How much does a 3-hour drive cost you in fuel (roughly) in USD?

35 comments

1. I last paid $2.84/gallon to fill up last week. On pure highway drives with little stop-and-go traffic, my Honda fit driving at about 65 miles per hour gets about 36 miles per gallon. (With AC on, that’s not an option in the summer) That’s a fuel consumption on interstate highway drives of barely over $5 an hour, $15 for a 3 hour, 195 mile journey.

   This doesn’t count tire wear/routine oil changes or other ownership costs.

2. Wouldn’t price per gallon be a far more useful metric?

   I have a range of vehicles available to me that get 14, 27, 36, and 60mpg respectively

   Edit:

   >** Forgot to mention my calculations are based on a very small 1-litre petrol engine ** 

   What does this matter for the sake of the question.

   Do they just not teach the scientific method across the pond? Bruh you gotta limit your variables. 

3. First, this depends on the car you are driving. Then if you are driving on highways or city? I drive a smaller sedan. For me it would be $25-$30

4. Assuming I drive on the highway at 60 miles per hour, 3 hours takes me 180 miles. At 30 miles per gallon that’s 6 gallons, which presently is going to be about $30 or £23.

   Ninja edit: note on the miles per gallon thing: rember that our gallons are smaller than yours.

5. My car holds around 325 miles (give or take) when full. I can fill it up between $45-$50. Some family and friends live 90 minutes (100 miles away). I probably could make it there and back using $35-40 but I don’t want to risk being stuck on the side of the road in the mountains

6. That depends on a couple of things. A small sedan uses less gas than a giant pickup. Highway travel also uses less gas than driving within a city. Gas prices vary wildly not only one week to the next, but from one region to the next. But in general, I can get down to Dallas in my Honda Civic (about a 3 hr drive from OKC) on about $25.

7. That depends on the speed and the vehicle. At 70 miles per hour that’s 210 miles. Our Toyota Camry gets about 30 miles per gallon on the highway. So, it would use about 7 gallons. At $3.60 per gallon, that would cost about $25.

8. I’ll assume an average speed of 55, so 165 miles for the trip. I get about 27 mpg, so that’s just over 6.1 gallons. I expect to pay ~$3.25/gal when I fill up, so about $20 for the trip.

9. 3 hours gets me from my house in Burlington VT to the Merrimack valley, where most of my family is. It’s about 200 miles and costs me a bit under $20.

10. My car is rated for 27 miles per gallon on the highway. 3 hours at 65 miles an hour would be 195 miles which would burn 7.2 gallons. Gas goes for about $3.40/gallon where I am right now, so that’s about $24.50

11. We have EV. The electricity for a 3 hour drive is about 2 dollars unless we get some free charging.

    But a 3 hour drive can kind of vary, the average vehicle in the US is 25 miles per gallon and gas on average is 3.50 here.

    Looking if we were driving the same cars it would be almost twice as much there as in the US, but your vehicles, on average, are more economical (we so many trucks here). So a guess would be we are paying about 20-40 pounds per trip.

12. Two weeks ago it was $22.00 for a 3-1/2 hour trip 286 miles. Car was a Kia Forte that got almost 40 miles per gallon.

13. As others have said, the cost of a drive depends on what car you’re driving, what kinds of roads you’re driving on, and where you’re buying the fuel.

    A better way to address this question is probably just to look at the relative cost of fuel in the U.S. vs. the UK. The current average cost of fuel in the UK is US$1.91 per liter. In the U.S., where it’s sold by the gallon, it’s $3.51 per gallon. A gallon is 3.8 liters, so a gallon of fuel in the UK is $7.26.

    So it costs about half as much to drive three hours in the U.S. as it does in the UK.

14. Eh. it depends on the vehicle size/engine size/octane rating needed?

    In my VW Tiguan cruising at say 75mph on a highway it would be about $28.00

    My son drive a little 1.3 liter 3 cylinder, he would cost about $24 right now.

15. It’d be about $26 (USD) for my to drive three hours (210 miles) in my truck, assuming I’m maintaining highway speeds of approximately 70mph the whole time.

