That's it, I'm walking. gas up 33 cents since Monday, - Page 7

Admittedly American cars ARE bigger and more powerful as a general rule but I feel that even for the same level of performance, a european sold car is more efficient. Not that I have any proof of this.

It IS true that avarage milage is going up in most of the developed world and down slowly or has stabilized in the US. I've read that it's due to American manufacturers making cars of the same efficency but more powerful while everywhere else, the cars are getting more efficient and not more powerful. It seems to me to be a fundamental difference in attitude. Most Americans think that merely not owning a car any worse than their last one is good enough and the extra power is a bonus, whereas most Europeans think that we have to make the world a cleaner place than it is right now. It's interesting but those positions are mirrored by the respective governments so maybe there's a real difference in values here.

I don't agree that it's entirely economic. Most British people I know really do react with a mix of disbelief and disgust when they see a Hummer on a city street when they come to visit me. They say that even if they could afford to put fuel in one, they wouldn't buy one. At least for myself, there are several trucks in my neighbourhood, the sort where the bonnet comes up to an average persons shoulders, that actually make me feel sick to look at. Especially when the thing is 5 years old has no scratches and the bed is perfectly clean.

It could just be that I hang arround with hippy save the whales types though I guess.

Remember the hybrid car commercail (I forget which one), where the hybrid pulls up along side the VW "Hippy" bus that's spewing exhaust and has the "Save the Earth" bumper sticker on it?

Kinda sums up our country to a T.

In the sense that hippies are retarded or what?

I suppose it's strange, but I really have no frame of reference as to what "good" mileage is. Not keeping track of things that meticulously, I'm estimating about 9.5 l/100km for my 2003 Mazda protege (According to Google that's about 25 mpg)-how does that rate? That's mostly highway driving in heavy traffic, so there's a bunch of stop&go in there. I always figured that was decent, but is there any way to do much better without going to a hybrid (next car...)?

I really doubt that, I think if you want to look at the best effeciency numbers you need to look at cars coming from Japanese companies, they consistantly make bigger and better performing cars that also show increases in gas mileage.

To give an example, a BMW 325 driven in a spirited manner will average around 24mpg or so, this isn't a very big car and it has "only" a 2.5l I6 engine in it. A Honda Accord with a 3l V6 is bigger, faster and get's 30mpg driven in the same manner.


I don't know how you can say that, every model change cars generally get bigger and more powerful, and that's across the board regardless of where they are made. Sometimes the change is small, sometimes it isn't, but 99.9% of the time it is there.

Average fuel economy for US made cars in 2004 was 29.3mpg, of course that doesn't take into account of the "truck" market (which is popular obviously). In Europe it's 43mpg (again doesn't account for "trucks" which would be a very small portion of the market).


Of course not, how would you ever drive a Hummer in Europe? I'd like to see somebody try and park one just about anywhere, it would be real fun driving down those 2-lane but really only 1 lane roads. Remove every single "bad" thing about a "big" car and I bet you'd see a whole lot of people take a long and serious look at them.

Of course, that's never going to happen.

Andrew

I think it is in the sense that, similar to the people who immediately excuse my "little Jeep" (16MPG on a good day) from their wrath about MPG, the people that spew diesel fumes from their "save the environment" bus and the people at the recent Boston Earth Day celebration that threw trash indiscriminately into clearly marked and seperated bins so the "recyclables" had to be dumped into a landfill; often the most "caring" in this country do not seem to care about an issue as much as they care about protesting against it.

I'm getting a bicycle.

Interesting article in the Sunday Times Magazine. (You may have to register for it, which is annoying but free.)

MC

I was joking, but that is a very good point.

Let me add "Protestors" to the list of people I hate

Yes, don't buy an SUV and bitch about gas prices in front of me, and on the other side, don't bitch about the plight of the world when you're not doing anything about it...or worse, doing something that contradicts the very thing you're protesting.

