Since you don’t seem to understand how fuel economy works and you don’t seem to understand that I’m comparing travels for the same purpose I guess I’ll have to make it extremely simple for you.
The average number of passengers/vehicle during the average drive doesn’t matter since it counts people going to work out to get grocery and what we’re talking about right now is people going on vacation so they’re more likely to go as a group and ride sharing also is a thing. People don’t stop going on their average drive because they went on vacation to Japan the week before.
Airplanes have a fuel economy of 67mpg/passenger. The number for a Prius you gave me is 52mpg/vehicle. They’re not the same kind of data, the Prius’ number needs to be converted to /passenger.
One passenger? Same as your number since there’s one vehicle and one passenger. If there are two passengers in the Prius the fuel used is divided by each passenger, they each use half of that fuel, that’s 52mpg/0.5 = 104mpg/passenger because the car’s fuel economy doesn’t change with the extra passenger.
(And just for the lulz, a Boeing 777 gets 82mpg/passenger and has a capacity of 388 passengers, let’s say the plane only had one passenger, that’s 82 / 388 = 0.21 mpg!)
That’s why the Suburban example was used, it gets 17mpg mixed (I’m even helping you here instead of just using highway mpg), with four passengers that’s… oh my… 68mpg! It beats planes! Know what’s the passenger capacity of a Suburban is? Up to 8. Need me to do the math on that or I’ve proven my point? Heck, someone else already explained all of that to you so I don’t know why I need to repeat it.
Since I’m arguing against people going on vacations by plane so dang much it makes planes look even worse because people use them to travel thousands of miles instead of hundreds of miles if they were to go on vacation by car. 67mpg over 1000 miles = 14.9 gallons of fuel or the equivalent of traveling 250 miles per passenger in the Suburban or 770 miles per passenger in the Prius. How far do you go on vacation in a car? How far do you go on vacation in a plane?
Regional flights (i.e. in smaller less efficient planes) are 500 miles on average in the USA
In the USA it’s over 1000 miles (1980km), Europeans and Canadians are even worse… Do you really need me to prove that it’s more efficient for a French couple to drive from Paris to Rome (1400km) instead of going on the average French international flight (2700km) for their vacation? Our even more realistically, from Paris to Milan (850km) this way both travels take a day? I used the French example because their distance traveled is at the lower end of the West European average so I’m being nice here.
It seems like you don’t understand how fuel economy works. Aviation is more fuel efficient no matter how you slice it and has been since the start of the millennium.
If your premise is that 52mpg/1 passenger = x mpg/3 passengers means that x is 104mpg/passenger then that means that 67mpg/1 passenger for a flight of 100 people is 6700mpg/passenger. You can’t divide for one and multiply for the other.
Also, planes get more fuel efficient the longer the trip because the majority of their fuel burn is on takeoff. Once they’re in the air, their fuel use is minimal and they lose the weight of the fuel as they continue which further makes it more efficient.
So no…your point is not clearer because air travel is more efficient than travel by auto in all cases except, again, the shortest distance travel where it’s not even practical to fly. You can try to limit your data to only trips with more than 3 people (the point where driving becomes more fuel efficient) and only for long distances but that means you’re only further scaling down the impact that making efficiencies has since that’s not really the most prevalent use for cars.
The 67mpg figure IS ALREADY PER PASSENGER! Do you truly believe a plane full of passengers only burns 15 gallons to travel 1000 miles? Why does a 777 need to carry 13 000 gallons of fuel then? By that logic that would be enough to travel 1 066 000 miles considering they get 82mpg/passenger when full of passengers (which you interpret as 82mpg/vehicle)!
6000 to 7500 kilograms of fuel per hour for a 777, gas weights 0.72kg/L, that’s 8300L of fuel burned per hour and I’m using the most advantageous number to help you! Typical cruise speed is 900km/h. That’s 108m for every liter of fuel, 410m per gallon, 0.25 miles per gallon. Hey, look at that, pretty fucking close to the 0.21mpg with a single passenger that I calculated with the official number, isn’t it?
Since you don’t seem to understand how fuel economy works and you don’t seem to understand that I’m comparing travels for the same purpose I guess I’ll have to make it extremely simple for you.
