Slashdot Mirror
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 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 ?
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.
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.