Miles Per Dollar for Gas

[Artemis Windsong]

This article shows the difference of miles per dollar instead of miles per gallon.  Do we care?

lifehacker.com/calculate-your-cars-miles-per-dollar-instead-of-miles-p-1849450845

[NoNamePerson]

I don’t care!! Gas can hit $10.00 a gallon and I will still drive. Maybe not as much but being retired makes a huge difference. Paid $2.69 gallon yesterday. Put in my $20.00 and mossied on down the road   Good for a month but I get around 31 MPG in my iitty bitty low end car.

And I friggin hate math problems with a passion so won’t be doing the MPD crap.  

[billisonboard]

I'm not into micro-calculations of mileage.  I do think in terms of cost for trips at times. My wife and I usually take her Honda Fit to town. She recently had a couple of doctor appointments and road conditions dictated we take my 4 wheel drive Ranger. Definitely noted the difference in cost. 

[laterbloomer]

I care for road trips with my camper...road trips with the car too now that I think about it. It's a budgeting thing. And I do cents per km.

[billisonboard]

We have a more expensive grocery store in our small town. This calculation would allow me to find the break-even point for shopping locally versus taking the trip to town. Not going to do it, but it would allow it. 

[NoNamePerson]

I should have added to my post that until I bought current car in 2018 I had no clue how many MPG I got. Filled up got to quarter tank and filled up again. Made no difference one way or other. I had to have gas to drive! Only reason I know MPG is it shows in middle of all that dash crap   l will also admit I noticed a difference when I went from driving  5 speed for 24 years to automatic in 2005. 

[bean29]

My First thought was I don't care if it is MPG or $ per Mile, I just fill my tank and go.  That said I do drive a PHEV, and I love plugging the car in and not having to go to the gas station.  I would use Electricity even if the cost was slightly more.  I have been using Gas recently b/c DH has stuff in the garage - So it will be another few weeks before I can charge daily.

Her explanation for why you would want to compare miles per dollar makes sense if you can choose to use Gas or Electricity for any given trip.

My car is very quiet in EV mode.  I love it.  Also the combination of Gas and Electric gives you some really good acceleration when getting on the freeway etc.  So, there are other considerations to why you would want the benefit of charging your vehicle vs. gassing it up.  Toyota is using a regenerative braking system and it harvests the energy from braking the car and uses it to charge the battery.  So, my car has been staying at 33% charged.  I am not sure what the minimal amount of battery charge it holds, but it will never take the battery down to less than maybe 20%.

[Artemis Windsong]

I'm not fond of math either. The article did the math that is close enough for me.

When the snow is hood high on a 4WD pickup with inches of ice underneath tires, mpg is forgotten. Just get r' done.

[Tiny]

I pretty much drive a predictable number of miles per month. I don't sweat it when I have somewhere out of the ordinary to drive to. "out of the ordinary" usually involves something "fun" or in some way meaningful so I don't really care if I will spend more on gas. My car gets about 22 mpg. It's not super efficient.

I am in the habit of planning my errands/combining trips so I feel I'm already wisely using/conserving gas.

My pet peeve is drive thrus. I tend to avoid drive thrus since letting my car run for the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to get my food makes me crazy. This may be misplaced anxiety.


I use to be surprised when someone had no idea of how many mpg their vehicle was getting. I'd also be surprised when someone would let their car idle while waiting for long times (like dropping off a passenger who was running into a store to get a few things while they sat in the car and waited)... but now I just shrug it off: You do you (it's not my money).


I did read the article in the OP, and I can see where calculating Miles per dollar is helpful when comparing the cost of two different energy sources.

For the most part I'm only using/buying gas - so I try to fill up at one of the lower priced stations on whatever "errand path" I'm running when getting gas is on the errand list. (I live in the land of a zillion gas stations and half a zillion different taxes/fees/charges applied to the price of gas schemes based on location of the station. so "shopping around" or knowing where the different "zones" are is helpful in saving up to .10 per gallon).

[billisonboard]

I have laughed at myself at times when I have realized  I went out of my way to save like.4 cents a gallon on a 15 gallon fill-up.