40 MPG Plateau?

Don't worry, the mahindra vaporware will save us.

killerkane wrote: In Europe the everyday car is much more efficient than it is here, the BMW 116d (diesel) gets a reported 62 miles to the gallon! No TDi does that! Toyota has two different diesel Tacoma's both returning 30-35 mpg, neither are available in the US! So frustrating!

thats also rated using imperial gallons vs us gallons

huge-O-chavez wrote:

failboat wrote: well. at this rate, in a few years there will be sporty coupe options that can pull 40 mpg.

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/spitrage/mustang This guy has achieved 36+mpg once. Hell that's impressive. Too bad I need 4 doors.

This is great. By his description of where he is driving, I am convinced I can regularly get those kinds of numbers out of a V6 mustang or more. My commute is mostly rural with little traffic, few stops, 90 miles round trip a day, speed around 50mph or so with a brief stint of 60-70.

In most cases I only need 2 seats (is the answer miata?) but its also nice to not have to drive my 17mpg van any time I want to bring our dogs with us anywhere.

failboat wrote: well. at this rate, in a few years there will be sporty coupe options that can pull 40 mpg.

The Veloster will be here this summer.

Travis_K wrote: I think a real 50mpg is really pushing it for a gas engine. Has there ever been a mass produced car that (assuming it was in like new condition) could be daily driven today that would regularly get over 40 mpg?

The thing is, 50mpg was possible a while back,. And the engines have gotten more efficient since then in terms of output vs fuel. Those increases just aren't being used to increased fuel efficiency they're being used to lug heavier cars faster.

A modern engine in a car with similar weight, with performance #s similar to the old ones would be more efficient. It also wouldn't sell.

EDIT: Plus emissions as someone pointed out, which I forgot to include.

I dont think Ethanol has been brought up in this thread yet.

I got 59+ mpg with my ZX2SR once when hypermiling. Used my scan gauge to see how much of the grill I could blockoff ,plus some other tricks. Too many years ago, if a car could accelerate 0-60 in under 15 secs. it was quick and said cars the ultimate mileage was 20 mpg. I remember way back when I lusted for a car that would do 0-60 in 10 secs and reach 120 mph.

There was mention of some cars that are not avilable here. Could be that they don't meet our emissions and safety regs.

My old '61 Fiat 600 could get 60mpg if you drove easy, but it had a super modified 32hp engine and checked in at about 1,200lbs. Given all the weight that a new car has to haul around and how fast they are, they do a pretty good job. The most amazing of these are mid sized sedans. Compared to their counterparts a few years ago, these get seriously good mpg. My G35 has just short of 300hp, yet I routinely get 22-25mpg, and there are some a lot better than this. My '99 Miata would only get a couple of mpg better, and it was LOTS slower, although it was more fun.

In my opinion, the real step up in fuel mileage for dino based engines will only occur when weight starts to drop. Weight is the enemy, but alternative materials are still pretty expensive. The real problem with needing bigger cars is the massive trucks and SUVs roaming the highways. A small car to small car collision has less stored energy than a large truck to large truck collision. Different sized vehicle collisions is where the massive damages occur.

I can either get 23mpg from the GLI or 30.5 over a 30 mile drive depending on when I want to get where I am going. If I hump along the I-96 ExpRACEway with traffic at 80mph I will ring 23mpg all day long. Slow it down to 67mph and I will average 30.5 door to door every trip.

I am now that dirty old SOB driving the performance car under the speed limit on the highway!

failboat wrote: I dont think Ethanol has been brought up in this thread yet.

You should see the MPGs drop in Michigan when the fuel changes to winter blend... oy vey

fast_eddie_72 wrote:

Nitroracer wrote: My question is why are we stuck at 40 mpg highway? Shouldn't that be old news already?

25 years ago some of them got 50 MPG. All this time, technology and expense later, we've gone down 10 MPG. That's progress!

And that was with an evil carburetor.

failboat wrote: I dont think Ethanol has been brought up in this thread yet.

That is a HUGE point! All of our gas up here is E10, which gives WORSE mileage than straight gas. If the government really gave a crap about MPG's they'd stop subsidizing the corn farmers and stop all this mandatory ethanol content BS.

spitfirebill wrote: And that was with an evil carburetor.

The carburetor is actually the most efficient air/fuel mixing device ever invented. At steady-state cruise they used very little fuel and automatically compensated for weather changes since they worked with air pressure. They are really cool like that from an engineering standpoint.

Getting up to speed was another matter entirely, as was idle, so obviously they will never win the overall title. Not to mention staying in tune...

Javelin wrote:

failboat wrote: I dont think Ethanol has been brought up in this thread yet.

That is a HUGE point! All of our gas up here is E10, which gives WORSE mileage than straight gas. If the government really gave a crap about MPG's they'd stop subsidizing the corn farmers and stop all this mandatory ethanol content BS.

Yep. Leaving aside whether or not ethanol is a good idea in the first place... (the short answer to that is sometimes, which rabid idiots on both sides will attack)

You can't reasonably use MPG as the yardstick for regulations while at the same time changing the gas to reduce MPGs. At that point you have to ask yourself what's the point of the MPG goals, and measure that directly. If it's emissions, measure emissions. If it's reduced dependence on oil, adjust your metric for the part that's ethanol, etc. Both? Measure both. Other? Measure that.

