Efficiency of Vehicles with More Than Basic Fuel Consumption Taken into Consideration

Something that I've noticed about all of this "Fuel Economy" hubub is that almost NOBODY mentions that the ACTUAL efficiency varies drastically depending on how much work you get done with the vehicle. 

For example, if I were to ask you, "Are Hummers as efficient as mopeds?" you would most likely say that they are less so, but taken into consideration that a Hummer can comfortably carry five adults and significant luggage, and to do that on mopeds you would likely need five mopeds, the Hummer uses more fuel, but carries them at greater speed, safety, cargo capacity, so your call, 20 or so MPG on five mopeds, or 16 in a Hummer?

With that in mind, the following table should be easy to understand. Let's define the columns:

Vehicle name, simple enough.

MPG of entire vehicle, Or as regular folks call it, "MPG"

Weight of vehicle, in pounds.

MPG per ton. This is a measure of actual efficiency, for example, a vehicle that weighs one ton and gets 30MPG is equivalent to a two-ton vehicle getting 15MPG. Again, per work done, same efficiency.

Seating capacity. This is a measure of how many people the car can actually carry. This is important to efficiency obviously because given two cars with the same MPG rating, the car that can carry twice the people does twice the work, meaning twice the efficiency, but only if you fill all your seats.

MPG per passenger. One person in a 15MPG car needs a gallon to go 15 miles, two people in the same car need half a gallon each to go the same distance. Same fuel, twice the work, twice the efficiency.

Tons per passenger. This is more a measurement of how efficiently built the vehicle is to accommodate passengers. Ideally, you'd have infinite passengers in a vehicle that weighs nothing, but more realistically, you'd have one fool driving an SUV that weighs three tons.

Vehicle	MPG	Weight (lb)	MPG/Ton	Seats	MPG/Pass	Ton/Pass
"Chainsaw Bicycle"	120	85	4.63	1	120.00	0.04
2014 Honda 50cc Moped	105	209	9.96	1	105.00	0.09
2014 Honda 250cc Motorcycle	80	306	11.11	2	160.00	0.07
1974 Volkswagen Beetle	20	1850	16.79	4	80.00	0.21
2014 Mitsubishi Mirage	44	1973	39.39	5	220.00	0.18
1988 Dodge Colt (my baby)	35	2200	34.94	5	175.00	0.20
2000 Beetle TDI (Diesel)	45	3000	61.25	4	180.00	0.34
2015 Toyota Prius	48	3072	66.90	5	240.00	0.28
1967 Chevy Impala	18	3425	27.97	5	90.00	0.31
2014 Mustang GT	24	3618	39.40	2	48.00	0.82
2014 F-150, V6	16	4154	30.16	2	32.00	0.94
2014 Chevy Suburban	17	5700	43.97	8	136.00	0.32
2014 IC-CE School Bus	8	30000	108.89	77	616.00	0.18
2010 Van Hool 925 (Megabus)	4	62000	112.52	81	324.00	0.35
LZ-129 Hindenburg Airship	0.433	511500	100.47	72	31.17	3.22
2008 Cat 797F	0.300	2175000	296.05	1	0.30	986.84
1981 New York Ferry, Barberi Class	0.05	6670000	151.32	6000	300.00	0.50
CSX Laden Coal Train	0.075	17600000	598.91	4	0.30	1996.37
1912 RMS Titanic (lb/coal)	0.0003	59760000	8.13	3547	1.06	7.64
2006 Sovereign-Class Cruise Ship	0.0250	162965964	1848.53	3577	89.43	20.67
2006 Emma Mearsk	0.0081	376429976	1383.43	400	3.24	426.99

Some vehicle notes:

A "Chainsaw Bicycle" is a term for a two-stroke chainsaw engine attached to a standard bicycle. Miserable emissions, but some of the highest MPGs of any cheap vehicle, thanks to negligible weight.

1988 Dodge Colt was included because it's my car, and also surprisingly efficient, check the figures. Some trims were even made with seven seats.

2000 Beetle TDI is one of very few small diesel cars currently available in the US. Being German, it is, however, enormously heavy.

2010 Van Hool 925 is a standard double-decker long distance transit bus, used by Megabus among others.

The LZ129 is, in fact, an airship. The MPG/Passenger is not bad considering each got a bed, running water, full meals, and music from an on-board grand piano. Furthermore, there were 40 additional crew members accommodated, for an actual MPG/passenger of about 40, so, competitive with a Prius, if a Prius had a bedroom, cooked meals, a grand piano, and the capacity to go 82 MPH for days on end.

Cat 797F is one of the largest dump trucks in the world. Passenger ratings are rubbish because it only seats one operator. If filling the bucket with 4,000 200lb corpses counted, it would get an astonishing 1,200 MPG/"passenger".

CSX Laden Coal Train is based on estimates of four 200-ton locomotives pulling eighty 100-ton laden cars, consuming 800 gallons per hour. Presuming the same weight that's a corpse load of 48,000, for a phenomenal MPG/corpse of over 3,600!

1912 RMS Titanic, as noted, the milage ratings are in pounds of coal, not gallons. By energy, a gallon of gasoline has the energy of 12lb of coal, so for rough gallon estimates, multiply MPG stats by 12.

2006 Emma Mearsk is a large cargo ship which employs one of the most thermodynamically efficient engines currently in operation of the world, and the total efficiency (of the engine alone) exceeds 50% (which is a lot. "Efficient" cars are around 20%). 

More importantly, notice that each person in a Suburban gets 136 MPG, and every person in a megabus gets over 300 MPG. These numbers are ridiculous if you are violently opposed to sharing your hour-a-day commute with EVEN ONE person, and will never be achieved by any level of technology or amount of money, but hundreds of miles to the gallon has been easily and economically available in trains since the 1940's.

The problem is not big cars, or small cars, or inefficient cars, the problem is that we don't comprehend any problem with driving thousands of miles a year, completely alone.

Alternately, with Hitler: