A car can take a vehicle that weighs 2000lbs 35 miles on gallon of gas, but a lawn mower that weights 35lbs and has one spinning blade only goes 2 or 3 miles before needing a refill.
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Distance is not the most useful comparison here, time would be better.
A small car rated for 35mpg could idle for an hour and use a quarter of a gallon (getting 0mpg) or it could drive for an hour at 70mph using two gallons (getting 35mpg).
A push mower probably uses a quarter to a half a gallon an hour no matter what it’s doing.
Take the same engine and stick it in a scooter that only goes 25mph, if it used a third of a gallon for that hour, that would still be 75mpg, which in isolation would make the lawn mower engine seem “better.”
That said there’s a lot more going on with this comparison. The lawn mower is likely a 2 cycle engine with a carburator and basically one operating RPM. All cars now are 4 cycle engines with fuel injection and now variable timing, so it is definitely true that they can get more rotational work from the same unit of fuel, it’s just not quite as drastic as the example sounds.
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