Interesting Facts and Figures part 1

You can believe the figures here or not, but this is what I've been able to conjure up with a few Google searches regarding fuel economy numbers.
Average Fuel Economy in the US in 2006

17.2 miles per gallon

Average Fuel Economy for Passenger Cars in the US in 2006

22.4 miles per gallon

The entirety of the data can be found here and here.

There are two things possibly wrong in that data, not that I'm necessarily calling out the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. One, the EPA changed all the miles per gallon values in 2008. So you can call them out on that, as it skews every single value before 2008 on fuel economy numbers. Essentially what the EPA did was lower the values for every single car made before 2008, so all the numbers listed on the BTS are wrong by today's standards.

So it regretfully means...the national average is actually even lower. Yikes. But there's hope though. I'm sure you heard of the Cars for Clunkers program that ran this last summer?

That program will probably skew the numbers for 2009 (due to the large number of clunkers traded in for more fuel efficient cars) so things are looking better. However these numbers are to be expected.

For next time, look forward to knowing how much pollutants are created by burning gasoline. The numbers will be surprising.