GOOD magazine asked a great question; “Is a Plane More Fuel Efficient Than a Prius?”
And they looked for an answer with a great data visualization that compares per-person, per-gallon efficiencies of various modes of transportation.
While the resulting poster is full of snazzy graphics and great information, there is a bit of debate about the validity of the comparisons it depicts. Yes, it seems to have fueled quite the controversy !
You see, an airplane burns through literally tons of fuel, but it also carries a lot of people, and travels a wide distance in a very short time. Meanwhile, you car’s engine is chugging along just to haul your single-butt across town, and depending on traffic, takes a while to get you there.
GOOD’s data visualization compares the fuel consumption of cruise ships, passenger trains, buses, SUVs, sedans, hybrid autos, motorcycles, bicycles and walking. And it factors in the number of passengers involved in each mode of transportation to give you an idea of how many gallons per passenger it takes to travel 350 miles.
Interestingly, since bicycling and walking don’t consume gas, they humorously made a calorie-equivalent comparison between petrol and cheeseburgers, proclaiming: we [humans]are efficient, we only need 2000 calories a day! Whereas a gallon of gasoline holds about 31,000 calories.
Here’s a preview, but you’ll want to see the full-sized graphic over at GOOD (just click the image)
click to see larger image at GOOD magazine, alternatively, click here
While the poster is eye-opening and thought-provoking, there is a bit of suspicion as to whether there is an agenda to make hybrid cars look much better than SUVs.
For cars, the red cans show the efficiency of single drivers and no passengers.
In the single-driver case, hybrids look pretty good compared to sedans and SUVs. But if you look at the legend below, you’ll see an explanation of the small solid, dashed and dotted lines above each row of cans:
When cars are full, then the difference in efficiences between SUVs, sedans and hybrids goes down quite a bit.
There is quite a bit of debate over this visualization. If you want to see how others are critiquing this info-graphic, have a read through the comments at FlowingData and in the GOOD magazine article itself.
This picture is a good start, if you’ll pardon the pun, but it would be nice to re-work the graphic showing the more typical cases of single-driver, or driver plus one passenger. If you know of anyone who’s done it already, let us know in the comments!