How Fuel efficient is your car?

[BAS]

Cuba has proven to be surprisingly resourceful since the Soviet Union collapsed.


B.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

Hey, please write your newpapers and congressmen asking that all ads on new cars to include their MPG rating.

Make people THINK!

AIIZ

[BAS]

Make people THINK!

Wasn't there an electric car called the "Think" which was developed in Iceland, then bought out, experimentally marketed (leased), then killed by one of the Big Three automakers? IIRC, the owners of the car really liked them and were reluctant to give them back at the end of their lease periods.

Just wondering.


B.

[unjonharley]

Hey, please write your newpapers and congressmen asking that all ads on new cars to include their MPG rating.

Make people THINK!

AIIZ

\/WE NEED NEW IDEAS
Forgett that MPG shit.. All the auto mgf do is try to tweak the same old junk and get around the gov.. It became a big game a long time ago..

The first time pollution control was forced they gamed the rule.. A device was made to measure parts-per coming out the exhaust pipe.. Most of you know the air pump on the old cars.. It "cost" "you" 10 hp of "your" total hp and burned useless gas to power it.. Burn more gas=more exhaust..

Written into the law was a loop hole.. PPM were allowed to the size of the engine.. Here come your 327s 440s and the like of the muscle cars.. Burn more gas=more exhaust..

In the 70s my boss needed a new exhaust system on his big Ford.. He ask for just pipe and muffler.. The shop told him: By law they had to reinstall what was on the ford.. the boss brought it back to our shop.. I stripped the system drove it to the muffler shop, They put pipes and muffler on.. His mpg improved.. He brought it back to me.. I stripped the emmision crap out leaving enough to allow the motor to run right.. His mpg improved by 25%.. That amounts 25% less ppm..


Then come the mid 70s gas shortages.. The demand for smaller cars.. The mfg piled on the emmision controls until you could not see the engine under all the crap.. Then the end of the gas shortage and big cars creeping back in.. AND another nice loop hole..

TRucks are basicallee exempt from most of the emmision laws.. This is where your small pickups started.. Then the auto mfg told you : Your dick was longer if you drove somthing huge.. The rednecked short dicks of America bought the whole thing..

SUVs huge pickups and even the PT are in this class..

WE do not need mpg rated tweaked, WE need NEW TECKowlage..

Little side note.. Mid 70s, small cars.. A guy in Ca. built the first hybreed.. He used a Colt and small motor cycle engine.. Did a professional job of it too.. Popular Machanics featured it.. Never head of again

[pyke]

Hey, please write your newpapers and congressmen asking that all ads on new cars to include their MPG rating.
Make people THINK!
AIIZ

\/WE NEED NEW IDEAS
Forgett that MPG shit.. All the auto mgf do is try to tweak the same old junk and get around the gov.. It became a big game a long time ago..

The first time pollution control was forced they gamed the rule.. A device was made to measure parts-per coming out the exhaust pipe.. Most of you know the air pump on the old cars.. It "cost" "you" 10 hp of "your" total hp and burned useless gas to power it.. Burn more gas=more exhaust..

Written into the law was a loop hole.. PPM were allowed to the size of the engine.. Here come your 327s 440s and the like of the muscle cars.. Burn more gas=more exhaust..

An engine is designed to run at a specific air-fuel ratio. Anything above or below it, generally, makes the engine run worse (too lean or too rich). There are some exceptions for "old school" hot rod motors with lots of cam overlap and such where you needed a richer ratio to account for other inefficiencies of the build-up. But the point is that for an engine running its ideal 14.7-to-1 stochiometrically correct ratio, the parts per million (PPM) of exhaust constituents is the same whether you're running a 151 cu.in. Fiero iron duke or a 440 Mopar six pack.

That air pump was not provided to dilute the exhaust mixture (helping from a PPM standpoint), but to help complete the combustion of carbon monoxide and other pollutants.

