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atif089

It's cheap but you also travel a lot in the US. Specially in the southern states because everything is so far.

Anecdotal reference, my children's school is roughly 3 miles, so I spend a gallon of gas every day with 2 round-trips.

That number was zero in Netherlands because all schools are either walkable or bike able.

Supermarkets and restaurants are 5 miles away easily.

Heck, my neighbor (door to door) is 0.4 miles.

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> roughly 3 miles, so I spend a gallon of gas every day with 2 round-trips

You get 12mpg?

Two cold starts a day and a vehicle larger than a WW2 tank. Sounds believable.

Hahahaha no, its a 2019 CR-V. I explained it in another comment. Maybe it has to do with that journey specifically?

> You get 12mpg?

It's the USA, so he's probably dropping the kids to school in a pickup truck...

12gpm

Even big pickups get better mileage than 12mpg

Some do, some don't. As a concrete example, the F150 [1] pretty reliably doesn't. Big SUVs like the Jeep Wrangler can be pretty far down there too.

[1]: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/50104.shtml

Oh interesting, I had thought the F150 was one of the better ones but I obviously need to update my priors. Thanks for the link!

Depends on the model. The example given is the most inefficient model.

To be fair, even the most efficient hybrid f150 only gets up to 23mpg. The raptor is the worst, but none of the models are great.

That is surprisingly bad. My substantially larger Ram 3500 dually gets 15mpg even when loaded with 4000lb of cargo in the bed. Towing a trailer I get about 14mpg, unless there is a substantial headwind (since the trailer is much taller than the truck), that is the only scenario where it drops to near 12mpg.

The example you gave is the Ford F150 Raptor which is an enthusiast model for off roading that is extra inefficient and I wouldn’t call the Jeep Wrangler a “big SUV” but it is an incredibly fuel inefficient one with terrible aerodynamics.

In metric, 19.2km of driving burns 4.5 litres of petrol?

Is that right? That seems absurdly high even for a large ute.

He must take his kids to school on a 18-wheeler.

I believe semi-trucks are more like 7-9 mpg, but diesel and gasoline have different energy levels, so it's not an exact comparison.

US gallon is 3.8 litres. Even so, that's pretty inefficient.

Lots of EU people are now travelling longer distances due to housing prices and job relocations.

My last commute in Germany was 1.5 hr one way and some of my colleagues had 2.5 hr commutes. Hybrid hours though.

You're right. One of my friends in the Netherlands does has a 3 hour total commute over the day. It's insane.

> Anecdotal reference, my children's school is roughly 3 miles, so I spend a gallon of gas every day with 2 round-trips.

12mpg! What do you drive?

2019 CR-V

I can squeeze up to 40mpg on interstate if I drive slow (under 65mph) and it's typically about 20-25mpg within the city but the ride for School specifically, I'm not sure what's going on there.

Maybe its not truly 1 full gallon so not 12mpg but a little over that like ~18mpg.

3 miles is less than 5km. Perfectly fine by bicycle. Oh wait.. I guess you have too much freedom and no infrastructure other than highways so you gotta drive and burn all the fuel, time and money.

I live in the EU: I pay at least half my income in taxes, have less freedom due to insane bureaucracy, and the infrastructure around me isn't great (highways or pedestrian/bicycle). On top of that, fuel is double what it is in the US.

Whatever shortcomings there are in US society, it's not perfect in the EU either. That US freedom and infrastructure looks OK to me.

If gas was free for EU, we'd still pay more than US for it, by the sheer amount of taxes. 25-30% of current price is gas cost itself, raw cost, the rest is taxes.

So if EU somehow magically got the same amount of gas for 100% free, we'd at most pay some 25% less than we do now, and it would still be more expensive than US.

Only if you can afford it. And if you could, you could do that in Europe, too :-)

I rode my bike to school as a kid in the US. Kids still ride their bikes to school and to the parks/pool, I see them riding by my house every day.

This weird jingoism serves no one.

Brother, I live in Austin. It's 40C outside and my kids are very young.

We do have bike paths over that routes but it's just not safe for my kids yet. The road they need to bike along allows up to 65mph.

In the Netherlands I just had to cross a 30km/h road (down to 20km during school hours and pedestrians always get first preference) to drop them. Netherlands is just too satisfactorily safe ♥

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