The price of driving at today's price of gas

By Rich Exner, The Plain Dealer

Sunday's Numbers, a weekly feature from The Plain Dealer

The Plain DealerClick here to use the gas cost calculator.$2.58: The average price of self-serve regular gasoline in the Cleveland area on Monday, (Nov. 9, 2009), according to the weekly survey conducted by the U.S. Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration.

This is about 8 cents per gallon lower than the national average.

$1,935: The price of fuel, at a $1.58 a gallon, to power a car for a year. This assumes traveling 15,000 miles at 20 mpg.

$3,023:  The price to drive the same car the same distance at $4.03 a gallon, which was the local high for the government’s survey on July 14, 2008.

$1,088: The price to travel the same 15,000 miles at 20 mpg if gas was still $1.45, as it was six years ago.

750: Gallons of gasoline needed to drive 15,000 miles at 20 mpg.

500: Gallons of gasoline needed to drive 15,000 miles at 30 mpg.

$4,301: The amount of money you can save over the 100,000-mile life of a car by choosing a vehicle that gets 30 mpg instead of a car getting 20 mpg, assuming today’s price of $2.58 a gallon.

$176: The cost of gas to drive roundtrip between Cleveland and Myrtle Beach, S.C., for a 20 mpg vehicle at the current gas price. Much is often made of rising gasoline prices causing people to change vacation plans. But this is only $77 more than when gas was $1.45 a gallon, probably a small amount of a total vacation cost.

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