Mileage for kilometers

My Canadian friends assure me they would indeed use the word mileage, at least in terms of cars. "The mileage on the car is 110,000 km." Were you thinking of non-car uses? If so, give me a specific sentence and I can ask them.

I want to refer to the distance (measured in km) travelled by any means of transport.

Just FYI Mileage can also mean how far the car can go on a certain amount of fuel. e.g. What kind of (gas) mileage does your car get? 30mpg(miles per gallon).

And no I've never heard a similar word used for kilometers, but maybe that's because I'm from the states.

When, I'm Canadian, and the only time I'd use the word mileage are the two ways already mentioned, although to mean "kilometres per litre" no "miles per gallon".

You already know the word you want. It's "distance". Or, more colloquially, something like "How far is it to Sudbury?" or "How many kilometres to the nearest Tim Hortons?"

Yes, I think GP is right in several regards. First, he is always a Canadian. Second, you only need to know the distance involved. If you were getting a rental car, for example, you could ask, "How many kilometers are included in the contract?" There is no term like kilometerage that I know of.

Also, if you wanted an alternative to mileage in the sense of miles per gallon, you could use the term fuel economy, or fuel economy rating, etc.

Try "distance."

Well I need "mileage" for a rental contract meaning the mileage on the car when it is received, and I don't think any of the above suggestions cater for this eventuality... Does anyone have any suggestions? Also, I found the word "odometer" to use instead of milometer (the device that counts kilometers/miles driven), but I've never heard this word before, has anyone else?
Thank you in advance for any help...

Kilometrage

Except kilometrage doesn't seem to be in most dictionaries. Europcar, one of the biggest car rental companies serving European and international markets, uses mileage (71 references on their site). There is one for kilométrage, but it's in a French-language page.

On the other hand, there is a reference on the website of the government of Nova Scotia to "Kilometrage Rates, Monthly Allowances and Transportation Allowances Regulations", so maybe Canada is an exception.

http://www.gov.ns.ca/just/regulations/regs/cskilometrage.htm

We use kilometres here in NZ, but people still talk about mileage, just like mara said they do in Canada.
"What's the mileage on that car?"
"Eighty thousand kays."

People also say things like "it's done a lot of kays" but I've never heard (or seen) kilometrage. It's just not a pleasant word to say. For all the advantages of the metric system, I'd say its biggest shortcoming is linguistic: the imperial measurements are nicer and more convenient to talk or write about.

As for fuel economy, the metric equivalent of "miles per gallon" tends to be "litres per 100 km", in NZ at least. That feels weird because it's the inverse, i.e. a low number is good.

mileage, has at least 5 different definitions that I know of, however for the translation of the definition provided above, use, 'klicks' or 'kilometrage'. The later you can find in a french dictionary but not an english one, and is not widely used, likely because it is too had to say. The word, mileage, is still used in metric countries to denote distance and often people will respond 300k and make the assumption that you understood 300,000 km. The definition (variant) of the word very clearly means distance in miles and so the meaning has developed ambiguity in metric countries (because many metric countries converted from imperial to metric in the 70s), and an older person or a "smart ass" might assume miles. Thus to remove ambiguity, klick (or less favourably klik) should be used. You can find this word in both oxford and webster.

I speculate that the reason why there is no english word is because oxford (British) and webster (American) are the 2 prevailing authorities for the english language and neither of these countries use kilometres as their base unit of measurements. In Canada, the Quebec province explicitly has a linguistic department to create french words (in particular english equivalents), however there is not an linguistic department for english.

I just found this interesting website and thread. The pedant in me wishes to point out to David4, that we Canucks say, "...the province of Quebec...", not ever, "...the Quebec province..."! You could also say, "La Belle Province" en français.

Having lived in Abu Dhabi for 5 years and using kilometers and kph for the first time, I could not refer to accumulated kilometers traveled as mileage; therefore, I coined the term kilometage. Made sense to me.

Hi,

I work in the healthcare industry in Canada and have heard and used the term "kilometration". Although, I must admit I have never found such a term validated anywhere on the internet. I am afraid this might be a made-up word, but sounds great for the purpose, doesn't it?.

Cheers!
Orlando