Km/L Verses L/Km

I use Litres/100kms but I always convert it back to MPG so that I can understand it.....

It's habit for me, I started my apprenticeship in '66 on Toyota and BMC. One metric one imperial, automatically I conevert one to the other. Having had to train apprentices over the years I became extremely impatient if they couldn't convert instantly. Thankfully I've retired and don't have to worry about it anymore.
The Chinese decided 18mm was a good size for bolt heads, just to confuse the issue.
If metrication is so important why are tyre and wheel sizes still in imperial ???

Hi Foxhound, I for one use Klm per litre, because I want to know how many Klm I am going to get for my set amount of litres, this is more inportant when we are travelling by Motor cycle, as we have say, 18lt in the tank and we get about 20ks per lt, I know I can go about 360ks before I would be walking.
By the way , who said that Ltrs per 100ks is the correct way.?
Cheers Des. Age 69.

I see nothing wrong with the use of X km/L if the units are included.

Looking at the test process to obtain values as we have adopted from the European Standards, it seems the L/km Units are of value to "average" any irregularities that may appear, whereas measuring economy of 1 litre is difficult to standardise IMO.

IMHO, standardised units should not involve arbitary values where possible eg 100km. Either choose km/L or L/km. :)

Andrew

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i use l/100k's on long straight roads
and k's/Litre in soft-sand, mud and hills...
l/100k's is almost usleless when 4x4ing...
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i use the km/L cause i know roughly what the 4WD will do on different surfaces like soft sand/bitumen at different speeds 90/110km/hr and pulling the 2 different trailers.
known distance x km/L gives me the amount i need.
also find it easy to quickly check my usage at the pump, ie trip meter divided by litres put in.
nothing against the other method if that suits you.

Showing my age. I use L/100km. And then I do a rough calc back to mpg. I know I shouldn't have to do this, but I do. What's worse, I then start comparing the results with what I would have expected from a Holder FJ. If i'm getting better than I would have expected from an fJ, I feel things are good, if worse, I think it's heavy. Please don't ask me for for a rational explanation of this, I can't provide it. Just happens.

I use km/l on black-top......when slower bush traveling I use hrs/rpm.

eng

Litres per 100k is what is quoted on all new cars on the economy sticker, so, that's the one that should be used. I can understand some of the ancients people frustration with metric. If the conversion had been done more sensibly, less people would have stuck with imperial. I remember in the seventies when it started and it was mandatory to use exact conversions on packaging, things like .453kg (1lb) or in a book I read once on maintaining a boat and trailer. It said to check the spark on the motor by holding the plug lead "about" 2.345mm from the block, or maximum trailer load of 907.2kg (2000lb)...
No wonder people got confused.

Common sense.

The new liters per 100 km's makes no common sense.

Thats coz it is base 100

Time however is base 60 - something those of us from the old school remember - we had shillings and sizpences remember, and half dozens and dozens, all 6's and 12's.

Time is base 6 calculation and goes well with Miles.

60 miles an hour is one mile a minute

How many kilomers per minute is that?

Exactly - base 100 when used with time (base 60) is fricken unwieldy and confusing.

So it makes a lot of sense to work in Miles per gallon and 60 miles in an hour, you can do mental math to see how much fuel your using and when you'll arrive some where (eta's).

Now we all kn0w how much a gallon is - its half a 2 gallon bucket full...

But - imagine it in liters - a buckets 9 liters and half a bucket is 4.5 liters

That's a handy VOLUME to "imagine" in ones minds eye..........as to trying to imagine how much fuel you have left to travel a certain distance in a given time (NOT!).

Metrics is damn confusing and not easy to imagine in ones minds eye.

If I am travelling at 1.6 kilometers per minute - how many minutes/hours will it take me to travel 480 kiometers, and how much fuel will I use at 9.37 liters / 100 km's????

Yeah thats easy mental math.... NOT!!!. (Hang on I'll just get out my pocket calculator - ohh damn the batteries are flat, never mind I'll use the mobile phone now what was the question again?....exactly! :rollseyes:

So lets look the SAME calculation it in old school values shall we?

It I am travelling at 1 mile a minute,(or 60 miles an hour) how long will it take me to travell 300 miles?

er 300 minutes divided by 60 = 5 hours, or 300 miles divided by 60 = 5 hours

That bit was too damn easy.

Now how much fuel will we need at 30 miles to the gallon?

Ahh 300 miles divided by 30 mpg = 10 gallons

Gee that was hard wasn't it?

I went 300 miles of 10 gallons I[m getting 30 miles per gallon..and I know ann average opf 25 miles per gallon is pretty good - 30 mpg is excellent...40 mpg would be about what a new hybrid car might expect to get.

