Hello Friends,

I have noticed you measure your fuel consumption by miles per gallons, yet you fill your fuel tanks by Litres.

Can someone please explain? Conversion must be tiresome.

btw, I have noticed UK fuel prices are among the highest in Europe.

Here is a link:

http://www.fuel-prices-europe.info/

Not trying to "rub it in" just an informative chart.

Edited 13 December, 201213 yr by oriki

Tradition and bulldog spirit!

Basically, a long long time ago

The UK joined the 'European Economic Community',EEC

( later the the 'European Union', EU)

& the UK accepted going metric.

(well thats my memory of it, & going Decimal in 1971, google might say different and it might actually have been different)

It is just that many of us never changed from thinking Imperial Measures to Metric.

so no mm,cm , Meters,Grams, Kilograms, Litres, Kilometers etc.

More still Inches, Feet, Yards, Pints, Quarts, Gallons, Miles etc.

Well some times we do think Metric Sometimes..

We know 1 litres of milk is about 2.2 pints, or 1 KG is 2.2 Lb.

(*You buy blow as a Half Quarter etc)

The Petrol & Diesel is sold & shown in price as Litres.

4.545 litres to a gallon near enough,

so many stand at the pumps thinking. 4 1/2 litres 1 gallon, 9 litres 2 gallons, 45 litres 10 gallons etc...

All pretty stupid really,

as many here do not even know that a 'Imperial Gallon' is more than a 'US Gallon'. (3,785 litres)

(some roadtests are on cars in the USA, & shown MPG is all wrong for UK cars.)

So really there is just a muddle up here. JMO

george

As Expatman said plus - changing to the metric systems allowed the oil companies/government to "hide" their price hikes. Diesel at £1.42 per liter is the equivalent of £6.45 per gallon. You don't notice the odd 1p/2p increase here and there, but 5p/10p you would!

Due to risk of depression I stopped working out MPG and how much it actually costs me to drive in the country...... I now close my eyes at the pumps, cover my ears and say "nahanahanah" when the cashier tells me how much it is and just enter my PIN to pay......

Can someone please explain?

you measure your fuel consumption by miles per gallons

The odometer on UK cars is calibrated in miles, and our road signs show distances in miles. Furthermore, most of us grew up thinking about fuel consumption in miles per gallon and it's easier for us to compare the numbers in units we're familiar with.

Are you suggesting it would it be better if we used litres per mile, or miles per litre?

you fill your fuel tanks by Litres.

We're forced to by law. (Actually, I believe it would be legal for petrol stations to show volume dispensed and prices in gallons as well as litres. But there's also a public health consideration: a lot of older people would probably have a heart attack if they saw how much fuel costs in terms that they remember from their youth! When I were a wee lad petrol cost my Dad a few shillings a gallon. Today, diesel is £6.27 a gallon at the "cheap" Sainsburys garage next to my office.)

I doubt many people have much of an idea of what a gallon looks like. As it happens, the standard 5l plastic fuel container that garages are allowed to dispense fuel into is roughly a gallon, but I doubt many people are aware of that. It only requires very basic arithmetic to convert the fuel quantity into units that we can comprehend for consumption (and people who can't/can't be bothered to do that sort of arithmetic probably don't think too much about their fuel consumption anyway...)

Basically, a long long time ago

The UK joined the 'European Economic Community',EEC

( later the the 'European Union', EU)

& the UK accepted going metric.

(well thats my memory of it, & going Decimal in 1971, google might say different and it might actually have been different)

It is just that many of us never changed from thinking Imperial Measures to Metric.

so no mm,cm , Meters,Grams, Kilograms, Litres, Kilometers etc.

More still Inches, Feet, Yards, Pints, Quarts, Gallons, Miles etc.

Well some times we do think Metric Sometimes..

We know 1 litres of milk is about 2.2 pints, or 1 KG is 2.2 Lb.

(*You buy blow as a Half Quarter etc)

The Petrol & Diesel is sold & shown in price as Litres.

4.545 litres to a gallon near enough,

so many stand at the pumps thinking. 4 1/2 litres 1 gallon, 9 litres 2 gallons, 45 litres 10 gallons etc...

All pretty stupid really,

as many here do not even know that a 'Imperial Gallon' is more than a 'US Gallon'. (3,785 litres)

(some roadtests are on cars in the USA, & shown MPG is all wrong for UK cars.)

So really there is just a muddle up here. JMO

george

Your litre is wrong - it's about 1.76 pints.

Edited 13 December, 201213 yr by Norry

I thought Its 2.2 pints to a litre also??

Einstein.

There's a joke there somewhere?

Sorry,

not had a pint yet.