Then come the mid 70s gas shortages.. The demand for smaller cars.. The mfg piled on the emmision controls until you could not see the engine under all the crap.. Then the end of the gas shortage and big cars creeping back in.. AND another nice loop hole..

TRucks are basicallee exempt from most of the emmision laws.. This is where your small pickups started.. Then the auto mfg told you : Your dick was longer if you drove somthing huge.. The rednecked short dicks of America bought the whole thing..

SUVs huge pickups and even the PT are in this class..

WE do not need mpg rated tweaked, WE need NEW TECKowlage..

You are 100% right here. We need new technology. And how's that going to happen? GM and Ford are just going to step up and give us a better car? The consumers are going to demand higher MPG and cleaner exhausts? Not until we're choking on the fumes - all the time. The only way to ensure that we get improved technology is to tell the mfgs that if they want to play, they have to step it up. And that's going to take some intervention from Washington (or maybe California first, followed by DC).

The problems with emissions controls in the 80s was a function of automakers fighting the law and doing the bare minimum from a technology standpoint.

The same argument from Detroit is used today against improved MPG as it was back in the mid-60s against seat belts - it'll be too costly, the public will stop buying cars, and we'll all go out of business.

If they HAVE to make cars that get 40 MPG, they will. and they'll figure out a way to do it without hurting themselves.

[unjonharley]

YOUR paying to get "your planets" ass kicked!!

There are cars on the drawing board right now with 75mpg.. Japan can not export them.. Under the trade aggreement.. The US auto maker are not up to speed on that tecknowlage ..

Flat screens were marketable several years ago from Japan.. US tecknowlage was behind times.. The flat screen was held back about four years..

Same go's with the cars.. Detroit has been fucking around trying to beat the emission laws.. Other countrys saw the hand writting o the wall.. They spent millions each year loddying to stop clean air acts.. Those millions are passed on to you as total cost.. "Your" paying to get "your planets" ass kicked..

The air pump on my AMC (GM built 327) went right into the exhust manafold.. and no where else..

The van I have now has a spark plug at the end of the tail pipe.. I don't care where you burn the gas.. It end up in the air and my/your lungs..

[Oldguy]

i get 54 mpg from my 1991 geo metro. I paid 500 down, 150/mo. but paid double payments thru GMAC. It still runs great! Best bargain GM ever produced...

[Captain Goddammit]

i get 54 mpg from my 1991 geo metro. I paid 500 down, 150/mo. but paid double payments thru GMAC. It still runs great! Best bargain GM ever produced...

Yeah! Amazing, 15 years ago you could buy a new, cheap, 50+ MPG car, and now you can't! My sister had a new Metro back then, wishes she could buy a new one today.

[geekster]

I don't know if this is state wide or just in the bay area but they screwed up bigtime by allowing hybrids to use the HOV lanes. That basically eliminates the advantage of the hybrid during the commute. The advantage of the hybrid is its drastically better mileage in congested stop/go traffic. In open freeway driving, it's mileage really isn't all that much better than a conventional. By moving them from the congested lanes to the open HOV lanes, they wiped out the energy savings of the hybrid.

Simply OWNING one doesn't save energy. Operating it in the conditions where it is much more fuel efficient than conventional cars is how you save energy. Owning a hybrid isn't going to do diddly squat if your commute is mostly wide open highway. It is most effective where your commute or majority of driving is in congested conditions. Buying a hybrid in Kansas is silly. Get a 2006 VW Jetta Diesel that gets something close to 45MPG for a lot less money. Buy a hybrid if you never leave downtown.

[Captain Goddammit]

That's exactly right! In steady-state cruising, a hybrid's energy comes from a gasoline engine, just like a conventional car, except that it gets converted into electricity and then back into rotational kinetic energy (like it already was in the first place).
Most people I've talked to report much less economy than expected or advertised with their hybrid cars. Does anyone really get 60 MPG with their Prius? Do tell...

