I don’t know if I’m more impressed with concept that one gallon of gas could provide 7,300 charges or that our automobiles can’t seem to get consistently better than 25miles using the same quantity of fuel.  Yeah, yeah,… I understand that moving a 3,000 hunk of steel is different that filling up a 1420mAh lithium-polymer battery.

Read more, courtesy of gizmodo -

It’s true. According to Bill Colton, a VP at ExxonMobil, a single gallon of gas has enough energy to charge an iPhone once a day for 20 years. Of course, that’s never going to happen but it’s a point ExxonMobil uses to stress the fact that there is a lot of energy in gasoline.

That number is striking though. 20 years? And then you think about what gasoline is used for, fuel for our cars, and it all makes sense (kind of). Our cars which are three thousand some pounds and can hit upwards of 100 mph for miles upon miles rely on gas to work. If gas has enough energy to power that, it definitely has leftover resources to pump up our phones.

ExxonMobil goes on to say that gas is one of the lightest and most energy dense fuels there is, which I could not care less about because all I want now is somebody to figure out how to transform a gallon of gas into a chargeable resource for my iPhone.

I didn’t even make it to my desk this morning before a fellow nerd approached me with a solution for fixing the massive oil ‘leak’ in the gulf.  This post has nothing to do with that situation directly, but perhaps it was the impetus for a conversation that followed with yet another nerd.

The short version: fuel efficiency.  It started with an article (here) about the misconceptions inherent in using miles per gallon (MPG) as a standard for measuring fuel efficiency.  This led to another website (mpgillusion.com, here) that is certainly closer to the epicenter of the issue - MPG misleads the consumer whereas a measure of GPM (gallons used per x miles) would not.

This got me thinking about two practical examples (that are at least personally relevant).  First, given that there are several vehicles that come in both hybrid and standard formats, is there a true cost savings in fuel that makes up for the higher price tag of the hybrid vehicle.  Taking that a step further, where would I be now if I had bought a Prius five years ago instead of my Camry.  Also, cost-savings aside, what are the environmental ramifications of such a choice.

For these scenarios I’ll use 75,000 miles as a standard distance that I think is fair to expect a buyer to travel in five years that they own the vehicle.  Also, for the price of fuel I looked up prices for the East Coast on the first of June for the past 5 years.

‘10 - $3.00
‘09 - $2.69
‘08 - $4.21
‘07 - $3.37
‘06 - $3.20
‘05 - $2.33

This works out to an average cost of $3.33 per gallon.

Camry Vs. Prius

2005 Toyota Camry LE, 2.4L Auto - Rated at 24 MPG ($17,500)
a) 75,000 miles / 24 MPG = 3,125 gallons
b) 3,125 gallons x $3.33 = $10,406
Total Cost = $17,500 + $10,406 = $27,906

2006 Toyota Prius Sedan, 1.5L CVT - Rated at 46 MPG ($27,500)
a) 75,000 miles / 46 MPG = 1,630 gallons
b) 1,630 gallons x $3.33 = $5,429
Total Cost = $27,500 + $5,429 = $32,929

So, there are two sides to the story here.  First off, I don’t know if I feel very good about my financial decision here.  Sure, based on these figures I came out about $5k to the good, but given the tax credits and whatnot that were being issued to folks that bought hybrid vehicles I probably only came out slightly ahead.  Unfortunately, the bigger issue here is that I burned through almost twice as much gasoline.

According to the EPA website (here), burning 100 gallons of gasoline results in one ton of C02 emissions.  So, who’s the guy that dumped almost 15 more tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since 2005?  Oh yeah, that’s me…. okay, so it wasn’t just me.  Automobile.com (here) claims that Camry sales topped 430,000 vehicles in 2005.  Of course not everyone that bought a Camry also considered the Prius, but given more of this type of analysis, more people (like me) might have gone the other way.

This post has already become much longer than I had anticipated, so I’ll try to wrap things up here.  As for the other scenario I mentioned above… use your own damn calculator, as I’m out of room here.

I’d say that most consumers today are more concerned about the bottom line than the environment, but I’m sure that we’ll get to a point where that isn’t the case, but it’ll probably be too late by then (IMO).  That being said, I fully support a shift in perception when it comes to the discussion about MPG vs. GPM.

With that being said, I now submit this to my fellow nerds for their brutal deconstruction of my article / arithmetic.