Fuel Consumption

Fuel consumption of any means of transport (car, aero plane, ship etc.) that uses fuel is a measure giving the relationship between the distance traveled for an amount of fuel used. The most common example is the car where it is usually expressed (in English-speaking countries) in miles per gallon.

It could also be expressed in gallons per mile. However, for a car the latter method gives a rather small figure: 35 miles per gallon is about 0.0286 gallons per mile. In that case it would be better to give a figure for 100 miles, so it would be 2.86 gallons per 100 miles. That is the metric way of expressing fuel consumption - as liters per 100 kilometers.

From regular enquiries it appears that in real life people are using all sorts of ways of expressing their fuel consumption, so this section (unlike all the others) tries to cover as many ways as possible. All the values are given to an accuracy of 4 significant figures.

To change into

miles per gallon (UK) miles per gallon (US) multiply by 0.833

miles per gallon (UK) miles per litre multiply by 0.22

miles per litre miles per gallon (UK) multiply by 4.546

miles per gallon (UK) kilometres per litre multiply by 0.354

miles per gallon (US) miles per gallon (UK) multiply by 1.2

miles per gallon (US) miles per litre multiply by 0.2642

miles per litre miles per gallon (US) multiply by 3.785

miles per gallon (US) kilometres per litre multiply by 0.4251

X miles per gallon gallons per 100 miles: divide 100 by X

(both gallons must of the same type)

X miles per gallon (UK) litres per 100 km: divide 282.5 by X