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239 MPG Car
Kozmik writes "VW/Audi has a history of being a leader in creating super fuel efficient
vehicles. They currently sell the most fuel efficient car in the world, 3L
Lupo and the
Audi A2,
and the most fuel efficient station wagon (Jetta
TDI Wagon). Now VW is experimenting with something along the lines of the
Honda Insight ( a 2 person vehicle ). The
1L VW concept car
can achieve .89L/100kms or 239MPG. With
Biodiesel and
Ultra low
sulfur diesel becoming available, hopefully more of these vehicles will come
to North America. These fuels are already available in Europe and combined with
the new catalyst technology they use, these new engines produce very low
emissions." It's nice to talk about alternative fuels, but I have yet to see a gas station selling one of them.
It's called supply and demand. If no-one is driving the cars, why would they stock the fuel?
It's exactly the same problem that faced unleaded petrol.
Why did unleaded take off? Well, in the UK a government mandate was passed forcing all cars sold after 1st April 1989 to run on unleaded. An EU directive, 98/70/EC, made selling leaded leaded petrol in the UK after January 2000 illegal.
Until goverments give manufacturers and fuel suppliers a swift kick, errr, benefit to promote new fuels, no-one will bother. (Cue the usual comment about oil companies owning the US goernment here).
At the risk of being cynical, when did MPG become a consideration in the US? Gas prices are so cheap compared with Europe, so where's the incentive?
at the price of fuel in europe, those cars are not only friendly to the environment, but also to your budget. In belgium, prices for unleaded fuel float around 1 euro PER LITER.
When I went on a trip to the US 2 years ago, I remember everyone freaking out at prices that were less than half of what we pay here...
My current car (an opel Tigra) uses approx 10litres/100km (I do a lot of city traffic plus the car had heart surgery 5 months ago and never fully recovered in terms of fuel usage) making me refill for 40euro every week or so. I could save 36Euro per week, or 420 per year.
Assuming fuel prices will go up in the future (anyone remember anything else ?) I think I can safely say that such a car can save me 5000Euro in 10 years. That's Half a VW Lupo.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I can tell you just how far I can get on a tank full of ( Low sulpher diesel ) fuel - 450 miles. And how much it costs me - £25 , but I couldnt hope to tell you the MPG figures for it. Especially since fuel is sold in litres these days and not gallons.
Most people I know judge fuel consumption on the same basis. Cost, not MPG. We buy fuel by price, not volume.
Does anyone actually use MPG figures as an every day referance anymore?
Maybe Michael should RTFarticle...
The 'one-liter car' is powered by a single-cylinder diesel engine...
So how many places in the world is it impossible to get diesel? Given that this is the fuel *all* (bar none!) trucks use. The story poster had it right - there's new diesel fuels around which are less polluting, which makes this even better. But it'll still run just fine on plain old diesel.
The only trouble is selling diesel cars to the US market. Or in fact selling *any* fuel-efficient car to the US market.
Grab.
Dear moderators,
If you disagree with what I've written (I have no problem with that), why don't you reply to my post instead of giving a "-1, Overrated" right from the start? Too bad "Overrated" mods are not caught in M2, I consider this to be serious shortcoming of the Slashdot moderation system.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
American are number driven consumers. Trying to sell a highway vehicle here with 8 horsepower? Never happen. We have lawnmowers with more HP. You guys know it is the same with computers with the megahertz myth.
People do not understand power to weight ratios or torque. I can not tell you how many people thought there were faster than my 500 LBS 1.1 liter Honda CBR. I would say things like, "Look 500 pounds and 160 HP. Let me get you a calculator. I do not care if your car has 400 HP, I will cream you."
Now if you were to market the car as the "The 0-60 in 8 seconds / 200 MPG car" then you would have something! But you could never advertise 1 liter - 8 HP. No no.
Diesel is more fuel-efficient, but it's also burned less clean than gasoline. Diesel motors release particles into the air which are higly carcinogenic. Only very recently have there been trends to install filters in the cars which accumulate these particles and destroy them every so often. Some car manufacturers refuse to install them since the filters, in turn, decrease fuel efficience - but just by about 0.1l/100km, so that shouldn't be that big a deal. Anyway, without these filters, Diesel engines are not that great, environmentally.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Europe has chosen to tax fuel very heavily IN ORDER TO making non-gasoline options more attractive. Many European countries are -- contrary to your statement -- interested in keeping the fuel prices up. To protect the environment and to force the car manufacturers to invent motors with more reasonable fuel consumption.
It's not really an apples-to-apples comparison, as those taxes subsidize all kinds of other efforts and don't really reflect the true cost of driving on the consumer.They are intended to reflect at least part of the true costs -- also counting damages to environment and health, building of new roads, traffic management. Unfortunately, some means of transportation like trucks or planes are not taxed as heavily as others, which is IMO the wrong way.
SebastianI know of quite a few Lotus Elises, at ~1600lbs, that have been in serious crashes (collision, rolled, nose-first 12ft into a ditch) with little or no driver injuries. The driver sits in an extruded aluminum bathtub with a rollcage around him. The front and back are collapsible subframes and the body panels shatter. I feel quite safe.
Along with the McLaren F1 (also very safe at 2400lbs) it's the only car to be drivable after the front collision test.
You don't have to make cars heavier, just more intelligently.
Nevertheless, simple physics seems to dictate that if you were in a head-on collision with an Escalade, well, I think I'd rather be driving an Escalade myself than one of these 150 lb hybrid tupperware-mobiles.
Speed limits going up, car weight and size going down. There's all of 4 inches between your forehead and the windshield in an Insight. Eeek. Are you okay with your 16 year old daughter in a tinfoil 2 seater doing 75 on the interstate just to be the only person in your town to save some gas?
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
There is a problem compareaing straight numbers like that. The USA has some large empty areas like Alaska , and the south west deserts that are sparsely populated and skew the numbers significantly. You should see a map that plots population density to geographical area. You will find that parts of the USA, such as the eastern seaboard, have popluation densities that are more comparable to Europe.
Did you have a problem with the data, or the analysis of the data?
Oh, I'm sorry, that was an ad hominem attack. Okay, well then...
Of course Cato gets funding from car and oil companies. Cato lists as the title on its home page The Cato Institute: Public Policy Analysis, Limited Government, Free Markets. If they're engaged in a shadow conspiracy with the oil companies, they're not covering it up very well.
So...let's hear some criticism of the actual report. What? You can't tell a regression analysis from a Subway sandwich? Color me surprised.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.