It's all about the market.

If FE cars sold in great numbers, and the higher the number, the more the sales, then the auto makers would all be rushing to make the best of the best cars.

Power numbers sell cars. 0-60 times sell cars. Safety sells cars. If anyone could sell a Civic Ex kind of car these days (slow, ~100hp- ignore the safety and emissions), it WOULD be made. It's not as if that's a difficult issue to solve. Heck a 110hp 3cyl DI motor that only needs to meet a 0-60 time of 12 seconds and not accelerate too hard at 60 or 70mph- I would think 50mpg is not that hard. It didn't sell well enough before, it would have a harder time now.

Lastly, as I see the market, the super high FE cars here in the US are generally seen as the cheapest econmy cars, or just the bottom of the price line. So it's hard to put technology specifically on a car to sell it for FE. Hybrids seem to be an exception, until you look at all of the non prius/insight cars on the market, and how they fit in. More often than not, you'll see the hybrid part as a v6 performance for an I4. Even then, quite a few of the insight/prius sales are the image sales that is similar to BMW sales.

Lean burn is an emitting issue, yes- but there are solutions. Cost makes prohibitive for the average market, let alone the FE market.

Diesel has emissions problems, again, there are solutions. Again, cost.

BTW, I've predicted it here before, but I'll state it again, with Euro V and VI, the EU has learned about the harmful results of diesels, too. Diesel cost is pretty even with gas as the pump anymore, and with the new regs, I'll predict that the non luxury market will be forced to abandon diesels in the a- c/d classes. Customers will not be willing to pay for the solutions.

In the end, consumers are more willing to pay for better improvements in an Explorer than in a Cruze.

Weight has almost no effect upon highway mileage. It only burns extra fuel getting the bulk up to speed, not maintaining the speed. Mythbusters - not exactly the go-to-people for scientific rigor, I know, but at least an example of experimentation - got significantly higher mpg out of a car with aerodynamic aids and massive amounts of weight added.

Ask the Lotus 7 guys how aerodynamics affect highway speeds and fuel consumption. They have a ridiculously lightweight vehicle and common sense says it should use almost no fuel, but it gets worse highway mileage than my LS400.

The portion of this that I find interesting is the New York City Taxi Commision. They passed laws a few years back that require 30/35/40 mpg out of taxi cabs over the following years. This is why they have gone to Hybrid cars for taxis.
At the same time, they have been running a design competition for the new taxi of the future. The leading design is the Ford Transit Connect done up as a cab, but.... it can not meet the mpg requirements.
It seems that the rules they are creating are not instep with what is being offered in the marketplace.

spitfirebill wrote: And that was with an evil carburetor.

Yup. I think EFI became kind of default more due to emissions requirements than fuel economy.

Travis_K wrote: I think a real 50mpg is really pushing it for a gas engine. Has there ever been a mass produced car that (assuming it was in like new condition) could be daily driven today that would regularly get over 40 mpg?

My Swift GT can, and does get low to mid 40's (53 MPG imperial), with cams, header, big TB, and me driving it. It is possible. The really early, 86-88 3 cylinder cars are even better.

This is pretty much the best argument for changing our fuel economy metric to a fuel consumption metric. It's easy to see at a glance that a car that uses 7 L/100km uses twice as much fuel as one that uses 3.5 L/100km. You have to go through the above contortions to see that a jump from 40-50mpg is only the same as from 14-15 mpg.

This is the main reason why i have always said that the most significant hybrids are the ones that get the least MPG.. The 2-mode truck hybrids. Instead of getting 14mpg you get 20. Thats HUUUUUUUGE.

I could increase the MPG of my Insight in a variety of ways, but the appeal is pretty weak. Im honestly more interested in improving the MPG of my cars that only get ~25.

A 2012 Focus and a 1983 Pontiac 6000 are virtually the same size ,excluding a bit of trunk overhang. Weights are close,too, but the Focus will out accelerate the Pontiac and beat it on gas mileage. I would have been ecstatic to get anything like 40 mpg from my old Pontiac. Put Fiesta technology in a 1985 lightweight shell and I'd expect some serious mileages, especially if you lose the really low gearing.

Zomby woof wrote:

Travis_K wrote: I think a real 50mpg is really pushing it for a gas engine. Has there ever been a mass produced car that (assuming it was in like new condition) could be daily driven today that would regularly get over 40 mpg?

My Swift GT can, and does get low to mid 40's (53 MPG imperial), with cams, header, big TB, and me driving it. It is possible. The really early, 86-88 3 cylinder cars are even better.

I don't think I ever got over 35 in mine. Weekends that I auto-x'd would be like 28 for the tank. One weekend when I did two, it was 23.

Why can't sports car guys and tree huggers just work for the common goal of smaller, lighter cars. The reasons why may differ, but it is something achievable that would allow everybody to win.

JoeyM wrote: Why can't sports car guys and tree huggers just work for the common goal of smaller, lighter cars. The reasons why may differ, but it is something achievable that would allow everybody to win.

Well, for starters, I will have three kids in May and I have a 75 lb dog (used to have two). There's no real way to convey all of them using something small and light. Carseats are gigantic.

Driving technique helps. Learn to drive slow and you could reach those numbers. Check out hypermiling.