Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

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Cars might be cheaper here, and gas certainly is, but we use a lot more of both than Europeans because we tend to be spread out a lot more. That's another factor raising our cost of living, which drives up the salaries we demand.

I swear I'm not picking on you but I see this line all the time when US-EU gas price comparisons are made and I just can't buy it from a logical POV. So I thought I'd get all anal and play with the stats :-)

The average US driver does about 13,500 miles per year: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

The number I keep finding again and again for UK driver is 9,628 miles a year (which sounds very low to me but I'll roll with it). That's almost a spot on 40% extra for the US driver (for a country with 42x the surface area, to be fair). OK, cool.

Given a US gallon of gas in the UK is about $8.25 compared to the current Californian average of $3.77 and the US driver is only driving 40% more miles on average, the US driver is still spending way less money on gas and would need to drive significantly further distances to make up the difference.

Our cars are probably less efficient on average too, with all the SUVs. You've got miles/year and $/gallon, but not miles/gallon. You need all three to compare. I'd be interested in what you come up with.

For what it's worth, my commute is one mile and I drive a Mini, so I can't use the commute cost to justify my own salary...

Having a more costly car ones own choice. You can't expect to have more luxury in the US when you're trying to compare $/gallon

US is quite easy to find; http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_stat... -> let's say 33 mpg for passenger cars (depends a bit on which vehicle classes you count). EU data is harder; Eurostat doesn't seem to track it (haven't searched very far - I'll ask my friends at the DG Transport if I don't forgot if they track it). http://www.greencarcongress.com/2004/11/average_fuel_co.html seems to suggest 43 mpg, but I don't see where they get their data from (the linked report is MIA). So US cars, in aggregate, use 30% more fuel. Which, intuitively, seems to be about right.

Taking into account gas prices, that still confirms that US citizens don't spend more than Europeans on gas, in absolute numbers, even given their different preference in cars, radically different urban development patterns and fuel purchasing power vis a vis the rest of the world.

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