[Rob the Wop]

Get a 2006 VW Jetta Diesel that gets something close to 45MPG for a lot less money. Buy a hybrid if you never leave downtown.

For the hybrid you have now. But what incentive is there for Toyota to make truely fuel efficient vehicles?

If you never leave downtown, why not just get an electric? Doing the math on my car- approx 35kWh per gallon gasoline from a truely fuel effcient gas powered power plant. Zap Xerba PK gets about 25 miles per 2.2kWh charge (full). 398 miles per energy output from same gallon.

Question: If the you lose energy from every energy transfer in a system, how come you can go farther going from gas chemical-> gas kenetic-> electric generator-> electric inverter-> battery-> electric motor; than from gas chemical-> gas kenetic?


Comparison from Tesla motors 70lb 3-phase motor vs. a far, far heavier ICE motor.

Answer: Because internal combustion engines are actually very, very inefficient. Electrical engines are very efficient. The battery has always been the weak link though. If we spent the money we do on ICEs on battery technology, we could all be driving electric.

Some reading on hopefuls. One current, one future.

[geekster]

Well that all depends and anyway at highway speeds a hybrid isn't using the electric and you have to weigh the environmental cost of producing the hybrid. Same with an electric vehicle. We would probably need to double the number of power plants if we were to switch to electric cars. Electric vehicles are much less fuel efficient than gasoline vehicles are. You have a coal fired power plant that generates power. There are losses along transmission lines and at each transformer and in the charger itself. You have, in practice, a rather inefficient coal powered vehicle. All it does is moves the emissions from where the energy is spent out to where it was produced at the power plant.

People don't want power plants yet they want their electric cars.

The HOV permits for hybrids did nothing to change any incentive for buying a hybrid. Toyota was already selling every Prius they could ship to California and the permits were limited in number. You can't get one of those permits now because the quote has been reached. What it was about was a politician posturing and pretending to do something when in practice what was done eliminated the benefit of several thousand hybrids. The benefit of them would have been much better had nothing at all been done and the hybrids been allowed to occupy the congested lanes.

[Captain Goddammit]

Well, here in the Pacific Northwest a lot of electricity comes from hydroelectric plants... so electric cars aren't necessarily polluters. But that is still a valid point, if you live in an area where your electricity comes from a coal plant then you are simply moving the tailpipe to a different location.

A friend of mine had his boat/art car at BM in '02. It was electric powered, and had enough solar cells on the roof to power it and charge the batteries enough to do quite a bit of night cruising. The catch was, he had managed to scrounge the solar cells left over from a project at work, and he said it would have been about $6000 to buy them. (Which wouldn't have happened!)
His bus is all solar powered (not the engine, but everything inside) and it's really great, BUT - he can't produce enough power for something like an airconditioner, while my little Honda gasoline generator can. That's the big issue; gas is still so much more practical. Not that I'm saying that's a good thing, it's just how it is and it'll be a hard sell to get people to convert to something less cost-effective.

Well, until we run out of gasoline and oxygen...

[geekster]

solar is great for domestic lighting and such but I have to get to work even on cloudy days. It isn't unusual for many parts of the country not to see the sun for a week or even a month from time to time in winter. My problem with hydro is that it destroys rivers. I would much rather see a dam taken out and a new modern nuclear plant built in its place and the river allowed to run free.

If you charge at night you are likely getting a higher percentage of nuclear power and so you have a relatively clean vehicle. Don't get me wrong, please, in the 1970's I was all about methane digestion, solar power, wind power, worm bed composting, etc. We really haven't come all that far in the last 30 years. Farmers where I grew up have been using chicken poop to heat and light their coops for decades. I am not against alternative sources. What I am trying to do is put it in perspective.

Petroleum is still the most efficient and safest and least environmentally damaging power source we have for small power production such as cars,generators, and trucks. Just the act of getting the copper needed to make that electric motor is more damaging to the environment than an oil rig and refinery are. You need a copper mine and a smelter. Also have you looked at world copper prices lately?

