‘Miles per Gallon’ or MPG is the de-facto measuring unit for fuel consumption in cars. That’s what we all use to define more or less fuel efficient cars, and the amount of gas we’d save or waste by traveling in them, right?
Well, would you say that you would save more gas (in absolute units: gallons of gas saved) when you moved from a 10MPG car to a 12MPG vehicle, or when you moved from a 25MPG vehicle to a 30MPG one?
It turns out that even though having higher fuel efficient cars is of course more benefitial (higher MPG), it also helps to gain even small increases in fuel efficiency in low fuel efficiency cars (lower MPGs). The amount of gas that you save in gaining even a small increase in fuel efficiency (2MPG better in a 12MPG vehicle) may be larger than a large difference in fuel efficiency in more fuel efficient vehicles (10MPG better on a 40MPG vehicle, even!)
Time to usher in the Age of the ‘Gallons per Mile’, anyone? Even if it is, though, keep grabbing those Toyota Yaris-es, people!!
Update: There were errors in the post; now they have been corrected. 🙂