I gave Jo Borras over on Gas2.0 a rough time in my last post, but he really made up for it with his latest article. Go read it here.

In a nutshell, MPG ratings are inadequate to measure electric and plug-in electric car energy consumption. The guys at X Prize put together a free spreadsheet to calculate a better metric called MPGe, which measures how much energy your vehicle consumes, regardless of source. Here is the comment I left:

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A quick look at my Cycle Analyst meter shows 5.97 miles and 2.04 amp-hours for the trip I took yesterday evening. That translates into 1,461 MPGe on the spreadsheet. Here’s my ride.

The overarching factor for efficiency is the power to weight ratio.

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