this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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fun fact. modern planes consume ~3-4l per 100 passengers per km or 3-4l per passenger per 100km.
efficient ICE cars consume ~6l per passenger per 100km.
add to that, that there's basically no good alternative to fast very long distance or cross-continent transport
Edit #2: ICE is a type of train in germany. I mistook "ICE cars" as meaning trains and was wondering how flying is supposed to be more efficient than trains. Hence my confusion.
OG comment (invalid, see Edit #2): Where are these numbers coming from?
I cannot find any source for the 3-4l/passenger/km claim. I cannot find any source for the claim that planes are more efficient. Nothing comes even near this claim.
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/rail-and-waterborne-transport
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566
Can you please provide a source?
Edit #1: I just want to add that my old combustion car (VW Up! / Seat Mii / Skoda Citigo) burned around 4.2l/100km. So I according to you, if I had another person with me, I'd beat both planes and trains with what stands uncontested as the most inefficient form of transport?
Since I just had this whole back and forth with someone else a few days ago, I have these handy. I’m not the parent, but he’s right. An individual car can be more fuel efficient with 3+ passengers but the average car trip is only 1.3 passengers. The most popular use of a car is commuting and that stands at 1.2 passengers per trip.
“A new report from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute shows that flying has become 74% more efficient per passenger since 1970 while driving gained only 17% efficiency per passenger. In fact, the average plane trip has been more fuel efficient than the average car trip since as far back as 2000, according to their calculations.”
http://websites.umich.edu/~umtriswt/PDF/UMTRI-2014-2_Abstract_English.pdf
“The main findings are that to make driving less energy intensive than flying, the fuel economy of the entire fleet of light-duty vehicles would have to improve from the current 21.5 mpg to at least 33.8 mpg, or vehicle load would have to increase from the current 1.38 persons to at least 2.3 persons.”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/
I think you need to learn how to read, buddy.