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At the Frankfurt Motor Show Peugeot will showcase its new 308 Hybrid HDi, which emits just 90g/km of CO2 and reduces fuel consumption by 38% in the Combined Cycle compared to a standard 308 HDi.

In addition, the engine has been designed to meet the future Euro V directive which comes into force in 2009 and offers the possibility of driving exclusively in electric or "ZEV" (Zero Emission Vehicle) mode for journeys in regulated urban centres.

Here goes another article about it. Apparently it gets 69MPG (US gallons) or 78MPG for urban driving.

The van is a "MasterAce Surf", 8 seats, it's diesel and 4WD, has removable skylights and uses very little fuel. Great for shopping, luggin bulk people around or gentle off-roading including parking anywhere.

The Peugeot 505 is just plain fun, albeit with nothing like the jaw-dropping fuel economy of a modern Pug. I've watched "sports" cars run over the roundabout or hit the kerb behind me more often than I can count after mistakenly assuming that where I could go in my old klunker, they could follow. (-:

The Pug is the closest to an electronically controlled (as in, transistor-assisted ignition) car I've owned. A friend in Mount barker got himself a new Mazda a few years ago, then when one of his friends drove the same-model car into a big puddle in a Perth underpass and killed an AUD$12000 car computer, he drove it back up to Perth the next day and traded it in.

Another fun car I once owned was Chrysler Centura 4l 6-cyl hemi with floor-shift. It was butt ugly and handled like a week-old trifle but had an elegant sufficiency of horsepower, thank you. Another was a Ford Transit van, no power or handling but you could stack stuff into it all day long without filling it up (I helped a girl move house with it and we got three wardrobes and a dining suite in one load), and you could bolt the sliding doors back on hot days (-: IOW, climate control locked on "yes" :-).

Bzzt. You're _mostly_ right, but you've got a few critical things wrong.

Fair enough, let's try it point by point because I'm feeling peevish.

Mileage is partially caused by the efficiency of the motor, and partly by the efficiency of the package it's wrapped in.

I believe I mentioned aerodynamic efficiency. Mechanical efficiency, like properly inflated tires, low rolling resistance tires (which is generally synonymous with low traction) and other effects also come into play. However I believe the message I was replying to was focused on the relationship of engine horsepower to mileage so I wanted to ignore packaging issues. Furthermore the original point was that horsepower cannot be used to infer mileage, but high horsepower does imply large engine displacement, holding the redline and compression ratio constant and allowing for similar engine material and component technology. Engine displacement is a large component of fuel efficiency and the Veyron's engine is huge in terms of displacement. There is simply no way (including caveats about red lines, compression etc.) to make an 8 liter engine as fuel efficient as a 3.5 liter engine.

My _98_ Corvette, while it has much less drag than the 89

I'd be surprised if that's really true, but I don't have anything at hand to answer that definitively. Suffice it to say though, Corvette's have generally gotten larger with each generation and whatever wind tunnel work has been done on the C5 may be offset by its increase frontal area with respect to the C4.

Several manufaturers are releasing a displacement on command feature. making the V8 a V4 by shutting down four cylinders and removing the oil that keeps the lifters filled (and hence, lifting valves.) GM, Porsche and IIRC BMW have motors announced.

Two nits to pick here: first of all what you are talking about is a variable number of active cylinders, a variable displacement engine actually changes the engine displacement without changing the number of active cylinders. Secondly, the idea of varying the number of active cylinders for efficiency is almost as old as the piston engine itself. No one has made one work reliably yet, so I'll consider it vaporware for now. For an idea as to how difficult this is to implement in practice, consider that we've got fully elctronically automated engines, hybrid powertrains and even Miller and Wankel designs all developed in the last 4 decades with no commercially produced variable active cylinder engines for automobiles yet.

The next really REALLY cool tech you'll see is a camless motor. Lotus has done a LOT of research on solenoid actuated valves.

While I appreciate the work of the wizards at Lotus as much as the next guy, this is more blue sky technology for the Popular Science "Aurora exists" crowd. Camless engines may become a regular production item someday, but at this point someday is no less than a decade or two away, just after they put the finishing touches on their fusion reactor. On the other hand, the existence of all these technologies makes GM's claim of producing a competitive fuel cell car by 2010 pretty silly. If you were working on technology that won't be productized for 10 or 20 years would you still do it if you knew it would be obsolete?

You can tune the motor to optimum fuel efficiency, max low end torque or max upper end hp.

Horsepower is torque times angular velocity, times a proportionality factor to take care of units. Thus max upper end HP is the same as max upper end torque. In general, current cam designs necessitate a trade off in the torque curve, although that is less the case with new engines, but that's a pecularity of the engineering not a fundamental difference between power and torque.

I don't even know why I wased my time writing this, like I said, just peevish I guess.

I hadn't heard of this tech until your post. However, a quick google search shows that the technology was in a very early development in the early to mid 90s. However, it would appear to be far from "disappeared."

Autoweb Article

New Cars article

Fule Cell Today Article

I am a bit unfamiliar with how dangerous liquid hydrogen is compared with gasoline. I seem to recall that this perceived danger is one reason why solid fuel cells are such a popular pursuit (however, this could just be catering to irrational popular hysteria).

I still think that hydrogen fuel cells are the way to go. This thing requires 220 pounds of stuff so that it can travel 62 miles? That just doesn't cut it.

You can produce hydrogen from water and sun light. Hydogen fuel cells have vastly greater power per pound yeilds than this lame power system, and the exhaust is pure water vapor.

Here's an article about the Mercedes-Benz NEBUS.

Ah, electrochromic technology. That's neat stuff, especially the LBL-developed material that uses power to change the tinting, and holds its current tint when the power is removed.

You're right, it's still expensive, but the costs are coming down. We're already seeing electrochromics being used for auto-dimming rearview mirrors on everything from VWs to Buicks, and it's showing up in larger panels on show cars like the Cadillac Imaj and Mercedes Maybach. There's also a big push (and a US DOE Initiative) for developing electrochromic windows to make buildings more efficient.