16. About $32. But I drive a Tacoma with a V6 that gets ~20mpg.

17. 3 hour drive on the Interstate (freeway system) I average around 21.5 miles per gallon. I just filled up at $3.06 a gallon. Maybe $23.50 for 3 hours on the interstate

18. Last time I went to the UK, it was 9 pounds per liter, where it was around $2 per gallon. I was floored how expensive gas was in the UK

19. If I drive 3 hours at 60 mph, it would cost me a total of ~$18.

20. It takes me like 3/4 of a tank…which is 11.something gallons…which is about 40 dollars at the moment.

21. 15-20$

22. Depends on where I’m driving. I think mileage would be a better metric for this than time. 3 hours of city driving is vastly different from 3 hours of highway driving.

    If I’m driving 3 hours on the highway, it would be approximately 180 miles/290 Km which in my SUV would take about 8.5 gallons at about $3.20 per gallon would be $27.20

    If I were to use E85 which is mostly ethanol, and I normally do, it would be slightly less fuel efficient (let’s just round up to 10 gallons), but the cost would be $2.49 per gallon, and I would be spending about $24.90 to drive 180 miles.

23. 3 hours at highway speed? That’s maybe 150-200 miles. On the high end that’s 50 kWh of power, or about $7-8 if I charge at home.

24. About $35 in my truck which is typically what I use when I drive that long. The car about $28 because it gets better mileage but requires more expensive gas. I’m in California so our gas is usually at least a $1 more per gallon than other places and often more.

25. My truck gets 15 mpg on the highway at 70 mph. That works out to 210 miles in three hours, and 14 gallons of gas. At $3.00 per gallon on average, you’re looking at $42. While the mileage ain’t great, the tank holds 36 gallons, so I can go quite a long ways on a tank of gas. It gets a bit speedy when it’s time to fill up, however.

26. Considering UK road infrastructure…

    A 3 hour drive can take someone from York to Coventry, at a distance of 135 miles. At 30 mpg, that would be 4.5 gallons of gas. At $3.75 a gallon, that’s about $16.88, so $17, or £13.25.

    That would be a similar distance as from Newark, NJ to Hartford, CT, which would take about 2.5 hours.

27. Probably around $40 I guess. I get around 400mi on $50 worth of gas at 3.40 a gallon… but I’m doing rough estimation here

28. Too difficult as 
    gas can vary widely even in one county to the next. It also depends on type of car and fuel economy. 

29. Let’s see, using highway MPG ratings:

    I get 30 mpg on the freeway. On the freeway, I drive roughly 80 miles an hour = 240 miles. 8 gallons of gas, maybe a little less. $24 bucks.

30. I drive a Honda Civic so I get good gas mileage: about 40 miles per gallon. Gas is approx $3/gallon depending on where you live and where you get gas. A 3 hour drive for me is about 205 miles, so I calculate about $15 for a three hour drive.

31. Gas near me is $3.49 per gallon right now. 3 hours of highway driving at speed limit would be approx 210 miles. I drive a 2006 F150 which is obviously a gas hog. I get about 18 miles per gallon on the interstate. So I’d use 11.67 gallons. Which would cost around $40.72.

    My wife’s 2012 Terrain gets 30 miles per gallon on the interstate in eco mode. So if we took her car it would take 7 gallons and cost about $24.43.

    So depending on which vehicle we take about $25-$40 bucks.

32. I’d make the calculation for a highway drive for both my cars

    I’d assume 120km/h with cruise control on a highway. So 360km in 3h non stop

    Car no.1
    1400cc turbo petrol 140hp
    Avg consumption 7.5L/100km
    So 27L used in the 360km. Avg petrol price 1.85€/L so 50€ (~55$)

    Car no.2
    1500cc turbo diesel 110hp
    Avg consumption 5.2L/100km
    So 19L used in the 360. Avg diesel price 1.55€/L so 30€ (~33$)

33. These questions are hard to answer sometimes with the wide range of cars being driven. You also need to factor in different states have different gas prices depending on what the state gas tax is. But roughly $30-$40 if gas is 3.50

34. It’s a 3-hour, 200-mile drive to visit my in-laws on the other side of the state. I’ll be conservative and say that traffic and construction will be awful and my Prius C with a 1.5-L engine will average only 40 miles/US gallon in hot summer with the AC on (usually it’s around 50 on the highway).

    So that’s 5 gallons at $3.55 (the current price at the gas station nearest my house), or $17.75 one way/$35.50 for a round-trip.

35. – A 3 hour drive would be approximately 180 miles.

    – My car gets about 45 mpg

    – Gas in my area is about $4.50 a gallon

    A 3 hour drive would cost me $18.

    Fun!! Word problem to start my day 😝