Obama discussed his energy policy yesterday; see the video here.

It all sounds "good"... except where he says McCain's call for 45 new nuclear plans is "not a serious" energy plan. He makes specific note of used fuel storage and Nevada, i.e. Yucca Mountain.

I understand oil is the big ticket item today. I understand families are hurting. However, if we limit our attention to oil in the context of total energy consumption, then we are missing the big picture. Renewables just do not count right now. Biodiesel/ethanol to me is a joke.

Baseload energy should be the focus. If we solved--I mean really solved--the baseload energy problem, our transportation cost crisis would be mitigated severely. Think nuclear and think either plug-in electrics or fuel cells.

I am war-weary, surely, but I am becoming suspicious of Obama's ability to lead our energy future.

GPM, not MPG!

A Duke professor thinks we ought to think in terms of gallons-per-mile (gpm), not miles-per-gallon (mpg) according to this article. Essentially, Richard Larrick believes we are often misled by what differences in magnitudes in mpg actually mean and that manufacturers should employ the gpm numbers instead.

For example, the cost-per-mile difference between a car getting 10 mpg and a car getting 20 mpg is greater than the difference between a 25 mpg car and a 50 mpg hybrid.

He tested his theory of misconception on college kids; not being asked, I decided to find out for myself.

miles / gallon	10	20	25	30
gallons / mile	0.1	0.05	0.04	0.03333
cost ($) / mile	0.4	0.2	0.16	0.13333
% improve each 10 mpg	0.0%	50.0%	20.0%	33.3%
$ improve from 10 mpg	$0.00	$0.20	$0.24	$0.27
% improve from 10 mpg	0.0%	50.0%	60.0%	66.7%
$ improve from 25 mpg	-$0.24	-$0.04	$0.00	$0.03
% improve from 25 mpg	-150.0%	-25.0%	0.0%	16.7%

continued...

40	50	75	100	1000
0.025	0.02	0.01333	0.01	0.001
0.1	0.08	0.05333	0.04	0.004
25.0%	20.0%	33.3%	50.0%	90.0%
$0.30	$0.32	$0.35	$0.36	$0.40
75.0%	80.0%	86.7%	90.0%	99.0%
$0.06	$0.08	$0.11	$0.12	$0.16
37.5%	50.0%	66.7%	75.0%	97.5%

Assuming gas costs 4$/g, we see going from the Excursion (i.e. 10 mpg) to my '93 Bonneville (i.e. ~ 25 mpg) gives rise to a 50% reduction in per-mileage cost. However, going from my Bonnie to say a good hybrid (~50 mpg) would also be a 50% price reduction... so something is fishy.

Ah! He must be talking about absolute cost! For the first 50% reduction (Excursion to Bonnie), we see the net reduction is 20 cents. For the Bonnie to Hybrid, we see the reduction is just 8 cents!

It makes sense, though, for what we pay per mile is an inverse function of our car's efficiency. Thus, we expect a hyperbolic cost function with the associated diminished returns.

It looks like my biggest impact move away from Bonnie will be to ride my bike!