Why The 2015 Ford F-150 Is Better For The Environment Than The Prius

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Getting into our example, Madowitz made the case that the rumored "3 MPG" increase in the new F-150 will result in less gas burned than the even a larger increase one would experience buying a Prius over a Corolla.

A 1 MPG increase is not equivalent to a 1 GPM decrease. Increasing the MPG of a vehicle that's already frugal on fuel doesn't reduce gas used over 500 miles by much. Meanwhile, an efficiency increase that's a smaller number in MPG but greater in terms of percentage of the original will reduce GPM substantially.

Imagine you're deciding whether to buy a Prius or a Corolla. The Corolla gets 30 MPG, the Prius gets 49 — 63% more. But if you're driving 500 miles, you only reduce gallons of gas burned by about 6.5 driving the Prius.

Madowitz focuses on two effects in this scenario: First, let's say you're deciding between a used 2013 F-150 that gets 14 MPG to a 2015 one that people are speculating will get 3 MPG better, bringing economy to 17. MPG would increase by 21%, but you burn about 6.3 fewer gallons of gas over 500 miles.

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The second effect that comes into play is that many more F-150s are sold than hybrids. According to the data he found, it was about half a million vs 150,000 Prii. Madowitz went on to say it seemed like all hybrid and EV vehicle sales combine only became comparable to F-150 sales last year.

If the efficiency of a small group of vehicles is improved significantly, the total amount of fuel saved will still be less than if the consumption of a massive group of vehicles increases slightly.

For a more direct comparison, the 150,000 people who bought a Prius over a Corolla cut American oil consumption by some 670,000 barrels per year. If Ford hits the 3 MPG increase we heard about when the 2.7 EcoBoost was first being speculated on and F-150 sales remain consistent, US oil consumption would drop somewhere between 1.4 and 2.3 million barrels a year.

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