Gallons Per Mile Makes More Sense
Duke Today reported that Fuqua School of Business professors Richard Larrick and Jack Soll, writing in Science, argue that fuel efficiency should be listed as gallons used per distance driven and not as miles per gallon. Their experiments found that miles per gallon leads people to underestimate how much fuel is saved by improving the least efficient vehicles: raising efficiency from 18 to 28 miles per gallon saves 198 gallons over 10,000 miles, about twice the 94 gallons saved by raising it from 34 to 50.
Duke Today reported that Fuqua School of Business professors Richard Larrick and Jack Soll, writing in Science, argue that fuel efficiency should be listed as gallons used per distance driven and not as miles per gallon. Their experiments found that miles per gallon leads people to underestimate how much fuel is saved by improving the least efficient vehicles: raising efficiency from 18 to 28 miles per gallon saves 198 gallons over 10,000 miles, about twice the 94 gallons saved by raising it from 34 to 50.
Written from the duke Today news item of 19 June 2008, read 2026-10-27.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
19 June 2008. https://today.duke.edu/2008/06/gpmfuqua.html