"You are spending X cents more per gallon for every Y MPH over Z you drive"

The BBQ Pit
1

Bull. I don’t know why this one keeps getting brought up, but I wish it would get shoved back into whatever hole it crawled out of originally. The individual numbers often change. Sometimes it’s “every 5 MPH over 55,” sometimes it’s “every 10 MPH over 60,” or vice versa, and of course as the price of gas gets higher the number of cents used goes up. I’ve been hearing variations on it for well over a decade, and it probably goes back much further than that, but it always just makes me shake my head in sorrow that people are actually so dumb as to believe it and keep spreading it. Most recently I ran across it as part of some article in one of those “magazines” that come with the Sunday paper, either Parade or USA Weekend, I don’t recall which.

Anyone with a functioning brain who just thinks about it for long enough should see what horsepucky the statement is. Hello, the price per gallon is set at the station. How fast you drive will never affect the price the station charges you for a gallon. There’s a CASH price and a CREDIT price these days, but no DRIVES UNDER SPEED Z and DRIVES OVER SPEED Z price. No sliding scale based on how many Y’s over Z. Nope. If I drive 70 MPH, and you drive 55 MPH, but we both just happen to be pumping gas at the same station at the same time, using the same grade of gas and the same payment method, I will pay the same exact price per gallon as you.

Yes, driving over certain speeds can/will cost you more money per mile, or use more gallons (well a higher fraction of a gallon, more likely) per mile, but it can never have any effect on the price you pay per gallon.

If you think people should drive slower because then they’d use less gas per mile, or less money per mile, fine. Say so.

“You are using X more gallons per mile for every Y MPH over Z you drive”

“You are spending X cents more per mile for every Y MPH over Z you drive”

Of course, even that would be a gross oversimplification, and it would always depend on numerous factors for each individual car, but at least it wouldn’t be so incredibly stupid as claiming you’re going to pay more per gallon.

Sorry, I just needed to vent on that a little. I don’t feel so strongly about this that it should be a pit, so I hope placing it in IMHO is alright. It was a tossup between here and MPSIMS.

2

Who is claiming what? I’ve never heard any claim like this by anyone. I have heard, “Your mileage will decrease if you go faster and/or accelerate faster.” This might easily translate into “You will pay more for gas if you…”, but they are talking about gas as a total expense, not as a price per gallon.

3

Moving thread from IMHO to The BBQ Pit.

4

YMMV.

5

The statement is obviously meant to mean that your car runs more efficiently below a certain speed. And you pretty obviously understand that that is what it means. Willfully pretending to think it means something ridiculous, and then getting pissed off about it seems like a really weird waste of energy.

6

I was curious about how widespread this mistake was. So, I fired up Lexis and I searched all English language publications over the last two years for any article containing the terms “per gallon,” “more,” “cents,” and “for every OR speed OR mph” near each other. There was one relevant result, from a list of energy-saving tips from the Alliance to Save Energy published in Business Wire and carried by a handful of local papers:

They probably meant to write, as has been written in some other newspapers, “Each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying 20 cents more per gallon for gas.”

OP: Was that the exact phrase you saw?

7

Bonus: The ASE has a revised version of the tips on their website, which reads “Each five miles per hour over 60 mph is like paying an additional 24 cents per gallon for gas.”

I’m sure the OP will be able to sleep now. :wink:

8

I gotta fuck-ton of money and a kick-ass BMW Groundshaker. I freakin’ go 85-100 mph most everywhere, and really like it!

And it gets really good milage, even at those speeds! :smiley:

9

Never heard this before but it is clearly bullshit. In my car, driving conservatively, I get about 28 mpg doing 60 on my commute to work. I used to drive a different (longer) route that takes less time as I was typically going 90 most of the time. On this route I typically got 26 mpg. By my calculation, each five mph over 60 is like paying 4 cents more per gallon.

I hate it when people make stupid comparisons like this. I could drive 90 and still get 28 mpg just by changing my acceleration profile…

10

Saying you’re paying more per gallon is just stupid. You’re paying more per mile.

This concept has been around since at the least the 1970s of course – it was the reason President Carter instituted the national 55 mph speed limit.

How much you’re paying per mile depends on the price of gas (duh) and a range of other factors, speeds under 75 mph being not all that important. I’d be willing to bet that a constant 70 mph on the highway takes less gas than an average 55 speed involving frequent slowdowns to 45 mph and acceleration to 60 mph. If you want to know how much gas you’re using at a given moment, the RPM gauge is a pretty good indicator.

11

As I recall, the 55 speed limit was instituted in either the waning months of Nixon’s presidency or the early part of Ford’s-- some time in 1974.

The assumption was flawed by the the adoption of then-rare overdrive transmissions. I knew several people who bought cars in which the top gear was overdrive who complained that the engine “lugged” @ 55 if they tried to use the overdrive.

My Pontiac gets the same mileage with the cruise set @ 65 as with it set @ 55 because the automatic transmission doesn’t hunt between direct and overdrive on any small rise in the road @ the higher setting but stays in O’D on all but the steepest hills.

I favor eveyone’s experimenting with their individual vehicles to find the ideal economic speed. The Interstate was designed so that people could safely use it @ 75 in sloppy-suspended 1955 cars with drum brakes and bias-ply tires, so any limit under 80 isn’t there for safety–it’s there for ticket revenue.

And, as has already been mentioned, the acceleration rate you use getting to a given cruising speed is as important as the speed itself.

12

I really gotta get one of those cars that has zero wind resistance.
losing 2 mpg for 30 mph when you start at 60 and you blame it on how you accelerate?
what I know is that going through Montana back before the daytime speed limits at 110 beat the living hell out of my mpg, the same car that was pulling 300 miles on a tank suddenly was closer by far to 200.