Stories tagged mpg

Trains are efficient
Courtesy Sean Lamb When it comes to moving tons of freight, freight trains are very efficient (barges or ships might be even better). Someone asked FactCheck.org

"Can a freight train really move a ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel?" (click link to read)

The facts

Seven major railroad companies reported the following for 2007:

• 1,770,545,245,000 ton-miles of freight were moved
• 4,062,025,082 gallons of diesel fuel were consumed
• That works out to be almost 436 ton-miles per gallon (435.88)

Trains today 85% more efficient than in 1980

The Association of American Railroads is boasting an 85.5 percent improvement in fuel efficiency for their trains since 1980.

“In fact, if just 10 percent of the freight currently moving by truck went instead by rail, the nation could save one billion gallons of fuel per year."

This information probably sounds like an advertisement for the railroad industry. I did use the Association of American Railroads website as a source.

Tags : transportation, trains, Association of American Railroads, mpg, efficiency, fuel, gas, energy

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My Geo Metro: 47 miles per gallon
Courtesy Art OglesbyGuess the answer to this word problem before doing the math.

• Car A (a compact) gets 34 mpg
• Car B (a hybrid) gets 54 mpg
• Car C (an S.U.V.) gets 18 mpg
• Car D (a sedan) gets 28 mpg

Which would save more gasoline?

• (a)replacing Car A with Car B
• (b)replacing Car C with Car D
• (c)both would save the same

Can you do the math?

I drive my car about 10,000 miles each year. One way to look at this problem would be to calculate how many gallons of gas each of the four cars would use to go 10,000 miles. Can you do the math? If gas costs $4 per gallon what is the cost for each car to go the 10,000 miles?

Show me your answers in the comments

I will do the math for my Geo Metro as an example. It now has over 100,000 miles on it. Until recently it got 50 miles per gallon. Two gallons would take me 100 miles, 20 gallons would take 1000 miles. 100,000 miles would take 2000 gallons. With $4 gas that 2000 gallons would cost $8000.

Save the world's gas

I once owned a Ford pickup truck. If it got 20 mpg and if I drove it 100,000 miles I would need 5000 gallons which would cost me $20,000. By replacing my pickup with the Metro I use less than half the gas and save over $1000 a year. I used to commute to work and put on 30,000 miles per year. That figures out to a $36,000 saving over 10 years.

Tags : mpg, miles per gallon, math, Geo Metro, efficiency

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