With gas prices being what they are I was just wondering how fellow dopers are dealing.
I’m driving a 95’ Eagle Summit ES, getting 6.3L/100km or 37mpg.
Which is great considering my last vehicle was a Town and Country minivan. Rather impractacle for a student.
I deal with high gas prices by having a 6-mile commute (that’s the total per day, folks). It was awfully grand of my company to move so close to where I live last year.
It uses a lot of gas starting and idling, so I am practically paying to go to work. That’s exaggerated, but I think about 35% of my wages go toward feeding my gas tank.
'97 Isuzu Oasis minivan. About 20 mpg.
2003 Toyota Prius. Up to 52 mph in summer (around 48 this year), 42 or so in winter.
2004 Toyota Prius. About the same as the '03, averaging a bit higher sometimes.
We have a 1994 Ford Explorer (17 city, 22 hwy), 2000 BMW Z3 (19 city, 26 hwy), and a motorcycle. Usually I drive the Ford and my dad drives the BMW, but we’ve switched to him riding his motorcycle and me driving the BMW (woo hoo!).
We’re looking to get a new car that will be better on the mileage, but most hybrids aren’t enough of a mpg difference to justify the $10k+ additional cost or are ugly as sin. So the quest continues!
I drive an 89 cadillac which gets 21 mpg. For a car that size with a V8, that’s not bad. I drive about 50 miles per day total (25 miles each way). I deal with it by grumbling and complaining at the pump every time I fill up, but for about a year and a half I had to commute much farther. Even with the price of gas going through the roof my weekly spending on gas has gone down quite a bit.
Mrs Geek drives a 91 toyota camry which gets better mileage than that, but all she does is drive around locally so it’s not worth worrying about.
I also have a pickup truck, which probably gets in the low to mid teens in gas mileage, but I rarely drive it to work.
98 Chevy Tracker – two door convertible. 4 cylinders. Gets between 22 - 24 mpg. I measure it every week 'coz I’m anal like that. I drive 12 miles round-trip to work each day; city driving.
We have three vehicles that are run with regularity in our household:
2005 Ford Escape Limited - about 22 mpg average (city and highway)
1988 Chevy S-10 manual - 27 mpg average
1984 Chevy 1-ton - 7 mpg when not in direct farm use, 3-4 mpg when towing a load of corn or hay
However, both the trucks have been converted by smarty-pants Mr. Stuff to be dual-fuel vehicles and will run exclusively on natural gas if we don’t venture more than, say, 100 miles round-trip from the farm. We get natural gas free off our farm oil wells.
Needless to say, we only drive the “good car” when we go to church or somewhere where I need to look put together (which isn’t very many places), since the S-10 has no air conditioning and is pretty grubby from years of part-time farm use.
3 cars in our stable:
1997 Mini van (18 mpg)
2001 Crewcab pickup (13 mpg)
2005 Sedan (32 mpg)
Cumulative commute distance is about 115 miles daily. Our Exxon bill exceeds the monthly payment on our first house. I still figure gas is a steal compared to European prices, so I’m not complaining. (Yet)
'98 Town And Country (wife); 18 mpg city, 25 mpg highway (a lot less if I’m driving).
'97 Grand Prix (daughter); about 25 mpg (see above disclaimer).
'91 Trans Am (my car); lousy gas mileage (15 mpg?).
'88 Goldwing; hard to tell as I am always driving it. I would wag it at 25-30 mpg. Because it’s a 1500 CC, 6 cylinder and damned if I don’t like to go from 60 mph to 90 mph quickly no matter how hard I try to drive civilly
My go-to-work vehicle is a 2003 Specialized Crossroads (a bicycle, 'cuz I ain’t paying no $2.65/gallon if I can ride a bike). The mpg figures aren’t in yet but I think it takes one candy bar for the two-mile trip to work.
I spend about $20 a week on gas but that is either putting gas into the wife’s vehicle or gas for the kid. I usually only put gas in my car about every three weeks or so.