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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
When discussing small, specialty car makers such as Porsche, its important to remember that they produce very few cars and are just a drop in the bucket of fuel consumption. High powered sports cars and low volume specialty SUVs (such as the Hummer H1) are not the reason why the average fuel economy is so poor. A much more important reason for this problem is the shift to from midsize sedans to light trucks (SUVs, pick-ups) as the primary family vehicle. Collectively, the Ford Explorer and F150 are much worse for the environment than the 911 Turbo.
Another important aspect of this story, one that is almost entirely unmentioned in the popular media, is the rise in average horsepower among high-volume passenger vehicles. Over the past 20 years, the efficiency of the internal combustion engine has been improved remarkably. However, instead of using those improvements to increase fuel economy (while keeping horsepower down), the auto makers have boosted horsepower and kept fuel economy nearly constant. The average family sedan now has over 200 bhp.
Here is an example: According to Road and Track (5/06), a 2007 Toyota Camry with a 268 bhp V6 (the most popular engine choice for that vehicle) can go from 0 to 60 mph in 6.1 seconds! In the 1960's, this car would have been a hot rod! The testers at Road and Track observed an overall fuel economy of 26.3 mpg. 26 mpg is actually pretty remarkable for a car with 263 bhp. However, how much better would the gas mileage be if the car only had 180 or 200 bhp? That modest reduction would probably put the car at something close to 35 mpg, without sacrificing much acceleration.
Its easy (and popular) to blame the sport cars and hummers of the world for our current gas crisis. However, its untrue and intellectually sloppy to do so.
Until gas taxes are raised so the inflation adjusted price of fuel takes a significant bite out our people's budget, why should we change our driving habits? If congress wan really serious about reducing oil dependence we'd match or exceed Europe's tax structure.
I drive 8000 miles a year to get to work. At the 20 MPG my Sienna averages, I spend $1200/yr on gas and get the utility of being able to haul my three kids around, groceries, etc when it suits me. Overall, I drive about 15000/yr and spend rougly $2300/yr. In the grand scheme of things, it's a less important expense than my mortgage, property tax, food, travel, electricity, etc. Gas doesn't break the top ten of things I spend $ on. I could drive a Pious and save $1200/yr, but I'd give up the utility and safety features of the larger vehicle.
It's no wonder the Pious isn't selling. If I truly cared about mileage/emissions, I could buy a Corolla, get 35-40 MPG and save $4-6K on the purchase price. If you can do basic math, there is no ecomonic reason to favor the Pious over a similar small car, say a Mazda 5. The Pious, is more a "look at how eco-friendly I am statement", the green equivalent of buy a McMansion to impress your coworkers.
This weekend, I took a 900 mile roundtrip in my van with my family + in-laws. We do trips like this 3-4 times a year. What is better for the environment, 7 people in one van getting 25 mpg, or 7 people in two cars averaging 35 mpg?
Tax me and I'll change my behavior. Put the taxes into mass transit that is accessible and goes where I need to go, & I'll use it. Until then, all a 35 mpg cafe does is create a mismatch between what people want and what the automakers have to sell.
Dangit,it's true - if we went back to 1980's acceleration, we could hit those numbers easy and still have our big cars. My '89 Camry, a midsize, has 115 horsepower. There are just a handful of tiny subcompacts sold in America today with such low horsepower. Of course, I also want a car with a little more pickup, but the HP of some of these cars now is just stupid.
...so why do we need vehicles with speedometers that climb to 150 MPH and go 0-60 in 3 seconds? How bout we eliminate the 6 extra speeds to reach 150 MPH and make it 0-55 in 15 seconds.
We can deliver a human being to a rock orbiting our planet almost 40 years ago but we can't manage to increase our mileage at all in those 40 years?
You have to want to.
It gets 32mpg on cruise control @ 78mph all day every day. Anyone who wants to penalize me is getting a fight. I did my part.
I've made up my mind that I just can't justify continuing to drive my 25 mpg Saab 95, as beautiful of a car as it is. (The gasoline ethanol reformulations have actually cost me 3 mpg in mileage, where I used to get 28 mpg.) So it looks like a Prius is in store for me.
Priuses, BTW, are emerging everywhere, here. I think demand may have been hurt substantially by the perceived backlog.
I'm not sure I even care that Toyota underwrote their development. They can afford it, and Priuses are damn good cars. Roomy and very comfortable.
And, Detriot always bitches and moans about what they could have done with just a bit of effort, long ago. The SUV has always been nothing but a scam, and one subsidized by our tax dollars, at that. They are also generally terrible vehicles. Why more people don't realize that has always been somewhat of a mystery to me.
realname, I don't hate my world. I *love* my world. That's why I'd love to see us limit the use of fossil-fuels. Don't you get it at all? Don't you see what's happening here? Look around and try to SEE what's going on.
There aren't going to be any fossil fuels to use, at least, not at any kind of cheap price, in the next decade or two. That's not even arguable.
Better to delay that bad day by conserving now. And the only way we could possibly keep the rest of the developing world from using the fuel we conserve, is by taking a leadership role and shaming the rest of the world into doing what we're willing to do: tax fossil-fuels so steeply that we're all forced to find more efficient ways to get from point A to point B.
The issue of horse-power is one I'd thought of before. It is absolutely insane that we've taken ICE refinements and turned them into increased horse-power, instead of increased fuel efficiency. We could all drive refined, comfortable cars that have 40 horse-power engines, like the old VW bug and bus did (but far more refined, now) and be perfectly fine, getting from point A to point B in plenty of time, in total comfort.
I know around Los Angeles, where I live, no-one has much use for all the horsepower most of the time anyway. And I imagine that is increasingly true in most urban centers.
What's happened is that car companies figured out long ago that to sell more cars, they appeal to our lizard-brains by making cars bigger, higher, and faster. It's purely a way to sell cars, it has nothing to do with quality-of-life, this has everything to do with giving drivers a constant low-level flood of brain-chemicals that makes them feel good. Can we really afford that now?
The whole situation is insane, and when you say the ridiculous things you do, realname, it doesn't help.
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