[unjonharley]

At our present rate there is enough oil to last about 100 years.. After that there is enough coal to be gasified to last another 100 years.. After that there is a tar being mined and turned into oil.. And so on..

We are paying the price for oil because we are an easy target.. oil is used to make almost everything you own.. Now we are wanted to clean up the mess.. While the mass manufacturers of oil based products laugh all the way to the bank..

New coal fired plants are clean but nuke is where it's at..

The fucking "nuke is going to get you" crap has been arond sence tag was a pup.. Look at the war ships and subs.. Now tell me nuke is not safe..

[unjonharley]

Copper and all other building product cost have jumped.. Everything is being consumed by China as it comes screaming into the 21st centry..

[geekster]

And people are not kept aware of the advances in nuclear power either. Modern plants such as the Westinghouse AP-1000 use passive safety features and have greatly reduced the number of pumps, valves, wiring, etc. and so they are more reliable. Also, nuclear fuel can be recycled rather than buried. We can reduce the amount of waste by 90% and what waste is produced decays in a few hundred years rather than a few tens of thousands of years.

I think China just ordered something like a dozen of the Westinghouse plants.

[gyre]

They told us that before.
The same industry that guarantees electronics to work for 90 days
wants confidence in their nuclear plants now?
I'd rather watch them from a distance for thirty years.
China sounds like a good distance.

Let them build reliable small products first, then give us a call.


Last I heard, they were still lying about the nuclear safety record in the usa.

[Rob the Wop]

Electric vehicles are much less fuel efficient than gasoline vehicles are. You have a coal fired power plant that generates power. There are losses along transmission lines and at each transformer and in the charger itself. You have, in practice, a rather inefficient coal powered vehicle. All it does is moves the emissions from where the energy is spent out to where it was produced at the power plant.

Bullshit. Cites. I just showed you a car that gets the equivilant of 400mpg.

The emissions stat is bullshit too. Electric produces around 55-92% LESS pollutants per mile than your average gas powered car, IN AREAS WHERE YOUR PRIMARY SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY IS FROM COAL. In the PNW, make that 98-99.9% since we use primily hydro.

Sorry Geekster, but you just hit one of my pet peeves. Utterly false proclaimations about electric vehicles without any data to back it up whatsoever. The auto makers and gas companies would LOVE for people to believe this.

And before you start pointing at the environmental issues of lead-acid batteries. (Yes, I know the cite source might be biased. This was on a quick look up and on par with previous information I've seen. If you require, I can give you more cites later from other sources.)

[joel the ornery]

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where i like

You say black i say white
You say bark i say bite
You say shark i say hey man
Jaws was never my scene
And i don't like star wars
You say rolls i say royce
You say god give me a choice
You say lord i say christ
I don't believe in peter pan
Frankenstein or superman
All i wanna do is

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my
Bicycle races are coming your way
So forget all your duties oh yeah!
Fat bottomed girls
They'll be riding today
So look out for those beauties oh yeah
On your marks get set go
Bicycle race bicycle race bicycle race
Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
Bicycle bicycle bicycle bicycle
Bicycle race

You say coke i say caine
You say john i say wayne
Hot dog i say cool it man
I don't wanna be the president of america
You say smile i say cheese
Cartier i say please
Income tax i say jesus
I don't wanna be a candidate for
Vietnam or watergate
Cos all i wanna do is

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where i like

[Rob the Wop]

Petroleum is still the most efficient and safest and least environmentally damaging power source we have for small power production such as cars,generators, and trucks. Just the act of getting the copper needed to make that electric motor is more damaging to the environment than an oil rig and refinery are. You need a copper mine and a smelter. Also have you looked at world copper prices lately?

What about motor oil, radiator fluid, gear oil, clutch/transmission and other wearable parts production, etc.?

