Fuel economy myths

Excellent observation but you are forgetting something - price.

I think the major factors people look at are:

size/utility/'functionality
price/how fast is the depreciation/how much will the lease be
mileage
ergonomics/styling
perceived life/warranty/how much will maintainence cost
quality/fit and finish

And not in that order. All of these factors are interrelated.
And you can have a car score very poorly on some factors
but very well on others, and still sell well.

The problem with Detroit is Detroit mis-stepped in the 70s
by ignoring the relations of these facts. People always talk
about how Detroit kept building big giant cars when everyone
wanted high mileage cars. They forget that at the same time
that gas prices were rising and people were getting more
interested in better mileage, that a whole load of emissions
stuff was being shoved on to Detroit which was detuning
engines and loading them down with a lot of easy-to-break-down
systems.

If the US Government at the time had shown some leadership and
issued 5-7 year emissions deferrals in 1974 and Detroit had simply
kept building muscle cars, then people would have only briefly
flirted with the economy cars from Japan, and would have given
it up and kept buying Detroit Big Iron - as after the oil price
rising hysteria had died down, people would have given up the
fuel economy in favor of all of the other amenities of Detroit Big
Iron.

But instead what was happening is at the same time that the Japanese
were selling fuel efficient cars that were small and uncomfortable with
no amenities, Detroit Big Iron was getting slower, harder to fix, and
breaking down much faster. Japanese fuel efficient stuff didn't have to
do the things to their 4 bangers that Detroit had to do to it's V-8's
to meet emissions - and the buying public rightly realized that they
could either drive around in a rattle trap tin can that was uncomfortable,
slow, but got great gas mileage and didn't break down as much, or
they could drive around in a luxury land yacht that was very comfortable,
but was ALSO slow, got terrible gas mileage, and broke down all of
the time.

In other words, the emissions regulations put Detroit Big Iron at a
disadvantage for at least a decade while Detroit redesigned engines,
transmissions, and everything else to meet them.

But, even that would have been survivable - but the problem was
that during this time the bean counters got control of all Detroit
automakers and started cutting corners. Product quality fell and so
when Detroit finally could compete with the rattle cans from Japan
on the mileage basis, the quality sucked so bad that once more,
Detroit was -still- at a disadvantage.

Today, I think all the automakers have finally gotten back to the
basics of marketing cars, but there's been 2-3 decades of Detroit
missteps, and due to retirement liabilites of the Big Three, they
can no longer afford to undercut Japan to buy back all the lost
market share. So it is going to be a long, hard battle for Detroit
since there's now an entrenched generation of Japanese car buyers,
and those people will never buy Domestic again. It won't be
until their kids come of age and start buying cars, that the situation
will improve.

Ted

 

The electricity to charge those batteries is going to come from .....?

 

In many cars of Japanese origin I need the drivers seat all the way
back, but then the steering wheel is too far away.
Unfortunately they are often set up for shorter drivers.
For example I can't comfortably drive the Toyota Corolla, the steering
wheel is too far away. The Chrysler '95 Cirrus had this same problem.
The previous Corolla model my knees hit the steering wheel, so I
couldn't brake with my foot flat on the pedal.


The Toyota Camry fits me, but I need the telescoping steering wheel all
the way back.
At least I don't hit my head on the ceiling as I did in a Honda Civic of
10 years back.
The Impalla fits me perfectly, as does my Concorde.
My height is only 5'-11"

 

The cars I see in the UK, I travel their every few years, are
significantly smaller on the average than those in NA, with smaller
engines.
In NA a mid sized car needs at least a 2.7L V6 engine to sell.

However in both the UK and NA there seems to be a trend for some people
to go larger and some to go smaller, so the number of fuel efficient
cars in the middle is decreasing.
Here in western Canada over 50% of vehicles are large truck based SUVs
or tall heavy cross over vehicles with large engines. Neither get good
urban mileage which is most of the driving.

 

And a bitch to back up to a loading dock...

 

Must be my short term memory failing me, but I just can't recall any time
that the price of gas ever plummeted. Regardless of conservation practices,
or any other influences intended to effect the market, the price has stayed
where it was. It is a false logic that believes that conservation will have
any impact on the price of gas at all.

And when was the last time you did this? What were those oil prices? What
had they been before and after? What did the price of gas drop (plummet...)
to after your conservation efforts?

I must have missed that huge downswing in the price of fuel. Damn - I hate
it when that happens.

Many of us find it easy to miss out on the events that never really occur.

 

I've found it to be true in real life measurements, but only in the
strictest definition of the word true. In all of my vehicles, the age old
adages about easy starts, easy stops, etc. have certainly been born out, but
the difference in the fuel mileage between driving at 70 instead of 55, or
jumping on it a little bit instead of grandfathering it off the line, was
inconsequential. In order to really impact mileage I find that I have to
put my foot into it completely, all the while - through the entire tank of
gas. Not at all practical for most driving. Otherwise, the difference in
mileage over a thankful is just not that significant.