I'm not quite sure how exactly you're dissagreeing with me. I'm not saying that European cars are more efficient than Japaneese cars, that's not true. I'm saying that American cars are the least efficient of the lot. I guess part of it is that many of the real gas-guzzlers that people buy here and pull down the avereges aren't available or are simply not purchased back home.





Unless I completely miss-understand you, you're agreeing with me. Well nearly anyway. I think the thing you're taking issue with is my insistance that in Europe and Japan cars are getting more efficient on average whereas in America, this isn't the case. Since I insist I've seen the data but can't find it I guess we'll have to agree to dissagree.



Well some people do drive range-rovers, which are pretty big. Whenever I'm in a car with Americans in Britain, they always say they find driving streesful because of the small roads. After a while though, they get used to the smaller margin of error with wing mirrors passing with only inches to spare. I sometimes here my British family members telling my American family members to stop pansying about and that you could get a bus through that gap.

Motorbikes & scooters also help keep the gas-use per capita down through most of Europe. I'm being general of course everyone in the U.K. seems to own a bike while the average Romanian citizen can't afford ALDI-brand Ramen let alone a bicycle with an internal combustion engine.

Perhaps it's when you say European cars give the same performance yet is more effecient that I get confused, of course if you want to include Japanese cars into the mix then that changes things a bit.

And I bet if you took out the cars that can not be imported into the US, the economy numbers will get even closer than you may think. Those ultra-small cars can't be brought over because they won't pass US crash test standards, and the super-diesel cars that Europe has tons of won't pass US emissions regulations (well MB and VW each have a model that will now in the E-class and the GTI/Jetta/Beetle range).


99.9% of all cars are getting bigger, faster and more effecient, Asian, European, North American, etc. The 29.mpg number is found from the NHTSA, that number is higher than it was 5-10-20 years ago (you are welcome to look them up).


Sure, it's also a VERY high end luxury vehicle that costs a small mint that get's pretty poor gas mileage.


I never had a problem with the small roads, it's the little differences that always throw me off, such as signs that we simply don't have here in the states, such as in some towns the traffic from the right always has the right of way, but of course there are no other signs other than the occasional "wierd" sign that says so, no stop signs, no yield signs, etc.

I got my numbers from the EPA.

They say 25mpg.

If you include trucks and SUVs, it's 21mpg. That's a fairer picture since more people use trucks like they're cars.

The peak for both was in 1987.

I doubt that the smart car would actually fail the crash tests since it outperforms many larger cars.

They're not selling it here because they don't think Americans want small, efficient cars. They want SUVs.Here's a link from MSNBC that claims this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5217861/

Here's a safety review of it
http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/jk/040908.htm

How do the mini Coopers range in gas mileage? They seem to be somewhat popular here, but I think that's the only way these cars will catch on, they have to have some kind of 'gimmick'. Unfortunately, Americans aren't going to buy efficient cars unless there's something else to entice them.

And the EPA doesn't take into account the cars that are actually sold, they average the MPG figure for each vehicle they test and average them, so the result doesn't tell us anything.

Either way, I'm not disagreeing that cars in the US get worse mileage than elsewhere.


The car get's an "average" rating in the European standard, according to the article you linked to. And the Smart Car did pass US crash tests.


We must have read different articles, from the article above;

Heidemann's company, smart-automobile, Inc., signed a deal to sell the cars through ZAP, a California company that until now had specialized in all-electric vehicles. ZAP has agreed to pay $10 million for exclusive rights to distribute the car for 10 years and is now lining up dealers.

"The response has been incredible," says Alex Campbell, a ZAP spokesman. "When people found out that we were in this deal, they have been contacting us wanting to buy them right away."

You can go to their site - http://www.zapworld.com/cars/smartCar.asp and see all the small cars.

The MSNBC article was written more than a year ago; here's a June 2005 article from Wired.com. The Smart Car is still on tap for release in the U.S. in 2007 and will be made available through dealers in eight states, for now. At this time, it is unable to meet the country's toughest emission standards, therefore, it won't be made available in California and four other states.

