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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.
Well the rest of the world is chasing dreams of perfect cars VW has done a lot of work on creating practical cars that are also enviromentally friendly for the meantime. Note that they are also working on ideas that are not yet practical.
Isn't 0.89 l/100km around 264mpg? Or am I screwing up the whole US versus imperial gallon thing?
Yeah.
What a good feeling to have something before the US does!!!!!!
We got EcoDiesel (call it whatever you like diesel) here for almost a year at most gas stations nationwide
BTW We finally got broadband (ADSL) in South Africa 3 months ago.
It's nice to talk about alternative fuels, but I have yet to see a gas station selling one of them.
And you're probably not going to any time soon. You've got a government hell-bent on keeping the flow of cheap petroleum open at all costs. The US simply isn't interested in this type of stuff...typically you're probably 20 years behind where Europe is with this type of thinking and technology. Enjoy your dumb Detroit 5.0 litre pushrod V8 engines while you can...
Jon.
There's a small article about it here, and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung has both this picture and this article (with more pictures). The car ran on diesel (not any alternative fuel) at an average speed of 75km/h, or about 46mph. Some sections of Autobahn have a minimum speed of 80km/h (50mph).
This was a concept car which isn't much more than a motorcycle on three wheels with a cockpit rather than a fairing. However, VW is a big name in fuel efficiency. The Lupo, a production car, needs less than 5l/100km, or close to 50mpg, and that with a top speed of 199km/h or about 120mph. In Europe, with fuel about three times the cost of the US (for many reasons including taxes and ecological concerns), this is important.
Bio-diesel is gaining acceptance and outlets in Germany, as is LNG (liquid natural gas), but this car wasn't using them. DaimlerChrysler is still working on hydrogen power, a much more sensible fuel.
Is it really "News" in December when this car ran in April?
woof.
This page talks about an abundant source of biodiesel. Esp nice for countries which have warm climates.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
What is interesting is that Diesel for these cars is available in Europe at each and every gas station. 28% of all german cars are diesel cars, with the Volkswagen TDi's being one of the most popular. 3-4 l/100 km are common fuel usages with these, if you are driving sensibly.
Kristian
so where's the incentive?
There's isn't one, which is why it won't sell. Hell, if I lived in the US I wouldn't care about fuel economy or pick up friends to split the costs of fuel when driving across the country for xmas. But since the fuel price is so high, I buy a small car(there are better things in life to waste money on, than fuel) and make arrangements so the car is filled up with people for those long trips in the holidays.
I the price of fuel was half of what it is, I would have a car that uses twice the amount of fuel and we would all own a car and drive by ourself.
my sig
had a 1979 Rabbit, Diesel (the kind with the round headlights... they went to square ones in 1980).
Their diesels always got good gas mileage... It was the perfect car for a high-school kid (which I was at the time... I realize that I'm dating myself here), got around 40-50mpg, damned good for that time. I could afford to be magnanimous and not bug my friends for gas money... it was nice.
I hope they have solved the problems with diesels, at least from the consumer perspective.
1. They are noisy, and dirty.
2. Finding fuel used to be a pain in the ass
3. You are constantly tightening things (diesels vibrate like nobody's business)
4. You can't shut them off if they overheat (I think modern diesels have a fuel cutoff. If not, they should!)
If the numbers are accurate, That's one amazing little commuter vehicle. Good for VW... might have to put them back on my "vehicles to buy" list.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
When I purchased my diesel Beetle, someone suggested I look into BioDiesel. As far as I can tell, the only way I would be able to use BioDiesel in my car would be to purchase the stuff in bulk and store it somewhere. I don't think I can legally do that in my condominium. And at $1.90 to $3.00 a gallon, I don't think I can afford it compared to the $1.55 a gallon (or so) that I will generally pay for standard diesel.
I work in the DC area, so reducing emissions would seem to be a priority here. Except that someone apparently removed funding for BioDiesel. Someone who, I think, currently lives in the White House. Someone who, I think, has more of an interest in preserving oil company interests (being something of an oil man himself) than protecting even his own health.
Anyway, here's a couple of useful links:
BioDiesel.Org
US Government's Alternative Fuels Data Center Homepage
The last link is particularly nice. While I will fault the US government for doing anything substantive, they at least have provided a lot of interesting research on the topic.
And so it goes.
Diesel has come a long way recently and I hated having to go back to petrol with my latest car (but it was a good deal). I am used to 60 mpg and no break downs. The analagy with OSs has already been made but to take it further...
Diesels are cheaper to run, not just because the mpg but also because they break down less often. The stories about vibration are old hat, that is like saying Linux only works from the command prompt. If you try a VW TDi you would not know you were in a diesel, they are as fast and as smooth as a petrol car. You can hear the difference from out side but I tend to sit inside my car. Most car breakdowns are caused by engine electrics and diesels do not have that.
Also, if biodiesel gets off the ground all those poor whining farmers can grow fuel instead of having to survive on subsidies. It is corn oil based so we can grow our own and forget the middle east !!! That is ecologically and economically sound.