 

Since I don't drive at 55 I cannot factor that into my daily life. I can,
however, compare the grandfatherly driving versus putting the foot into it
once in a while, using my remote starter to hear up the car when cold or
start the AC when very hot. While I don't "speed", I often do like to
accelerate up the entrance ramp to the highway and be doing 70 at the top.
The difference between the two types of driving cost me about 38 gallons a
year over 23000 miles.

I can hear some of you saying "not big deal, enjoy driving" while others are
screaming that "a family in Ethiopia can plow their fields with what you
wasted". Judge as you please but I'm not going to change. Another zinger,
my total cash outlay for gas last year was probably $200.

 

Actually, this is not an argument. They are questions.

 

Which is the cause and which is the effect? Are official mileage
figures done at 55 mph because that is a fixed law of physics that that
is the optimum (fuel mileage) speed for a wheeled vehicle. *OR* is 55
mph optimized by the manufacturers for fuel mileage because that is the
speed at which the law arbitrarily says they have to be measuered at?

I know all about the square laws of wind resistance and all that, but I
have a hard time believing that 55 mph is the optimum speed by a fixed
law of physics and not an arbitrary design parameter. Things like this
get ingrained in the culture to the point that it starts being treated
as if it were a fixed natural law instead of some arbitrary phenomenon
created by legislation.

I submit that if the mileage measurements were required to be done at,
say, 65 mph, lo and behold, within two vehicle design generations you'd
find studies that proved that 65 mph was the magical optimum fuel
mileage speed. I'm not saying let's change the official measurement
speed to 65 mph, but let's be careful to not make the "55 mph is the
optimum fuel economy speed" an irrefutable law of physics.

Question: Would a study of all cars designed for use on the Autobahn
also show that opitimum fuel mileage speed is 55 mph?

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

*NEXT* you're going to tell us that an alternator is harder to spin and
therefore takes more power from an engine if you turn more electrical
things on in your car!!

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

I don't know enough to dispute or confirm that.

When I was buying a Mack truck years ago, the salesman had figures on power
needed for various loads. At 60 mph, you needed more power to overcome wind
resistance than for rolling resistance or load. It would take some analysis
by an engineer to determine the if the 55 sweet spot is true or not. In the
case of final drive ratio, there has to be some compromise between highway
driving versus rural driving. City driving ratio selection is easily done
with the transmission lower gears. My 5 speed does not shift to the highest
gear until 40. Maybe a 6 or more speed would shift at 50 or higher to gain
better ratios at 70.

My guess is that gearing can be better optimized at various speeds, but at
some cost.

 

Ah, that's a different topic. That question can be asked about anything
that uses some kind of power.

 

I think he's getting at how fast you can get the required energy
transferred into the battery (without overloading your supply system and
without destroying your battery with waste heat).

You can't get infinite power in zero seconds from a practical source.
Look at Ted's post with quantification of the problem (i.e., 12,000
watts for 10 minutes). Actually Ted's calculations are optimistic.
Whatever the inefficiencies of the charging process ('x' watts of heat
generated in the supply lines and in the battery for every 'y' watts of
useable charge) would only increase the watts required from the source.
IOW - if the charging process is 70% efficient, that 12,000 watts
sustained pull becomes over 17,000 watts.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

|
|Must be my short term memory failing me, but I just can't recall any time
|that the price of gas ever plummeted.

The last significant price drop in my memory was around the end of the
first Gulf War. Regular in my area of New York was under $1 per
gallon... and it stayed that way for quite awhile.

 

Look them up, they're both officially classified as mid-sized cars. From
my personal experience with those models, they seem like mid-sized cars
to me as well.

 

Gas here regularly drops from about $ 1.14 per liter to $.94, and
occaisionally (but not lately) $.87.

When the reserves gut too high, the price drops. For any excuse at
all, it goes up.

 

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote:

I can compare the grandfatherly driving versus putting the foot
into it once in a while. The difference between the two types
of driving costs me about 38 gallons a year over 23000 miles.
Another zinger, my total outlay for gas last year was about $200.
______________________________________________________

At $3 a gallon, $200 will buy 66.67 gallons of gas. And 66.67
gallons to go 23,000 miles means the car is getting 344.98 mpg.

Driving more conservatively will save the lost 38 gallons, using
only 66.67-38 = 28.67 gallons. This will result in a gas mileage
of 23,000/28.67 = 802.23 mpg.

That's what I call good gas mileage. Congratulations.

Rodan.

 

Oh, yeah! And then there's parallel parking...

And the best part is, in Los Angeles (and a lot of other places) we
had a lot of combined rail systems - they moved a lot of freight over
the standard-gauge trolley lines late at night with electric
locomotives, and the small lumber yards and small industries had a
siding on their property. That way the bulk freight (that rail is so
much better at) could stay in one rail car for the entire trip.

Now the trolley lines are long gone, all the old branch freight
lines and sidings that industries used to use have been abandoned, and
any industries that want to ship by rail can't do it without paying
for transfer to truck for the last mile - even if they were built next
to a railroad siding. If the rail line has been shut down all the
NIMBYs in the area will fight like rabid wolverines to keep it from
being started up again. The usual BS - "It's unsafe, it's noisy..."

--<< Bruce >>--

 

I said that was MY total cash outlay. I do buy gas once or twice a week.