Content Categories ARTICLES Hybrid Articles My only day off in a week and I'm doing math? | My only day off in a week and I'm doing math? |
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| Written by Kacey Green | |
| Saturday, 15 September 2007 | |
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I am enjoying my only day off in a week. Let's talk about calculating your miles per gallon (MPG) over a tank of gas. The way the Prius calculates MPG is simple; the vehicle has four cylinders, it feeds the four cylinders the same amount of fuel, Prius multiply their consumption as measured in cylinder one by four to get total consumption. 1*4=4 4*amount of fuel used=total fuel consumed consumption/miles traveled= miles traveled for each unit of fuel consumed. Now for the part that works on every car. We don't usually have fuel flow meters that we can read, so we have to gauge how much fuel the car has used since last fill up. Most people will not run their tanks dry to avoid stressing the car and to avoid being stranded in inconvenient situations. If we cannot measure as the car consumes the fuel and we aren't able to measure a perfect tank how do we know how to gauge our progress without relying on what the car says? We know something the car does not (usually) know, we know how much fuel we put in. For example, if we put in 2 gallons of fuel to bring the car to full, then drove 50 miles and filled up again, this time the vehicle took 2.5 gallons to get to full, we used 2.5 gallons! 50 miles/2.5 gallons= 20 miles per gallon. There are only two minor inconveniences with this method of calculation. You have to wait until you have used some fuel and refilled, and it is less accurate on single tanks for the Prius. The reason for the loss of accuracy is, the North American Prius all have flexible fuel tanks and hold different amounts of fuel under different environmental variables. Therefore, for the Prius this method only gives a rough estimate and the car gives a better and instant rough estimate. However, this method combined over all the tank fills in question, will tell you the car's exact mileage for the series of fills in question. If you pumped 80 gallons into the car and traveled 5000 miles for the tanks you are tracking, you achieved an average of 62.5 MPG!
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