The whole imperial system os EASY to use.

WHY - coz all our time and distances etc were base 6.

Even our coainage and notes were base 6

Kilometers and liters, will NEVER become easy to use for mental math until TIME is metricated and made into base 10

10 days in a week
100 days in ayear
10 hours in a day
10 minutes in a hour
10 seconds in a minute etc

Until you do that to time - then metrics will always remain a clusterphuk of monumental proportions, when we want to use it for travel - because time is involved and while time remains base 6 - anything else is just confusing!

Its designed to deliberately confuse people and make our kids mental math midgets.

It's worked, our kids are now dumbed down - they don't know their times tables and can't do mental math.

Metrics is responsible.

Once you could buy a half dozen nails, or a dozen or a pound of you wanted loose at the hardware, now they come in blister packs of 4! :rollseyes:

No wonder the fricken economy is screwed with the inbuilt waste age of metrics.

Quite simply metrics sucks for anything but calculators.

Cheers

Personally I have also made the change to litres per 100 Km. 60+ young and still up to changing.

But here is the rub. When working out how much fuel I need to get to the next stop or how far I can get with the fuel I have on board I use the Lts per 100 Km figure.

As far as not talking the same language - What about the way some use psi and others use kpa etc etc. Too many inputs from too many countries and cultures and we get the mix we are in.

Hey I now know what "lol" means.

Just my two bobs worth.

I often wonder why one is 'correct' over the other. Both work?

LOL
I'm a generation X, and think in MPG! I know that my Camry averages 23mpg, which roughly equates to 600kms to a tank of fuel (65-70ltr). If I want to get really pedantic, I give the brain a rest and use a cardboard slide rule from Caltex that gives me all three equations!
Kym

Oh dear! When I was growing up they always said never talk about politics or religion. I guess I just learnt about a third one to never bring up ;)

Glad we have metric.
I did my training at the end of imperial, and using 8 and 10 figure log tables with feet and inches working out slopes and distances was a pain.
Rough calculations were done on a slide rule.

1974/1975 metric and calculators came in and what a difference. Much easier.
Just have to watch myself to ensure I don't become lazy. Caught myself using the calculator to add up 2 + 2 the other day :o)

Only one problem now, is it a metre or a meter in kilometres(ers)?

Must get it right, it might affect my fuel consumption!

Yes, prefer litres per hundred kilometres, easier to use in the head, or on the slide rule when you have 100, or 350 kilometers to go. Multiply the 12 or 15, or even 10 at times, by 1 or 3.5.

Metric is great ... for lengths of steel, timber, and weights ... now that products are sold in metric measurements rather than, imperial converted to metric as it was done in the past.

Fuel use .... Imperial is the best way to go ... as in Flywests post - time & miles is a simpler and relative equation to a travelling circumstance.

My trip meter works litres per 100klm as does the consumption indicater ... all meant nothing to me until I sat down and did the sums so that 12.5/100 meant I was getting my expected, approx 20mpg loaded travel consumption. yes, yes, ... its 21 point something .... big deal

Now if I see 16/100 I know Im getting worse fuel economy ... about all there is to it really.

Biggest hassle I have come across is that all building measurements are in "mm" ... so "mm" is what I use ... Kids and Grandkids have been educated in "cm" and ask what a 1000mm are ..... pffffffft

Oztroopy,

Re cm and mm.

Been here before.
Wife is a teacher and I am in engineering.
She works in cm and I work in metres (m) and millimetres (mm).

Had some one from the federal government ring up the office about a job I was doing and wanted to know what length a particular item was. They were not in engineering, couldn't read a drawing, so I looked up the drawing and gave the measurement in mm as per the drawing. They wanted it in cm, so I converted, and commented (nicely) that mm and m are the correct units to use. They came back after a day or so and gently referred me to the Australian SI standards. Australia put their own twist on metric in 1974 by specifying cm as a recognized standard of measure.

Evidently cm has been used (and only in Oz) since 1974 as it related more easily to half an inch, or the width of a thumb or finger. Centimetres was thought to be an easier unit to understand by the general public at the time than mm. Centimetres was taught in the schools, and still is, as a basic unit of measure.