So it is cheaper, more reliable and gets us away from the reliance on the current monopoly...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I knew several people who bought diesel cars during the last fuel crunch. They liked the mileage but were unhappy with the high incidence of mechanical problems and the difficulty with finding diesel pumps at gas stations. They switched back to gasoline for their subsequent cars.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You might also want to check out his other article on alternative fuels which covers solaris, geothermal, wind, fusion, tides, fission, and solar satellites.
I'm not saying he's 100% correct, but he definitely brings up some points that need to be considered when having an intelligent conversation about alternative fuels.
-- null
The alternatives to war are 1) maintain sanctions that have killed thousands and thousands of children since 1991, 2) remove sanctions and give free reign to a regime to threaten millions with nuclear or germ-war death, including you in Europe, a regime that has a proven track record of willingness to use chemical weapons, 3) hope that "Cowboy Bush's" threats of war will get Iraq to cooperate with UNMOVIC and avoid war.
You all in Europe need Middle Eastern oil more than the U.S. does -- your policy, however, is appeasement.
All this whining that biodiesel isn't available -- burn used grease of which there is a HUGE supply: Greasecar.
This is now the third time I've posted about Greasecar (not affiliated in any way, but plan to implement a kit in the the next year or so).
Heard a radio story or two recently about diesel and soot. As clean as they can be (nowadays) from a carbon standpoint they have another bad thing about them: soot. Even if the carbon is reduced the soot is sunlight blocking / reflecting and thus weather affecting (kind of like those contrails) -- so much so that even the diesel-guzzling Europeans are beginning to take notice of the problem. I am not sure if the soot issue is resolved at all with biodiesels or grease cars. Still reseraching that one...
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Having worked for an oil exploration company (Unocal), I know that this is already done. The efficiency with which existing wells are tapped is much higher than it used to be. Unocal does mostly off-shore work in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Indonesia, and some exploratory work off of West Africa (with smaller operations in many other locations), and I remember talking to some of the engineers about the process.
Some of the initial investigation is done using sounding from a boat to check out the sea bed and the underlying geology, and they usually return four reels of tape that contain more than a terabyte of information each. This is then run through computers to determine the true geology to great detail, and if it looks like there's a possible profit to it, further work is done to investigate whether a drill rig should be put into place. This is not a lightly-made decision by any means; these rigs can take more than a year to construct and are very expensive to operate. Every single one of them uses the latest available technology, so no two platforms -- even in the same field -- are quite alike because they are usually started at least a few months apart, and the state of the art advances even in that short time. Rigs are left in place until the very last possible barrel of oil has been extracted, and sometimes longer than that if a possibly promising new technology that can be refit to an existing rig becomes available. These rigs also are the endpoints for more and more wells, sometimes covering hundreds of square miles for a single rig with wells going off at all angles, decreasing the cost for tapping a given field.
Once a rig is no longer useful and there's no immediate hope of re-use, its wells are capped (though the caps can, of course, be removed later), the rig abandoned, and either scrapped or scuttled. If scrapped, the materials get reused, and if scuttled, the fish get a new home and place to play.
Much research is now going into investigating the heaviest crude oils. This stuff is thick beyond belief, and almost impossible to pump with current technology. Oil companies have been investigating how to do this for the last 25 years or more, starting around the energy crisis of the '70s when OPEC flexed its muscle, and have made some progress, but it's still not a profitable field at this point. I remember reading an article long ago that suggested that the US is sitting on a virtual sea of this ultra-thick oil that could allow for total domestic consumption, but because it can't be pumped, it sits there, waiting for the day when we get advanced and/or desperate enough to do something with it.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Thats actually not true. Diesel engines don't spill any more junk that petro engines do its just that the pieces are larger so they are more visible. This is actually a environmental plus as they fall to the ground while petro exaust doesn't and hangs out in the air for a long time.
Tyro,
:-)
Let me address your concerns one by one.
1. The engine being noisy and dirty are things of the past. Modern computer design has improved diesel engines to the point that the clattering sound you hear from old-style engines no longer exists on a 2002-manufactured diesel engine. As for the air pollution problem, the use of modern fuel-delivery systems and modern particulate traps/exhaust catalysts will eliminate the unhealthy exhaust of diesel engines of the past. The only reason why diesels aren't common in the USA is the fact Diesel #2 fuel sold in most of the USA has sulfur compound levels of around 2,000 parts per million, which will quickly corrode fuel-delivery and exhaust emission control systems on European market diesel cars in very short order. Fortunately, with the EPA mandating low-sulfur diesel fuels very soon, we will see clean-burning diesel engines in the US market in a few years.
2. Finding diesel fuel pumping stations is fortunately not as bad as it used to be, thanks to the fact diesel engines are very popular for pickup trucks.