The average number of passengers/vehicle during the average drive doesn’t matter since it counts people going to work out to get grocery and what we’re talking about right now is people going on vacation so they’re more likely to go as a group and ride sharing also is a thing. People don’t stop going on their average drive because they went on vacation to Japan the week before.
Airplanes have a fuel economy of 67mpg/passenger. The number for a Prius you gave me is 52mpg/vehicle. They’re not the same kind of data, the Prius’ number needs to be converted to /passenger.
One passenger? Same as your number since there’s one vehicle and one passenger. If there are two passengers in the Prius the fuel used is divided by each passenger, they each use half of that fuel, that’s 52mpg/0.5 = 104mpg/passenger because the car’s fuel economy doesn’t change with the extra passenger.
(And just for the lulz, a Boeing 777 gets 82mpg/passenger and has a capacity of 388 passengers, let’s say the plane only had one passenger, that’s 82 / 388 = 0.21 mpg!)
That’s why the Suburban example was used, it gets 17mpg mixed (I’m even helping you here instead of just using highway mpg), with four passengers that’s… oh my… 68mpg! It beats planes! Know what’s the passenger capacity of a Suburban is? Up to 8. Need me to do the math on that or I’ve proven my point? Heck, someone else already explained all of that to you so I don’t know why I need to repeat it.
Since I’m arguing against people going on vacations by plane so dang much it makes planes look even worse because people use them to travel thousands of miles instead of hundreds of miles if they were to go on vacation by car. 67mpg over 1000 miles = 14.9 gallons of fuel or the equivalent of traveling 250 miles per passenger in the Suburban or 770 miles per passenger in the Prius. How far do you go on vacation in a car? How far do you go on vacation in a plane?
Regional flights (i.e. in smaller less efficient planes) are 500 miles on average in the USA
https://www.statista.com/statistics/742763/regional-carriers-average-passenger-trip-length/
International (i.e. in bigger more efficient planes)… well it sure doesn’t look good!
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-international-aviation-km?tab=chart
In the USA it’s over 1000 miles (1980km), Europeans and Canadians are even worse… Do you really need me to prove that it’s more efficient for a French couple to drive from Paris to Rome (1400km) instead of going on the average French international flight (2700km) for their vacation? Our even more realistically, from Paris to Milan (850km) this way both travels take a day? I used the French example because their distance traveled is at the lower end of the West European average so I’m being nice here.
So, is my point clearer now?
It seems like you don’t understand how fuel economy works. Aviation is more fuel efficient no matter how you slice it and has been since the start of the millennium.
If your premise is that 52mpg/1 passenger = x mpg/3 passengers means that x is 104mpg/passenger then that means that 67mpg/1 passenger for a flight of 100 people is 6700mpg/passenger. You can’t divide for one and multiply for the other.
Also, planes get more fuel efficient the longer the trip because the majority of their fuel burn is on takeoff. Once they’re in the air, their fuel use is minimal and they lose the weight of the fuel as they continue which further makes it more efficient.
So no…your point is not clearer because air travel is more efficient than travel by auto in all cases except, again, the shortest distance travel where it’s not even practical to fly. You can try to limit your data to only trips with more than 3 people (the point where driving becomes more fuel efficient) and only for long distances but that means you’re only further scaling down the impact that making efficiencies has since that’s not really the most prevalent use for cars.
The 67mpg figure IS ALREADY PER PASSENGER! Do you truly believe a plane full of passengers only burns 15 gallons to travel 1000 miles? Why does a 777 need to carry 13 000 gallons of fuel then? By that logic that would be enough to travel 1 066 000 miles considering they get 82mpg/passenger when full of passengers (which you interpret as 82mpg/vehicle)!
https://alliknowaviation.com/2019/12/14/fuel-consumption-aircraft/
Napkin math time:
6000 to 7500 kilograms of fuel per hour for a 777, gas weights 0.72kg/L, that’s 8300L of fuel burned per hour and I’m using the most advantageous number to help you! Typical cruise speed is 900km/h. That’s 108m for every liter of fuel, 410m per gallon, 0.25 miles per gallon. Hey, look at that, pretty fucking close to the 0.21mpg with a single passenger that I calculated with the official number, isn’t it?