Who gets better mileage, a Prius v running on 87 or a man on a bike running on 2% milk ? The race will be over 20 miles, including a mix of urban traffic jams, highway driving, and suburban roads. Car: 2013 Prius v Package Two Michelin Energy Savers Average Mileage: 48 mpg (there's traffic lights on the highway) No Hypermiling Man 31 190 lbs 10 lb pack Avg Speed 15 mph (traffic lights and hills) No hypermiling Some calculations: Calorie use of man biking at 15 mph = .2Cal/pound 200 lbs * .2 * 20 miles = 1000 Cal Calories in milk = 488 /quart. (We will be burning 2 quarts this journey) 4*488 Cal = 1952 Cal/gallon 1952 Calories / 50 cal per mile = 40 MPG (2%) Prius v wins easily, but what if we step up to whole milk? Calories in whole milk = 592/quart * 4 = 2368 2368 Cal / 50 Cal/mile = 47.36 mpg. There you are. The prius v uses less fuel then a man burning 2% , and about the same as a man burning 3.25%. Although I am not sure what the health effects of that much whole milk would be. For the record, that is nearly double the daily recommended intake of saturated fat. Happy driving.
Milk is seriously watered down. How about a hunk of cheese or lard as 'fuel'? From another site: or 28,750 Cal/gallon, translated from Wikipedia figures: Gasoline gallon equivalent
Well 1 gallon of Nacho Cheese has 5120 Calories. Almost exactly 3 times that of 2% milk. A human with a sufficiently rugged digestive tract could get 119.4 MPG Nacho cheese. Our journey would require a modest 3 cups. You'd need to stay hydrated though as you would be consuming 7560 mg of sodium or over 3 times your daily recommended intake.
As a frequent bicyclist, I just can't let this go. Ah, how about olive oil? The first convenient bottle in my cupboard has a nutrition label showing 120 Calories per tbsp (15 ml), which corresponds to just over 30,000 Calories per gallon. That puts the cyclist at just over 600 miles per gallon, more than an order of magnitude more efficient than the Prius.
Yay more math! Fuel cost to drive the v to work: $2.10 ($5/gal here) Milk (2%): $2.24 (112/quart) Milk (whole): $1.90 Nacho Cheese: $1.40 ish ($7 can, *1/5th of can) Olive Oil: $0.87 (8 tablespoons @ 28$ gallon) Bacon: $1.85 (5$ per pound) Olive oil seems to be the winner but it contains no protein and must be disqualified. Nacho cheese is disqualified for being lethal to humans with over 7000 mg of sodium. Low sodium bacon seems like the most reasonable option but I think it should be disqualified for not being a liquid. Liquid bacon is available online but at 8 dollars per pound after shipping is not cost competitive. The winner seems to be either the Prius v or a bacon and olive oil slurry.
This says more about the fact that gasoline is higher energy density, than about the relative merits of the vehicles.
For energy density, gasoline and olive oil are virtually identical. I picked olive oil just to minimize the yuck factor. Other vegetable oils, lard, Crisco, etc. ought to provide the same energy for a much lower non-gourmet cost.
