Admitting such might get me uninvited to some parties locally, but it is true. But what if I told you it gets 64 miles per gallon, and under the right conditions it gets 96 miles per gallon?
You’d say I was drinking motor fuel, but I am not lying. We have a growing family – me, my wife, and our two children. We travel most everywhere together, and we take lots of things, such as strollers, coolers with milk, sleeping bags and pillows, our two dogs, and some books to read. When we do such things, we drive the Expedition. That car nominally gets 16 miles per gallon, but is that the relevant metric? It does not seem to be for us. What we care about is how we can get 4 people and our things from one place to another. When we drive that car with all of us in it, we get the equivalent of 64 person-miles per gallon (each gallon of gas carries 4 people 16 miles). When we add two of our parents as we did last weekend, then that same “inefficient” car comfortably carries 6 people over 16 miles, for an equivalent of 96 person-miles per gallon.
With gas prices creeping back up to $3, it is rare for any of us to use that car for any other purposes than family trips. Our other car gets 30 miles per gallon, but barely can fit the 4 of us in there – that is what I use to get to work – rather “inefficient” compared to how our family travels.
You might also rethink what we mean by “efficiency.” In what sense is me driving the Expedition “inefficient?”
Wintercow will be one of the first to be burnt at the stake for heresy.
My 8-cylinder Cadillac did 52 miles per person per gallon from home to Virginia and back, all at about 1900 rpm, feeding the trees, grass, and weeds CO2 along the Robert Byrd Highway on 81, which is being resurfaced, thanks to the Recovery and Reconstruction Act of 2009, or whatever the sign said.
I don’t know what I would do if Obama did not care for me so much.