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Can Your Car Get 1,700 MPG?
Xaroth writes "Given all the hubbub over EPA mileage ratings, I'm a little surprised that this one hasn't come up earlier. SAE apparently holds a contest each year to encourage students to design single-person, fuel-efficient vehicles. This year's winner achieved 1,747.4 MPG, with the press release that tipped me off pointing out that third got a 'measly' 1,194. There are more details on the competition over at SAE's site about the competition. Now, if only they could make these street-legal..." However, even the winner has nothing on top entries we mentioned in Shell's competition a few years back.
This article makes me wonder: just how fuel-efficient can an aircraft be?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Can increase the efficiency over metal based ones. The temperatures they can withstand are far higher, raising the efficiency substantially over conventional ones.
They're also much lighter, the materials don't expand/contract and can be machined to closer tolerances and they wear out much slower than metal ones.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
How about comparing modern day cars, trains, busses, and planes, on a per-passenger basis?
According to Top Gear a few nights ago, trains get worse mileage than the average car, per passenger(I'm trying to find any info about the study online to see if that's based on maximum capacity of each type of vehicle or real-world average passenger counts) and a high speed train gets worse mileage than a jumbo jet! Personally I'm kind of curious about a subway train as well. Both averages(ie based on typical # of people in them) and maximum figures would be interesting for all vehicles.
When they asked the UK "Green Party" for a statement, they said "the best choice is the journey not taken". Um...okay.
Oh, and ever watched a diesel locomotive idling or at speed, belching lots of blue/black smoke? How about a city bus? Here in Boston, they're downright filthy, and in neighborhoods near the bus depots and garages, asthma rates are much higher, and studies have repeatedly shown diesel soot causes both cancer and asthma.
Please help metamoderate.
There's a University competition sponsored by Ford and the DOE to build environment-friendly, fuel-efficient vehicles called FutureTruck. The catch? They have to modify Ford Explorers, not create go-cart sized vehicles, maintain existing performance, and remain fairly manufacturable. (In other words, Ford is using college teams for their R&D.)
There've been amazing results: the winning team, from University of Wisconsin Madison, built a hybrid Explorer that got somewhere over 40 mpg. (Different sources disagree as to the exact number.) For reference, stock Explorers are rated at merely 15/19 mpg for city and freeway driving. They also scored well in emissions and made a vehicle which could probably be manufactured and sold for about the same price as a stock vehicle.
So it's not 1700 mpg. It's still pretty darn impressive for an SUV!
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman