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11 Aug 2025, 09:58
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D
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
25%
(medium)
Question Stats:
75% (01:31) correct
25%
(01:42)
wrong
based on 150
sessions
History
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Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
Most car manufacturers now offer hybrid vehicles: cars and trucks, which use both standard gasoline and electricity to power their engines. Therefore, consumers who drive hybrid vehicles are using less gasoline now than before these manufacturers began offering hybrid cars and trucks.
Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?
A. Hybrid vehicles generally have higher horsepower than non-hybrid vehicles.
B. Hybrid manufacturers use less gasoline in their manufacturing equipment than non-hybrid manufacturers do.
C. Most hybrid vehicles get the majority of their power from gasoline combustion.
D. The number of miles driven in a hybrid vehicle that are attributable to electricity is greater than the equivalent number of miles that could have been driven with the gasoline used to create that electricity.
E. More electrical power is used driving a hybrid vehicle than an equivalent non-hybrid vehicle.
Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?
A. Hybrid vehicles generally have higher horsepower than non-hybrid vehicles.
B. Hybrid manufacturers use less gasoline in their manufacturing equipment than non-hybrid manufacturers do.
C. Most hybrid vehicles get the majority of their power from gasoline combustion.
D. The number of miles driven in a hybrid vehicle that are attributable to electricity is greater than the equivalent number of miles that could have been driven with the gasoline used to create that electricity.
E. More electrical power is used driving a hybrid vehicle than an equivalent non-hybrid vehicle.
11 Aug 2025, 19:25
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This is ultimately about NUMBERS—i.e., the amount of gas used by consumers driving hybrid cars vs. the amount of gas that the same consumers would use in traditional gas cars ("before these manufacturers began offering hybrid cars and trucks").
The conclusion of the argument is that these consumers use LESS gas in hybrid cars than they would have used in traditional gas cars. This conclusion is currently unsubstantiated, so literally anything that points the numbers in the correct direction will be a 'strengthener' here. Specifically, any sort of quantitative evidence that consumers use LESS gas AFTER SWITCHING TO HYBRIDS will be the correct answer here.
(Brainstorming possible answers upfront / 'pre-thinking': This could happen in many different ways.
Since total gasoline usage is miles/gallon · gallons, though, these possibilities will basically all fall into two categories:
• FEWER MILES DRIVEN: Maybe consumers just don't drive as many miles in the hybrid cars—perhaps long road trips are less appealing in them, or they can't go as far in the winter, or something else that would limit mileage on hybrid cars but not on traditional cars.
—or—
• MORE MILES PER GALLON: Maybe the hybrid cars get more miles per gallon on the gasoline that they actually use.)
.
Choice D is pretty much exactly the idea of the second bullet point above, so choice D is the correct answer.
FYI, the wording of this problem is much looser than that of GMAC's critical reasoning problems.
Most importantly, you just have to assume that the consumers in question actually drove traditional gas cars BEFORE hybrids—since the central comparison is nonsense if they didn't—but GMAC would definitely articulate this explicitly. The same issue also exists in choice D, in which "the equivalent number of miles that could have been driven with the gasoline used to create that electricity" represents the number of miles that could have been driven in a traditional gas car on the same amount of gasoline; once again, GMAC would absolutely SAY this, just to ensure the integrity of the logic and of the problem itself (by ruling out edge cases like "How do we know they didn't drive a fully electric car before the hybrid?"—which would totally destroy this problem).
.
Wrong answers:
A/ This choice suggests that hybrid cars use more energy in general, which runs in the opposite direction from the argument that we want to strengthen. Moreover, this choice has nothing to say about the usage of gasoline specifically, so it can't speak to the conclusion to begin with.
B/ The problem is about fuel use by consumers, not by manufacturers, so this choice is irrelevant.
C/ This choice pushes the expected gasoline usage of hybrid cars upward, so it runs in the opposite direction from the argument that we want to strengthen. Moreover, there's nothing here that allows a comparison with non-hybrid (traditional gas) cars, so this choice can't possibly be the basis for judging the conclusion.
E/ Hybrid cars use electricity as a primary fuel while non-hybrid cars do not, so this is already an obviously true fact in the given context. Since this choice just repeats something that can already be gleaned from the given information, it contributes nothing at all.
The conclusion of the argument is that these consumers use LESS gas in hybrid cars than they would have used in traditional gas cars. This conclusion is currently unsubstantiated, so literally anything that points the numbers in the correct direction will be a 'strengthener' here. Specifically, any sort of quantitative evidence that consumers use LESS gas AFTER SWITCHING TO HYBRIDS will be the correct answer here.
(Brainstorming possible answers upfront / 'pre-thinking': This could happen in many different ways.
Since total gasoline usage is miles/gallon · gallons, though, these possibilities will basically all fall into two categories:
• FEWER MILES DRIVEN: Maybe consumers just don't drive as many miles in the hybrid cars—perhaps long road trips are less appealing in them, or they can't go as far in the winter, or something else that would limit mileage on hybrid cars but not on traditional cars.
—or—
• MORE MILES PER GALLON: Maybe the hybrid cars get more miles per gallon on the gasoline that they actually use.)
.
Choice D is pretty much exactly the idea of the second bullet point above, so choice D is the correct answer.
FYI, the wording of this problem is much looser than that of GMAC's critical reasoning problems.
Most importantly, you just have to assume that the consumers in question actually drove traditional gas cars BEFORE hybrids—since the central comparison is nonsense if they didn't—but GMAC would definitely articulate this explicitly. The same issue also exists in choice D, in which "the equivalent number of miles that could have been driven with the gasoline used to create that electricity" represents the number of miles that could have been driven in a traditional gas car on the same amount of gasoline; once again, GMAC would absolutely SAY this, just to ensure the integrity of the logic and of the problem itself (by ruling out edge cases like "How do we know they didn't drive a fully electric car before the hybrid?"—which would totally destroy this problem).
.
Wrong answers:
A/ This choice suggests that hybrid cars use more energy in general, which runs in the opposite direction from the argument that we want to strengthen. Moreover, this choice has nothing to say about the usage of gasoline specifically, so it can't speak to the conclusion to begin with.
B/ The problem is about fuel use by consumers, not by manufacturers, so this choice is irrelevant.
C/ This choice pushes the expected gasoline usage of hybrid cars upward, so it runs in the opposite direction from the argument that we want to strengthen. Moreover, there's nothing here that allows a comparison with non-hybrid (traditional gas) cars, so this choice can't possibly be the basis for judging the conclusion.
E/ Hybrid cars use electricity as a primary fuel while non-hybrid cars do not, so this is already an obviously true fact in the given context. Since this choice just repeats something that can already be gleaned from the given information, it contributes nothing at all.
Updated on: 25 Aug 2025, 02:30
Originally posted by Sajjad1994 on 25 Aug 2025, 02:25.
Last edited by Sajjad1994 on 25 Aug 2025, 02:30, edited 1 time in total.
Last edited by Sajjad1994 on 25 Aug 2025, 02:30, edited 1 time in total.
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Official Explanation
The argument is that drivers now use less gasoline than they did before the advent of hybrid vehicles. Knowing that the number of miles driven in a hybrid vehicle that were powered by electricity exceeds the number that could have been driven with the gasoline used to make the electricity strengthens the argument. It explains that more miles come from that electricity, proving that hybrid vehicles use less gas than conventional cars and trucks.
Answer: D
The argument is that drivers now use less gasoline than they did before the advent of hybrid vehicles. Knowing that the number of miles driven in a hybrid vehicle that were powered by electricity exceeds the number that could have been driven with the gasoline used to make the electricity strengthens the argument. It explains that more miles come from that electricity, proving that hybrid vehicles use less gas than conventional cars and trucks.
Answer: D
