Prius wins the "How Far For $100" race
Sure, you could do the math yourself, but why not let a website figure out how far you can drive on $100? AutoblogGreen reader Brad B. has started up just such a site, called, unsurprisingly, How Far For $100. The site allows you to compare vehicle makes, models or fuel types and see just how far a car can go on $100 worth of fuel. The problem is that this is just a guess, as the $100 is "spent" using yesterday's national average gasoline price. While that's a solid method for looking at how cars perform in general, if you'd like to know how far your own car can go on $100, you'd need a way to input your local price. Of course, now we're back to doing the math ourselves.
Another addition I'd like to see is the ability to add in plug-in vehicles to the list, even currently unavailable models like the Volt and Aptera. For $100 worth of electricity, you can go quite a distance. It'd be fun to see the cars that will be available in two or three years arrayed today in the visual chart that Brad has built. Just a thought.
[Source: How Far For 100]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JamesWB 12:18PM (10/06/2008)
Can you fit $100 worth of charge in any electric car? If not that's a bit of a silly point. You would be best off seeing how much it costs to fully charge the Volt then checking how far you could go on the change (plus the 40miles).
Reply
GoodCheer 4:55PM (10/06/2008)
then again I can't fit $100 of gas in my car either.
JamesWB 3:06AM (10/07/2008)
Just wait six months and you will be able to ;)
Interesting... 3:36AM (10/08/2008)
My '81 300SD will do 725 miles on the highway on $100 worth of diesel at the current price nearby, $3.859.
My '01 C320 will do 679 miles on the highway on $100 worth of gas at $3.899
My '08 Smart ForTwo has averaged my girlfriend 41mpg since new. at $3.699 that's 1108 miles.
And finally, the pig--errhm--2008 C63 will get me $359 (Avg. 14mpg).
Peter 12:26PM (10/06/2008)
According to Martin Eberhard's blog, his Tesla Roadster costs him 3.6 cents / mile to charge, which works out to 2778 miles per $100, more than twice as far as the Prius.
A more energy efficient electric car like an Aptera would go even further.
Reply
Jeff 3:22PM (10/06/2008)
Jetta diesel can do way better than 33mpg. Real world driving is far better than that.
Reply
TopaZ 4:19PM (10/06/2008)
I fuel at home for $1.40 in my gx, so
2000 miles for $100!
Reply
GoodCheer 4:54PM (10/06/2008)
Aptera... hmmm, let's see. $100 in electricity at $0.14/kWh is 714 kWh.
Ghosting along at 115 Wh/mile would be 6,211 miles.
Reply
Brad 6:53PM (10/06/2008)
Thanks for the article Sebastian. I could certainly look at allowing people to enter their own local fuel prices if your readers are interested, however I wanted to keep the site as easy to use as possible. Also the site is really designed to help people see the relative differences between all the new cars available in the US market today.
The only time you would see a major difference by entering your own local prices is if the price spread (% difference) between say Regular Gas and Diesel or E85 in your area was larger than it is on avg. There would not be too many places where this spread would be more than 1 or 2% difference unless you happened to live closer to a facility that produces Diesel or Ethanol for example.
Would love to be able to show Electric cars but haven't been able to find any official MPGe figures for them. As you're aware there is a lot of debate with electric cars especially with range-extenders like the Volt as to how to truly give them an MPG rating because the rating can vary hugely depending on whether they are running off the batteries that were charged overnight using coal-fired electricity or whether the range-extender has kicked in and they're burning gas. I guess I could always put up the manufacturers numbers (non-EPA) and have a disclaimer at the bottom that it may not be a fair comparison. I'll keep you updated.
Reply