Road Trip wBikes on top of Car

It is cheaper to put the bikes on top of the car.  Here is an example.

Miles travelled	2500		Cost per gallon of gas:		3.75
MPG without bikes	20
Gallons gas used w/o bikes	125
Gas cost without bikes	468.75
Bike rental cost	280
Total cost w/o bikes	748.75
Break-even MPG with bikes	12.52087

Basically, this means for these numbers, as long as having the bikes on the roof doesn't cut your MPG down to 12.5 from 20, you come out ahead.

And it doesn't.  I don't know how much it decreases your MPG, but it's not 37%.

Last year we took a group of athletes from Halifax to Ottawa for a race (about 1500km of driving each way) and we took three seven passenger vans.  Two of the vans had roof racks (six bikes per rack) and hitch racks (4 per rack) while the remaining van had no racks. 

When we stopped to fuel the van with no bikes would typically take about $60.00 worth of fuel while the other two vans were averaging just over $100.00 (stopping for fuel about every 500km).

Shane

Edited by gsmacleod 2009-07-07 9:09 AM

Just my rack alone steals about 3mpg.  I don't have good data for how much additional the bikes themselves steal because I never bothered to figure it out.

But taking your bikes along is defiitely cheaper than having to pay for medical bills associated with riding on a rented bike that maybe wasn't fit exactly right for you and now you ended up with injuries because of it.

I have a hitch mounted rack on a station wagon.  I don't think it affects the gas mileage.

TW

I have a fork mount on top of my 4 Runner and I get anywhere from 22.0 - 23.0 mpg in that ride. My mpg is more dependent on my driving style and if I am aggressive in the hills or not.

Mike