None of them apply to electric. Motor-belt/chain/shaft-battery. All the other crap is to overcome the problems inherant in an ICE.

As to small power production, are you nuts? You realize that the vast majority of 'power' (the assumption is you are talking about things that do work) is from electric motors. Look at any factory. Truely small work is done by electric, you can find a half dozen small electric motors on any car (fuel pump, windsheild wipers, CD player, etc). Truley big work is done by electric too (factory machinery, winches, really really large construction/mining equipment).

And you do realize that saying that petroleum generators being the most environmentally clean- you are talking about something that generates electricity, don't you? And I HAVE a car that can use an inefficient small generator (12 kWh throw-in-back-of-truck type) to go 136 miles? And far more using a real power station?

Cites, cites, cites. I want the comparison PER MILE of a petroleum car versus an electric. I can back up all the environmental claims I make with cites, but I don't have anything on the copper smelting versus oil production (haven't heard that one used before). To be fair though, you would have to compare the copper used in electric motor production (which is a once off thing in an electric car) to the pollutant output of all the components of an ICE over the lifetime of that engine. I would place bets on this one- electric motors are very, very small compared to ICEs of the same HP rating.

[Rob the Wop]

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/vines/5565/myths.html
http://www.evworld.com/archives/interviews/playlist.html
http://www.evadc.org/pwrplnt.pdf

[unjonharley]

Yo Wopster, My Zappy3 Pro gets better per mile than your Zap Zebra .. Comes with a 2 stack of 36v 10.5 amp batteries.. I have doubled the battery for up to 50 miles @ about 3-6¢ a day..

Am working on a cab for bad weather.. This was inspired by an art cart project at BM.. They used disabilty scooters and made rolling cupcakes..

Being disabled, I can take the Zappy into stores and ride the city buses..

[gyre]

The Lotus Elise is the basis for the electric Tesla.
It gets 20-30 mpg and could be tuned for more.
The Tesla is more expensive.
As you can see, these cars can also climb large obstacles.

[BAS]

gyre:

As you can see, these cars can also climb large obstacles.

...and without their front tires, either!



joel the ornery:

Bicycle bicycle bicycle

Yes, Queen had it right-- very little can compare to a bike! (Still one of the most efficient, if not most efficient, vehicles out there. Too bad I am so out of shape, and the distances I am traveling so far... doing a century plus every day would be a really good for my health if it didn't kill me first!)


(sigh) Tried to explain my desire to convert an old school bus into a biodiesel/waste veggie oil burning motor home to my dad today. His conclusion was that it was something for someone who makes at least $100,000 a year and has more spare time than common sense. They way he sees it it makes more sense just to get a regular van-- that the fuel expense is only a small part of the expense and the cost of buying, converting, running and maintaining something like a school bus would be too high. I really doubt that he is correct-- if enough research is done ahead of time. The school bus itself could be had for between $4,000 and $6,000 from the source I keep having recommended to me (Florida Church Bus), and with the minimal conversion I want to do I shouldn't have to spend more than a few thousand more (maybe as much as ten, if I do some of the odder things I might want to do, and have to redo some mistakes along the way [toying with the idea of adding solar and wind power, maybe an incinerating toilet-- those sort of things could run it up to ten thousand more-- and are also stuff for "down the road, if/when I get the money"]).

Actually, I would be just as happy to throw an old futon in the bus and a camping stove and call it good, but to re-register the bus as a motorhome, Wisconsin requires doing a bit more than that. I don't have the rules at hand, but I seem to recall that they are something like a permanently installed bed and table with benches (which can be the same unit as the bed), and three from a list which includes a heating unit, cooling unit, refrigerator (or icebox), stove, water system. I think I might be missing an item or two from the list.