3. Because modern diesel engines don't have the vibrations of older-style engines, you don't have to worry about engine vibration causing long-term structural damage to the car. The current 90 bhp TDI engine on the VW Golf/Jetta is quiet enough that you really for the most part can't tell if it's a gasoline or diesel engine. I can't wait for VW to bring over the PD 130 diesel engine with its 130 bhp output and massive initial starting torque.
4. Modern diesel engines have pretty much cured the problem of not being able to shut them off on high temperature conditions, thanks to modern fuel delivery systems that have automatic cutoff.
I for one want to see Toyota build a Prius with a 1.0-liter turbodiesel engine instead of the 1.3-liter gasoline engine. Instead of getting fuel mileage around 50 miles per US gallon try getting fuel mileage in the range of 70 miles per US gallon!
I live in the Ann Arbor area, and several stations I normally go to have LNG (Liquified Natural Gas). There's a hydrogen pump listed in the UCS web site but it turns out that it's at the Chrysler proving grounds and not accessible to the public. I think there's a hydrogen pump at a gas station about 40 miles north/east of here but I've never gone to check it out.
Of course, we're in the midst of liberal city AND very near Motown, so it's not too surprising this stuff is around here. However, it does show that there's willingness to put in the pumps if there's demand. The LNG station is at a Meijer's (large supermarket/we sell everything chain).
you mean after being rigged, major exclusions of certain cross sections of the public, numerous recountings and admissions of inaccuracies, a public too illiterate to understand voting. Umm - the George Bush vote was a farce in the worlds eyes... You mean some Americans actually thought he got in fair and square?
Anyway- this is almost off topic, except to state that George Bush has some very well known and reasonably advertised links with the Oil Industry (understating). Remember how Ford bought the EV1 and shelved it. Before people troll about how useless it was to have to leave it plugged in those eight hours a day you are sleeping and dont use it, or those eight hours a day you are working and dont use it - it might not be for everyone but for some of us it was a great alternative.
There are two main reasons that petrol is the most widely used vehical fuel: 1) The oil/petrochemical companies are the richest economy in the world - yes even more than Bill Gates. There are economies that would collapse if a safe, clean, cheap and efficient alternative presented itself overnight. These peole's livelyhoods and entire reputations are at stake. Why would it seem so odd that they would go to extreme lengths to preserve their legacy.. As much as I am an idealist- if I was in that position i would probably do the same - who wants to have to go back down....
2) The American public. Yes call me what you like but they drive the biggest cars, the move the least on environmental issues. The American nation decided to ignore, abstain or even counteract many environmental treaties while the whole world - even China - signed them. The British public have slightly better attitudes, and drive smaller cars which are slightly more fuel efficient. The germans have some excellent concerns. In fact on my short stay (coding contract) almmost everything in the four companies I was visiting was recycled. Stinking petrol cars- I dont think so. Most people either cycled, or grouped together in deisel cars. Public transport was much cleaner and safer than any I have seen with a notable security presence and much more efficient trains. Even on a friday night at rush hour in city locations in munich you could get on a train without being force to placce your cheek in a fat guys armpits. I am sorry- but on environmental issues - Americans embaress the rest of the world.... George W most of all...
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
Wrong, bucko. The safest cars are those which are large & LIGHTWEIGHT. Why? This gives plenty of room of crush-zones to do their thing, and the light weight means that there is less kinetic energy to dissipate in the crash. Plus, lighter weight reduces the damage done to other vehicles, structures, and people in a crash - again, less weight, less kinetic energy to cause destruction.
The large SUVs are the least safe vehicles on the road. One problem is the high rollover rate. Another is the murderous effect they have on other cars. Finally, the HEAVY, RIGID frames they're built on do a great job of transferring impact energy to the occupants. Seatbelts & airbags ain't worth shit when your internal organs get jellied from the impact.
The average person may get caught in this trap, but a slashdot person? This is sad.
Say you don't get in a head on with a smaller car, say your Escalade hits an embankment. Now how happy are you about all that extra energy? Now your enormous amount of energy is dissapating through your too-stiff frame rails and delivering a hell of a shock to you (unlike a crumple zone space frame car). How about that tail way behind you? Where is it going to put all of its energy? Well, it's either going to swing sideways or upwards. Neither seems like a lot of fun, does it?
And what about the increased rollover incidence? What about the reduced likelihood you will get in a wreck in a manuverable car? Which wreck is more survivable, the one you were in in a large car or the one you avoided completely in a manuverable car?
Stop buying vehicles as kinetic energy weapons!
Head on accidents are so few. For all you know the increased risk of skin cancer because you have to spend more time in the sun fueling the vehicle more than makes up for your chance of using your better physics in a head on collision.
http://www.bagelhole.org/article.php/Transportatio n/44/
Learn to make your own. You can make your own fuel for a bit less than petroleum diesel, get the same power and reduced emmissions.
Plus, the exhaust smells like whatever was cooked in it. My old diesel suburban smells like Krispy Kremes.
... but he does have some comments on the issue.
(Score:-1, Wrong)