Comment by rngfnby
1 day ago
"once you get past the range of a tank of gas or two."
This is like the folks who say flying is more carbon friendly than driving. It's wrong, you're comparing a vehicle running cost with one passenger vs a full vehicle normalized by its capacity.
No one flies 30 mi commutes.
Few drive 600+ mi empty or alone.
> Few drive 600+ mi empty or alone.
Because if you are going 600+ mi alone with minimal luggage you fly, because it's cheaper.
The point is that it's nonsensical to say flying is cheaper than driving. Its oranges vs apple. Apples and oranges are fruit, flying and driving are transportation. But they're totally different.
1. You're normalizing one cost by the occupancy but assuming the other is single occupancy.
2. The assumption that folks are alone in a car is only true only for short trips, trips that are unpractical and expensive by plane. Folks don't fly 600+ mi because it's cheaper (the fuel isn't cheaper until about 1600 mi), but because it's faster.
Asking people to drive 600+ miles for business is not a good use of business time, even if it is more expensive, typically.
And when people travel 600+ miles on their own dime, the most common reason is leisure/vacation, which people typically do with friends or family.
> Few drive 600+ mi empty or alone.
Is there a study on this? As I would have thought the opposite and would bet that the number driving alone is increasing as more people live alone.
Its intuitive, costs don’t scale to travel per family member when you drive from A to B like it does when you fly.