km/L to L/100km Converter

Brazil and the United States measure fuel consumption as distance travelled per unit of fuel: kilometres per litre, miles per gallon. Europe and much of the rest measure the opposite: litres burned every 100 kilometres. Both describe the same thing, but they behave in opposite ways — in one, more is better; in the other, less is better.

Enter the consumption in kilometres per litre and the page returns litres per 100 km. The arithmetic is simply 100 divided by the value, which also means it works both ways: apply it twice and you get the original number back. A car doing 12.5 km per litre burns 8 litres every 100 km.

The inverse relationship has a consequence that misleads people: equal gains in the first unit are not worth the same. Going from 8 to 10 km per litre saves 2.5 litres per 100 km; going from 18 to 20 saves only 0.56. In other words, improving the thirsty car saves far more fuel than improving the economical one — something the European measure makes obvious and the other hides.