Did they test it against SUV's? Until the roadways are clear of most "big" vehicles, I'm not about to commute in a tiny ass car no matter how efficient it is.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050823/...e/fuel_economy
Some good news: and some not-so-great news:

I dont understand all these exemptions. Lets get serious with our CAFE ratings or drop them all together. Its a freaking game. Also, I can drive like Granny freaking Weatherall in my Dodge Ram and still get NO WHERE even close to the numbers quoted on the sticker. The sticker numbers are 13/17 and I get 11.9 blended and maybe 12.5 blended tops. I've reset the mileage calculator while crusing at 60 MPH, totally unloaded, no strong wind etc, and the best I can get on the highway is 14ish. Thats fucked up. I cant get 17 going downhill with a tailwind. How is that possible?

C'mon Mark, you want to live forever or something?

Besides, unless they get rid of double trailer trucks on the highways, anything short of an Abrahms tank would get obliterated by them in an accident.

SUVs and big trucks are on way out IMO, I don't think gas is ever coming back under $3 a gallon in today's global environment. It won't be a question of whether to drive an efficient car or an SUV soon unless you are wealthy. I would suspect that buses and commuter trains will see a nice upsurge by 2010 too.

It's not the kind of car you would buy if you had to make long highway type commutes, it would be ideal if you lived in a city type setting and only had to commute a few miles in the typical hectic city traffic (plus with the lower speeds will help the 3ton truck vs ultra-small car crash problems), plus it's so damn small it's so easy to park.


Car makers already have to conform to CAFE standards, but that's a whole other can of worms itself as automakers can "earn" credits against compliance with the standard.

You aren't driving like the EPA does.

Email them and ask for a description of "city" and "highway" driving tests. I've seen it before in car magazines, but its not what most people would think, I believe the "highway" segment involves driving at 45mph for X distance, then down to 35, upto 50, stopping every so often. 'City' driving was 35 for x miles (how many cities have stoplights miles apart?!), then doing loops at 15....

The standards were developed in 70 or 71 I think and aren't updated. Also the numbers reflect not using the A/C, keeping windows up at all times, And following three feet behind a van withthe tailgate open to eliminate wind resistance!... Had to read a Car&Driver special report for that last tidbit.

So yes, car manufacturers are cheating at every available turn to up those CAFE numbers!

Which would be fine if SUV's weren't on the streets, but they're everywhere. I can't imagine it being much fun to be rear-ended by a Hummer even if it was on a side street (going slowly).

If this is true, then this is retarded, I mean, I EXPECT the car manufacturers to do something like this (drive 40 MPH 2 feet behind a big rig with the back doors open to kill all wind resistance down a 45 degree grade etc.) but the EPA is supposed to be impartial. If that's really how the numbers are determined, that's a crime. They should be determined by driving the car in the real world for 3 months or something.

Here's a rough idea of the test;

The EPA city-driving test simulates an 11-mile, stop-and-go trip with an average speed of 20 mph and a maximum speed of 56 mph. The trip has 23 stops and includes time for the vehicle to idle at a standstill. The highway test simulates a 10-mile trip and averages 48 mph. The maximum speed is 60 mph.

The full test is on the EPA site somewhere, but it's written in typical govt spec.

They do the test on a dyno and "simulate" real world load on the car, find the numbers, deduct some percentage and that is the result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpora...e_Fuel_Economy for info on CAFE standards.

Not even close to what I do in my Yukon on my frequent weekemd trips to Miami. 325 miles each way....

The stupidest part is the speeds used. The speed limit here is 55 min for two lane highways and 70 on the interstate which means people are driving 60-80mph on the highway consistently.

Here is a LINKto fueleconomy.gov that explains how the EPA measures MPG on a Dyno.

I guess this is similar to the old 56k modems where you NEVER got the full 56k speed. The number is what it's capable of, but 'real world' conditions are going to be slightly lesser.

That means they are still wrong IMO. That means that my 13MPG on the sticker was closer to 14 on the dyno and its still 10 in the real world, so what gives?