All this chatter about miles per gallon… You only hear about it when the price of gasoline goes up. Once it stabilizes we are back buying performance cars and SUV’s. On with the discussion…

I want to create a couple of new acronyms, “EMPG” and “AEMPG”
Effective

Miles

Per

Gallon

And what that means is this-

The EMPG of your vehicle is determined by the capacity of Licensed Drivers. Commercial vehicles are excluded and do not carry an EMPG rating since they are for work. For example, my Ford Excursion Diesel has a capacity for 7 Adult Licensed Drivers, if it averages 15MPG the range of the EMPG can be as follows:

Driver Only, EMPG = 15

1 Passenger, EMPG = 30

2 Passengers, EMPG = 45

3 Passengers, EMPG = 60

And so on until my Excursion’s maximum EMPG at 105 when fully loaded.

You will have to undersand the Min and Max ratings of your EMPG to most effictivly use this to your advantage. For example if your have a 2 seat car that gets 25MPG you Min EMPG = 25, and Max EMPG = 50.

So now you can see that the best way to save fuel and traffic is to increase the mean EMPG of drivers. Yes, increasing your EMPG involves, dare I say it, the L.A. dirty word of carpooling.

A few side notes while bragging about your EMPG and Acutal EMPG (AEMPG), the following does not apply when calculating the (A)EMPG

• Animals (Dogs, Cats, etc)
• Non-licensed drivers
• Children
• Licensed Drivers that are passed out due to drinking or other chemicals
• Joyriding with Licensed Drive (AEMPG = 0 always)
• Stolen Vehicles (AEMPG = 0 always)
• Dead Bodies in non-commercial vehicle (i.e. Stiff in the trunk)
• Motorcycles (Min/Max always the same)

So maybe the better plan is get larger cars and carpool? Might be worthy of a government grant (sponsored by the larger Automakers) to sort this out…

One thing is certain, you can do very well at increasing your maximum EMPG without any magic JC Whitney parts… no magnets near the fuel lines, no secret fuel additives, special fuel catalysts, no platinum 4 prong split sparkplugs, special vortec air intakes, or my new favorite which is selling (and losing money) a good car to get a few more MPG, only to find out that it will take an additonal 12 years for the payoff to happen.
Just good old fashioned math can save you a ton of money, don’t get caught up in the “Trade up to Green” ploy that are floating around. So keep you large gas guzzler just pack in a few more qualified people to raise your EMPG and all will be well.