I was thinking 2 pints =1.1 litre approx.

Just typed wrong,( finger brain burp).

I buy and measure & divide & use in Litres every day as well.

george

Edit,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6988521.stm

Never understand why anyone born after 1971, or even after say 1981 in the UK, keep thinking Imperial measures.

My brain works in miles and gallons, while the pretrol pumps work in litres.

But the conversion is easy, it's just 4.5454ish.

But that still gives miles per litre, because we have never adopted the litres per 100km idea most other countries use.

You see, thats where there gets to be confusion among many,

up north it becomes 4.54609 (4.456 near enough)

Just one extra push of the throttle can use up all those numbers after the decimal points quick enough tho.

george

I find 75cl of 13.5 proof stops me worrying about it, indeed it stops me using any petrol at all that day.

I first bought petrol at 32 pence per gallon.....but I earned £1.50 for my Saturday job

so 150/32 = 4.6875 gallons for a days work. Move forward to today..£6.27 (as ejstubbs) * 4.875 = £29.39.....so does your average Saturday job pay £30?

just an interesting thought for a Thursday.........

For me Miles per gallon seems the proper way to measure consumption....it has a kind of reality and common sense

Having been at school for a few years before decimalisation and working in feet and inches, it was a bit of a shock to suddenly have a new unit of measurement but later school life and a career in engineering has allowed me to use booth imperial and metric side by side.

For fuel I tend to use metric for filling up but miles per gallon for consumption.

I know that an inch is 25.4 mm, a foot is 305 mm and a metre is roughly 39 inches without having to really think about the conversion.

The same for km into miles. 1.6km is 1 mile.

Many wonder why we have 0 to 62 mph figures. Europe again, they use 0 to 100km/h (99.77 if you're really picky)

Plus, with miles per gallon the higher the number the better it is, whereas l/100km is the other way around. Not sure we could deal with that. It would be almost as big a culture shock as having to drive on the other side of the road ;-)

My Saturday & after School job 'on the pumps', was before it got to 77 Pence a gallon.

People stlll bought a Dash of Red then & gave you a tip.

http://www.theaa.com...ate_gallons.pdf

I earned a lot more than the wages, that was from the bit on the side with the HGV drivers doing the business with declared fuel in the tank & the Slip filled in & the share

between me, the drivers & the Garage owner.

(the whole nations transport system must have officially been using more fuel than the vehicles really did use)

It was damn hard leaving school and taking a drop in earnings as a Apprentice on £14 then £18.

Luckily i got to do the Pumps sometimes, or i would never have afforded to underage drink anymore.

george

People stlll bought a Dash of Red then & gave you a tip.

george

Good old Redex........

I thought Its 2.2 pints to a litre also??

"A litre of water's a pint and quarters."

People may be getting confused due to the way milk is sold in the UK. The 2 pint plastic carton is 1.13l, the larger 4 pint one is 2.27l.

The useful approximation for converting from gallons to litres is to multiply by 5 and subtract 10%. (Not to be confused with kg to lbs which is multiply by 2 and add 10%.)

as EJSTUBBS suggests further up the thread , miles per liter sounds logical,does it not?

Edited 13 December, 201213 yr by oriki

I find 75cl of 13.5 proof stops me worrying about it, indeed it stops me using any petrol at all that day.

:clap: :party: GREAT!!

Plus, with miles per gallon the higher the number the better it is, whereas l/100km is the other way around. Not sure we could deal with that. It would be almost as big a culture shock as having to drive on the other side of the road ;-)

Can you imagine the chaos?

Knowing our government, they would make buses and LGVs change on a Monday, cars on Tuesday and all others on Wednesday

An imperial pint is 20fld ozs = 1.1/4 lbs, eight of these make an imperial gallon.

That is the stuff you need to know when on modern 'Team Building' type adventures or 'recruitment selections'.

(or 'Who wants to be a millionaire' maybe!)

Once the Ipads & Smart phones are removed, the young generation can be stuffed if the have to weigh something and they only have a gallon container, maybe they need to balance something of a known weight and only get one go at it..

(now i am confused. i will get my coat..)

http://www.funtrivia...estion2796.html

george

Edit, PS

MInes will be a 'Scottish Pint' please. (A Joug)

"A litre of water's a pint and quarters."

People may be getting confused due to the way milk is sold in the UK. The 2 pint plastic carton is 1.13l, the larger 4 pint one is 2.27l.

The useful approximation for converting from gallons to litres is to multiply by 5 and subtract 10%. (Not to be confused with kg to lbs which is multiply by 2 and add 10%.)

There's my "you learn something everyday"

Cheer mate