I used to worry about how many miles per gallon my vehicles got. It was a measure of not just the efficiency and economy of the engine but continued measurement provided insight into the engine’s performance over time. As it got worse, it was time to get it tuned up and checked out. It was always just a simple matter of resetting the odometer at each filling and dividing the miles traveled by gallons purchased to refill.

These days, its not so important how well the engine is running. Its more important to understand how badly I need to travel by car. Given the rapidly rising price of fuel, it makes far more sense to calculate kilometers per dollar.  I don’t even care how many gallons (or, here in Korea, liters) I purchase, its how much I spend. These days, I can fill my tank for about $90 and run about 550 km. That figures out to about 6 km per dollar, or kpd.  For you American types, that’s about 3.6 mpd given the price of fuel here.

Looking at how much it costs me to travel, it makes me more conscious of how expensive its getting to drive. Figure in maintenance, wear and tear and driving my own vehicle may soon become too expensive.  In Korea, we’re paying about $1.70 per liter, or around $6.40 per gallon. My car is already 15 years old and going south rapidly. When it finally stops taking me from point A to B, I’ll have to seriously evaluate what, if anything, I replace it with.