Lol that's a great comment. I'm all for metric in engineering contexts, but this vid failed to give a compelling reason why I would want to switch from mpg and it is very similar to why I have no reason to switch from Fahrenheit. I'm sure it makes plenty of sense in a lot of contexts but if you ask me, it's better to see bigger numbers as you go up. Everyone who has been exposed to the mpg ratings has a feel for what they are and it's a good thing that people consider 20's as low, 30's as ok, and 50's as good. And among the top it's a lot easier to distinguish. I just don't really see the problem unless you're doing math.
@@BitJam Also for human use Celsius is perfectly fine:
20s are comfortably warm (summer temps where I live)
22C is typical room temp
30s are hot
40s are very hot
10s are mild (spring/autumn temps where I live)
0-10 cold but not freezing
@@franklehmann3785 you said it ✊ I'm from Belgium and using full metric and Celsius just makes sense to me.
@@jblecoz I think that the idea is to change your mindset and make driving your personal car so expensive that you'll look for a cheaper alternative like a bicycle. And so this is more eco friendly. Fine by me as I live near a city where I can bike to work, but for others it's more challenging.
Harmonic average also applies to other averages: for example, the average speed of a trip consisting of successive legs with different individual speeds. The slowest legs (e.g. traffic jams) prevail disproportionately.
That's why speeding on the highways doesn't save you much time. Speed through school zones, that actually makes a difference.
For legal reasons thats a joke
This was the WRONG video to get high and watch... oops lol I'll come back and try again later
Same
Not a problem with beer. You're using the wrong (and illegal) stress reliever.
@@BillyBobDingledorf Okay officer Bill. Definitely not illegal here in Colorado but thanks for the input!
Not a problem with beer? Come back when you've had 7 of those
My man just absolutely LANDED that Intro Hook
Really interesting. I am one that enjoys distance/volume. It makes calculating on the road a lot easier. I always wondered what the idea was behind using volume/distance. Thanks!
Funny enough, it doesn't. What I realized after watching the video: the way brains outside the US work is in chunks of 100km. So you know your car uses 7l per 100km, then you count in multiples of 7. Have a 35 liter tank? Makes 500km. 5l per 100km? Makes 700km. The rest is rounding error :-D
@@fizzlmerde640 Yeah I can do that math too, but it's too many steps (I'm a little lazy 😅). It's just the way my brain chooses to work. I'm in South Africa, btw. My car uses volume/distance too, but I barely use that
Me: Subscribes to Engineering Explained to hopefully understand stuff a little better.
Also me: I have less of an idea than when I started...
My engineering classes were the only place I ever left feeling dumber than when I arrived.
@@justinbecker1813 if you felt dumber that means you were getting smarter because you could begin to see the lack in your knowledge as you were progressing
Before I watch this i have to say the biggest issue is that a "5mpg difference" is not really all that meaningfull.
If you go from 10 to 15 mpg then that's massive in terms of fuel cost. If you go from 30 to 35mpg the difference in cost is not all that impressive (in comparision)
Edit: 9:01 I knew this was comming
Yes, and that is why Jason is arguing that using a volume over distance measure is way more meaningful! Going from 10mpg to 15mpg is a 50% improvement in economy so over a fixed distance you would spend 1/2 as much money on fuel simple right!
@@johncanalese588
you are wrong i think (or I don't get what you are saying)
over a fixed distance, let's say 60mi you would have to buy
6gallons with 10mp or
4 gallons with 15mpg,
so you are not spending " 1/2 as much money on fuel"
Or was that a joke?
In the Netherlands we tend to use L/100km, though we used to use km/L in the past. People often convert it still.
I'm Canadian, we use L/100Km...which can be converted to m^3/m ... which is an area.
In jet aircraft, the fuel economy is measured in TSFC, which has dimensions of s^-1
I’m still surprised that kwh/mile is a thing. They combined a metric unit with an imperial unit to create that abomination, and I can’t classify it as either one.
I'm pretty sure Americans measure electricity consumption in kWh, so it is quite logical.
that's why space rockets crash
The only problem is your need to classify things. If someone finds mixed units useful, I have no objection.
Well, we do use watts (lightbulbs, microwave, etc) and kWh (electricity bills) in the US, so it kinda makes sense for us. Thankfully there isn't much use of BTUs outside of HVAC discussions.
watthours aren't metric.
I achieved my goal of learning something new today. Back to bed for me.
The video hasn't really convinced me that volume over distance is somehow the superior measure (it gives exactly the same information), but it finally made the harmonic mean click for me. Thanks!
Agreed, I don't see how the issues he pointed out would cause trouble for typical person in the real world. I mean, who is looking at the average mpg of their vehicles? What would even be the use of that information (for a typical person)?
@@Cyberguy42 Best I can guess is hypothetically if you were considering paying more for increased fuel efficiency when buying a car. The jump from 10-20 is worth a lot more than the jump from 40-50 and you shouldn't pay the same markup for both.
But realistically that's not how cars are bought or sold. Other factors are going to land all your options in a similar range of price and fuel economy anyway.
@@Cyberguy42 Because the average American has trouble making sense of numbers, and somehow an increase of 40 to 50 mpg seems more impressive than 4 to 3 l/km. Also see why third pounder burgers didn't make it in the US.....
11:22 that moment when you realise you'll have to watch this video all over again because you did not understand one bit of it!
Probably why he gets so many views
Wow you got that ; I will have to pick your brains.
