Planning a Drive Abroad When Your Sense of Distance Is in Miles
Booking a road trip through a metric country means every figure you meet is in the wrong unit at once. The route planner returns kilometres, the hire agreement caps your allowance in kilometres, the fuel is sold by the litre, and the economy figure you know your own car by is in miles per gallon.
The distance conversion is the anchor for all of it. Get the legs into kilometres and the rest — daily driving time, fuel stops, whether the mileage cap is generous or mean — falls out of it.
When You Need This
Hire Agreements
Fuel Budgeting
Daily Stages
Costing Out a Leg and the Fuel It Will Take
Enter the leg in miles
Type the distance you already know — the one from a US route planner or from a friend's description — and the kilometre figure appears underneath.
Check it against the hire allowance
Add every leg, compare the total against the included kilometres, and price the overage before you sign rather than at the drop-off desk.
Turn kilometres into litres
Multiply the kilometre total by the car's litres per 100 km and divide by 100. At 7 L/100 km, a 400 km stage needs 28 litres.
The return direction matters at the end of the trip, when the odometer has counted in kilometres and the expense claim wants miles. Press the swap arrows and kilometres go into the top field instead.
Trip Stages, and What Each Costs in Fuel
The last column assumes a car returning 7 litres per 100 km, roughly a mid-size diesel or an efficient petrol hatchback at a steady motorway speed.
| Stage | Miles | Kilometres | Fuel at 7 L/100 km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airport transfer | 10 mi | 16.09 km | 1.1 L |
| Cross-town | 25 mi | 40.23 km | 2.8 L |
| Morning leg | 60 mi | 96.56 km | 6.8 L |
| Half day | 100 mi | 160.93 km | 11.3 L |
| Full driving day | 250 mi | 402.34 km | 28.2 L |
| Long haul | 500 mi | 804.67 km | 56.3 L |
A Leg Converted Without Leaving the Map
Results follow your typing, so a route with six stages takes about as long to convert as it takes to read the stages out.
Turn It Round for the Odometer Reading
The swap arrows put kilometres on top, which is the direction you need when the hire car has counted the trip and the claim form has not.
Copy a Total Into an Expense Claim
Each field copies just the digits, with no unit and no thousands spacing, which is what a claim form or a mileage spreadsheet will accept.
Switch to Metres for Height and Width Limits
Bridge, tunnel and car-park restrictions abroad are posted in metres. Search the unit list and check a van or a roof box against them.
Road Trip Questions
What does 7 litres per 100 km mean in miles per gallon?
About 33.6 US mpg, or 40.4 UK mpg. The two systems also run in opposite directions: a lower L/100 km figure is better, while a higher mpg figure is better, which is why the comparison trips people up so reliably.
Are US and UK miles per gallon the same number?
No, and the gap is large. An imperial gallon is 4.546 litres against the US gallon's 3.785, so a UK figure is about 20% higher for identical fuel use. A car advertised at 48 UK mpg is doing roughly 40 US mpg. The mile itself is the same on both sides.
Why does Britain post miles but sell fuel in litres?
Metrication was done piecemeal. Trade and packaging went metric decades ago, while road signage was left alone because replacing every sign in the country was never worth the cost. The result is a system that measures fuel in litres and consumption in miles per gallon.
How long does an 800 km driving day really take?
Around eight to nine hours door to door. The motorway maths says about seven hours at a 115 km/h average, but fuel, food and toll stops add most of an hour, and any city at either end adds more. Five hundred miles is a long day, not a comfortable one.
Will a hire car's mileage cap be counted in kilometres?
In a metric country, yes — both the included allowance and the excess rate. A "200 per day" cap is 200 km, which is only 124 miles, so a touring itinerary can breach it far sooner than the number suggests.
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