Originally Posted by
McBTC
True and given that a cyclist spends about 34 calories /mile -- essentially getting the equivalent of 31,000 / 34 or 911 mpg -- you'd have to turn a Prius into a clown car to match a cyclists mpg/person.
I don't know why I'm bothering, since at this point I can only conclude you are trolling, but for the benefit of anyone newly reading your post, that only works if the cyclist can eat gasoline. If he eats food, then his gasoline mileage is 1/10th of what you claim, because it takes 10 units of gasoline to produce 1 unit of food.
Originally Posted by
Roody
He says in
another article that the cost of refining crude oil to gasoline is about 25%. But I don't see where he is including this cost of operating a car in his comparison. But he is including it in his estimate of the cost of food.
If the cost of refining fuel for cars is the same as refining it for tractors and transport trucks, then it washes out - if you have 31,000 kcal of refined fuel (a gallon), you can put it in your Prius and drive 50 miles, or you can give it to food industry to produce 3100 kcal of food, and use that to bike maybe 90 miles.