Anyway, it was interesting criticism from someone who has bought bare bone vans and done his own conversions for camping for the past twenty or so years. His van conversions are what put the idea in my head in the first place. A school bus would allow me to take more folks with me, and to haul more stuff (bicycles, amongst others), and using waste veggie oil (or even, these days, regular diesel fuel) would cut down on the expense at least a little.

I think part of it is he has convinced himself I would never actually use it for camping (except maybe for Burning Man, which he thinks is frivolous [which, I thought, was kind of the point of vacations...]). The thing is, I do like camping, it is just I haven't had much opportunity over the years-- lack of money, lack of time off, etc.

Well, I guess I am done venting now. I guess I should have known better than to try to discuss a letter I got from someone on biodiesel (the letter is another story-- the person was trying to convince me I should buy an old motor coach already converted or partially converted instead of a school bus-- at only two to three times what I am willing to spend!) Or to discuss an alternate method of using waste veggie oil a Madison area collective was telling me about (straight veggie oil with no second tank of diesel or biodiesel needed to wash out the lines and clean the injectors. Somehow it uses two heaters, IIRC.)

We now return you to the regularly scheduled electric car discussion!


BAS

[Captain Goddammit]

If it's true that you wanna go to BM and go camping but lack the time to do it very often, then you're in a similar situation as me. I have a very fuel-INefficient gas-hog truck, but only use it to get the boat to the lake now and then and carry the camper/trailer/whatever to BM. It doesn't seem to math out to spend much $ for a little better MPG when the total usage is very low.
If you DO have the free time to use it a lot, then things are different.
And, as mentioned before, I put 98% of my miles on a very small and economical car, which does save plenty.

[BAS]

Well, it generally depends upon employment. If I can get another steady job like I had at the hospital or the Division of Motor Vehicles, I should have the money. At the hospital I had enough seniority I could get off when I wanted, a the DMV I did not, but got lucky in 2006 when one person retired with only one week's notice and another left suddenly for a private sector job. Even so, I could use it to go other places other than BM. I want to do traveling and camping, but I need steady (and paying) employment first. Of course, I need decent employment before I could buy a bus, so those two sort of go together. (The savings would only be about $400 to $500 on fuel, for a trip to BM and back. Of course the fuel cost could be divided among people, which makes it even more difficult to factor.)

Anyway, the bus would be sort of an art project for me, and at this point is more of a thought experiment than anything else, esp. since I have no idea of where I will be working, what vacation time will be like, how much I will be paid, etc.


B.

[gyre]

They are running diesels in the current 24 hours of Le Mans on speed channel.
There seem to have been some problems with the quietness of them.

[Box Burner]

And people are not kept aware of the advances in nuclear power either. Modern plants such as the Westinghouse AP-1000 use passive safety features and have greatly reduced the number of pumps, valves, wiring, etc. and so they are more reliable. Also, nuclear fuel can be recycled rather than buried. We can reduce the amount of waste by 90% and what waste is produced decays in a few hundred years rather than a few tens of thousands of years.

I think China just ordered something like a dozen of the Westinghouse plants.

Yes. Nuclear fuel can be recycled instead of activating new fuel. Unfortunately you need breeeder reactors to do that and Pres Jimmy Carter signed a treaty closing all the breeder reactors in the US. The by-produst of reprecessed nuclear fuel is Plutonium, used in making nuclear weapons. So what we have now is 100% waste of spent nuclerar fuel rods that will remain highly radiactive for tens of thousands of years. So much for recycling.

Pres Carter also promised that a place would be provided to dispose of the spent fuel. Nuclear power plants are presently required to store it in fuel pools (under water) on site. The time has come for the government to deliver on it's promise because it seems that no-one wants the highly radioactive stuff in their back yard.

[gyre]

A friend of mine is working on disposal in the usa.
I asked her if they were nearly done and she laughed.
Job security.

As far as I know, sweden is the only place with a storage plan for radioactive waste.


They appear to be using el panels on the sides of some cars at Le Mans.
Stunningly bright.