How to Calculate Your Car’s “Miles Per Dollar”

Car mileage is usually described in “miles per gallon”, which generally makes sense. Calculate your car usage in miles and pay for gas in gallons.But when it comes to budgeting, we don’t always care how far we can go with a particular amount of a particular petroleum product. costThat doubles when comparing cars that use different types of fuel, such as gasoline and electric cars, or if you have a car that can use both.

Compare Conventional Cars Using MPD

Even if your car only runs on plain old gas, calculating mileage per dollar can help you put your budget into perspective. When gas prices were $5.09 this summer, a 22-mile-per-gallon car would do 4.3 miles per dollar. By comparison, a car that goes 30 miles per gallon earns 5.9 miles per dollar spent.

If you know the mileage of your car and the current price of gas in your area, you can find the miles per dollar.

(mileage of your car per gallon) / (price of gas per gallon)

If you can’t remember which number comes first, miles Around dollarSo divide the number of miles (say 30) by the number of dollars (say $5.09). It’s 5.9. If you prefer, you can flip the equation for dollars or cents per mile. In this same example, that would be 17 cents per mile.

Budget your driving with MPD

Miles per dollar can also help you think about how much it costs to drive somewhere. So 18 miles round trip. Using the 5.9 miles per dollar car example, going to the gym three times in a given week would cost $3.05 in total, and staying home every day this summer would cost him $3.05. Saved me a dollar. (Gasoline prices have dropped, so each trip is slightly cheaper, at $2.40.)

Or let’s say you want to go hiking in the woods 50 miles away. That’s 100 miles round trip. If my car gets 30 miles per gallon and my friend’s gets 22 miles per gallon, will I save a significant amount of gas by choosing mine instead of theirs? is $4/gallon, $13 vs. $18. If I had been traveling in an inefficient car when gas prices were at their peak, I would have paid at least $23 for the trip.

Use MPD to compare vehicles using different energy sources

Not all cars run on gasoline. Let’s say you’re considering a pickup truck and you’re not sure whether to buy a diesel or petrol model. This year’s RAM 1500 comes in a 24-mile-per-gallon gasoline version and a 29-mile-per-gallon diesel version on the highway. Sheets near me cost $4.03 per gallon for gas and $5.15 for diesel.

Doing the math makes the decision easier. That’s 6.0 miles per dollar for a petrol engine and just 5.6 miles for a diesel. Considering price alone, gas cars win, but they don’t. gigantic So when the diesel version is the better choice when other factors are considered, we know not to sacrifice too much. In terms of annual driving, he would pay $1,776 for $1,681 to cover 10,000 highway miles.

Use MPD to compare plug-in hybrid fuels

When my husband and I were buying a minivan and the possibility of buying a plug-in hybrid came up, one of the first things I did was ask how much it would cost to run the car on electricity instead of gas. It was to calculate what it would cost.I will save gasbut can we really save money?

A Chrysler Pacifica running on gasoline alone will get about 30 miles per gallon. But the car also has a small battery with a capacity of about 33 miles. In other words, a full battery charge is equivalent to approximately 1 gallon of gasoline.

At 15 cents per kilowatt hour (after taxes and fees), it costs about $2.40 to charge the battery, or 13.8 miles per dollar.that is way cheaper than gas. We bought a car and try to keep it charged so that it uses as much electricity and as little gas as possible.

Recently I took this same car on a road trip. His one of the highway rest stops had a chargeable charger. Wanting to stop paying high gas prices, I checked the rates. It costs 3 cents for every 30 seconds of charging.

I know it takes about 2 hours to fully charge the battery with a level 2 charger (which it did), so I did a little math. 33 miles cost $7.20, or just 4.6 miles per dollar. Not only is this higher than your home’s electricity bill, it’s also much higher than the equivalent (1.1 gallon) of gasoline. No, thanks! Meanwhile, one of our hotels had a free charging station. At a price of 0 yen, it is Infinity Miles per dollar. Much better.