Just for the heck of it I use decimetres for utter confusion of every one. :o)

Be careful though, some one will have their revenge.
Now my son who is doing a doctorate in nanotechnology and a nanometre is a massive figure to him, so he talks in picometres, to stir his old dad. :o0

Prefix Symbol Meaning Factor by which unit is multiplied
tera T one million million 1012 1,000,000,000,000
giga G one thousand million 109 1,000,000,000
mega M one million 106 1,000,000
kilo k one thousand 103 1,000
hecto h one hundred 102 100
deka d ten 10 10
deci d one-tenth 10-1 0.1
centi c one-hundredth 10-2 0.01
milli m one-thousandth 10-3 0.001
micro µ one-millionth 10-6 0.000,001
nano n one-thousand millionth 10-9 0.000,000,001
pico p one-million millionth 10-12 0.000,000,000,001

Just to throw in my 2cents worth (thats approx tuppence to all the old schoolers), it is all horses for courses.
I hired a car in UK earlier this year and the trip computer measured consumption in mpg. There, they're still measure distance in miles so it makes sense to still use mpg.
Here in Oz, we have measured distance in km for some 35 plus years and unless you are driving a vehicle made before 1970, you will be seeing km on your odometer. Therefore it makes sense to use the metric system for fuel consuption.
If you are having trouble understanding the "new" figures then by all means for yourself, convert it back to something that means something to you but please if you are trying to involve others, talk in what is understood by most - L / 100km.
Remember the lower this figure is, the less fuel you are using.

G'day Foxhond, I run a truck, and for me I calculate Km to the Litre.
I find it easier and more accurate, to keep track of fuel consumption.

But I also use this calculator quite a bit.

http://sikls1.v8owners.com.au/index20.html

Before this thread dies a natural death or alternatively goes on ad infinitum, I would like to thank all the contributors for their entertainment, especially the one from Elmer.

I wonder if all those baby boomers like me, who can remember when they could buy a bag of lollies on the way home from school, using the change from the shilling their mum gave them for lunch money after buying a pie and a cream bun, can work out how far a mile is these days. You won't find it on signposts or maps these days. You won't measure it on your car odometer unless you drive a really old banger. You probably won't be up to walking the distance and counting your (accurately measured?) steps til you get to 1760. So what relevance is it to work out the MPG.

I wonder how many of you know that the origin of the mile was from the roman times and it it came from the mille, i.e 1000 paces of a roman soldier in a march. (did someone really count them?). Somehow or other, it was worked out that this distance was equal to 5280 times the measurement of a certain king's foot. Now that really makes sense doesn't it? Then on the other hand, the metre was originally proposed to be one 10,000,000th of the distance of the quarter circumference of the earth measured along the line of longitude passing through Paris (i.e from north pole to equator). The fact that this calculation was incorrect and later it became the distance between 2 marks on a bar of platinum held in a certain location, then even later still redefined as being a certain number of wavelengths of a particular frequency, all means about as much to all of us as does 5280 times the length of a king's foot.

In reality, both systems are metric in origin. Now if you want to have something more meaningfull, why don't we promote a new measurement of speed, that of furlongs per fortnight, first mentioned to me years ago by an ex collegue at DoT ATG S&T SA/NT (thanks John if you are out there). Now there's an idea for another thread - acronyms.

There is a little saving grace though. For those of you that still want to convert to mpg to satisfy our own unexplainable curiosity to compare it with what we used to get from our old holden/ford or whatever, the mental gymnastics that we go through will help to keep our minds active. Mind you the younger ones who don't know about miles and gallons also didn't learn how to add up and divide, but rely on calculators so their minds probably won't be as active as ours later on anyway.

For those of you who are buying your metric sheets of melamine or plywood or mdf are you buying a 2400mm x 1200mm or is it really 2440 x 1220 (the old 8ft x 4ft)?

Now I could climb onto my soapbox to mention a few other issues mentioned like spell checking, puctuation and incorrect use of there, their, and they're, or lowering of the standard of communciation by txt speak when we are all using a full keyboard, but for the moment my aging arthritic m.i.l needs the box to help her climb into the fourby. Oh I forgot, they make soapboxes out of cardboard these days. I had to make my own using (metric) pieces of 5 x 1 timber. Now there's another idea for a thread - origin of expressions.

Happy travelling to you all.

My vehicle kindly informs me of my fuel consumption, as I drive along, in L/100Km. That suits me fine. It also tells me what range I have left in the tank under any given amount of right foot and is accurate to 3%, which also suits me fine.

Because the vehicle has educted me to think in L/100Km, it now comes naturally. When I get talking to someone and they quote me the fuel consumption of their vehicle in Km/L I just shrug my shoulders and agree with them that it is good or bad or whatever they think it is, because I couldn't be bothered doing the conversion to something that makes sense to me.

All of the brochures for new vehicles use L/100Km, as do reviews in 4x4 magazines etc. Why fight it?

Cheers

Russ