That's exactly the reason why a trashy numbers system in the US works. Most people are not smart enough anyways to recognize the deficits of it.
All I know is I put gas in my car and it goes vroom
@@irmenkop85 FO
I know people who judge cars (let’s be honest, Pickup Trucks) on “Miles per Tank” or even “Days between Fueling”
As a fellow math and engineering nerd, this video made me giddy!
For fleet logistics, there is a missing part of this as well
This is assuming that all the vehicles are going to same miles in a given time period,
If the 9 cars are actual fleet cars doing 500 to 1000 miles per week and the one doing 5 mpg is only an executive doing 100 kiles a week then is would actually be better to do option 1, improve the fleet
In Brazil, the unit is kilometers per liter, but some Peugeots in early 2000 still exhibited liters/100km on the on board computer.
Litres/100km is the standard fuel economy metric in Europe
European production car?
@@edipires15 Australia as well.
@@r6201sk yep it's a french car manufacturer
Liters per 100 km is the best way to know how much your fuel economy is.
Don’t know why it should be so strange.
You travel 550km and you have an average liter/100km value, you already know how much you need to fill, or how much you can push your car.
This is exactly why we need to have Light-Duty Truck and larger vehicles meet stricter regulations, it provides more benefit than forcing a Prius to be more efficient
All imperial units are just trash
Yes. Thankfully, we use US Customary units. I hate that Imperial gallon/pint!
Where I am in Canada we use km for the road but we still use feet and inches along with centimeters and meters, so even though its liters at the pump a lot of us use miles for fuel measurement in our cars.
In my old age, 38, this and speeding in a residential zone has become a grumpy dad issue!!!lol
I'm turning 39 this month and find myself shaking a fist when people drive by too fast in my neighborhood. Haven't yelled at kids for walking on my grass yet.
L-oo-ser-s! 😛
Im also turning 39 next month, and im still young, hot and no kids.
And running on my own grass yelling!
;)
I’ve hated speeding in residential since I was 14. I grilled my friends in high school over it because I didn’t want to be in the car when a kid gets hit. I don’t think this issue makes you a grumpy old man :)
Yeah, and most of these clowns do the same - expect everyone to be respectful of the speed limit in front of THEIR house, but drive by yours like Mario Andretti headed for the checkered flag at Indy.
@@scottanthony3426 often thats the case but I drive slow in neighborhoods and parking lots. Rarely above 2nd gear, slightly high RPM so any kids hear me coming.
MPG is the type of measurement advertised when the a shady marketing department runs the show ehhehehe
I mean, it's still a good measurement if you need to know how expensive it is going to be to drive.
In Germany and maybe all Europe we use Liters per 100km
For example a car needs 6 liters per 100Km
Yeah, I prefer that way, not the mpg one
Very simple 👍
@@jvjv6942 Which mpg do you dislike? american or uk?
Really you thought that only Germans use metric system? Out of 195 countries 192 use metric
@@wywiertarkowywator7516 of course i didn't. I only shared an example of the common method used in Germany.
What you stated about quickly calculating the range is the exact reason why MPG is a better metric for consumers. Yes, for fleets with varying distances traveled, g/100mi is more useful, and the same goes for equivalent comparisons. But for commuters, road trippers, and weekend warriors, the distances between our DESTINATIONS never change.
All I would like is a review of the vehicle getting only 5 MPG! That should be a fun car! 😂
Canyonerooooo
This guy gets it lol
hummer probably
Take a hellcat to a track haha, and you if you're delicate with the throttle, you might get 5 mpg!
It could be a heavy tractor...
I'm gunna have to watch this like 5 more times before it sinks in. Thank you
It's basically the same principle as average salary. Say the average salary is $50k, but if you ask 100 people on the street 99 of them would be earning way less, probably closer to the median of $35k. It's the 1 guy with the crazy high salary that pulls up the average.
Same idea here, 9 cars have great fuel efficiency, but it's the 1 car that pulls them all down.
@@AKAMustang damn thanks bro, now i get it lmao
I've never seen a more complicated explanation for something so simple ...
One mistake I made when I purchased my ford focus rs was to not look at fuel tank size. I made the mistake of assuming that cars would have a reasonable size tank. I spent one week trying to get the absolute best mpg after purchase only to then notice that I had one puny little 12 gallon tank. :(
I don't enjoy maths on a whiteboard in general, I enjoy your presentation of maths on a whiteboard 👀
That might be because what Jason presents is not maths 👀
On the other hand, MPG can actually represent idling as 0, where L/100KM will be infinite.
And MPG will go infinite in those moments when the throttle is closed yet the car is moving :) I've seen that in one car.
Most new cars in Europe switch to L per hour when idling or moving below a certain speed.
Going downhill would also give you infinite MPG but will show 0L/100KM.
my car at idle says 0.5 or 0.6 liters per hour.
@@8Hshan same thing happens in mine
Even though we use metric in Australia, I will always use the Imperial 6 inches for certain things!
First.. I can totally understand..
Second.. and not a negative comment on you.. more just a comment on what we get used to.. I grew up in the US which uses the english system for basically everything.. but in high school I went to a tech school with a focus in Chemical Tech, and in college took chemistry for two years as part of undergrad work in biology. So for me, metric just became easier to think in and calculate in. Many things that required a calculator in english system I could do in my head in metric (not all, obviously). Further, since I deal with a lot of Europeans in my work, metric is something I'm used to thinking in.
I can obviously still think in english.. but part of me has always hoped for a conversion to metric in the US (even though now I think it is just a pipe dream).