Slashdot Mirror
An Alternative to Alternative Fuels and Vehicles
markmcb writes "While the world is working to solve energy and environmental issues with today's petroleum fuels, some vehicles simply don't have good alternatives, namely off-road platforms. For those not willing to give up their gas-guzzling habits, Matt Vea offers an innovative alternative. Using the OBDII interface in his Jeep, a laptop, and the infinite power of Excel, Matt conducts some performance tests and uses the results to tweak both his vehicle's engine and his personal driving habits for optimal fuel consumption both on and off road." Rigorous testing and good use of available technology; nice work.
Since such a large portion of SUV consumers are suburbians who go everywhere on well-paved roads and never use their vehicle's off-road capabilities, I think choosing a more economical car the next time around would be a better way to conserve fuel.
Duh!
Res publica non dominetur
Look.. back in the early 80's my uncle, a doctor, used to keep an SUV for cases when emergencies demanded he trundle off through snow bound michigan streets to see critical patients, but in today's age more than half the vehicles on the road come with all wheel drive and traction control, and luxury sedans now have the option of adjustable suspensions to increase ground clearance. He has one of these now and it serves him better.
Further, fewer than 1% of SUV owners actually take their cars offroad. Most people now buy these things for their own vanity and nothing else.
Meanwhile, while they guzzle fuel at 3mpg, they drive the price of this increasingly limited and taxed resource to the point where there are news reports of the working poor having to pawn off household objects merely to make it into work.
At this point this activity is approaching immorality. I know of few other activities (besides lobbying) which actively make other people poorer for no reason.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
In the grand scheme of things, you may believe that reducing a commute to work makes a big difference in the energy consumption equation, but, it's not your major source of energy consumption. When you turn the heat off, living indoors at ambient outdoor temperature (same for the air conditioning), and stop eating, then you'll make a BIG difference. As long as you eat every day, and keep the heat/airco turned on, a little bit of driving is not the big energy consumer.
It's really trendy here on /. to whine about SUV's in terms of energy consumption, but, the fuel burned by an SUV pales beside what a semi full of goods headed into the city burns. If city folk REALLY want to make a difference, it's easy. Turn the heat off, turn the airco off, turn the lights off, and stop eating. When they all do that, the world's energy problems will be solved. Until then, you are just as much a part of the problem as everybody else.
For instance, when driving one has to impart some amount of KE into the car. KE is mv^2. What this means is that a car going 85mph has twice twice the KE as a car going 60mph . Now, if a car is light, like a roadster at 2200 lbs, one could go 85 and not gain any more than a Pilot going 60. And yet every day I see these huge cars going 90 mph, while I am going 70, and all these people complaining about gas consumption? It makes no sense. If they were truly concerned, they would go slower than me!
I really applaud this guy. He really tried to maximize a solution using reasonable constraints. If everyone did the same, instead of whining that they are being crunched by the price of gas, we would be in a much better place.
His recommendations are good. Accelerate slowly, especially if you have a massive car. Any physics or engineering person knows how much this helps in energy expenditure. Keep tires inflated well, and if you car came with improper tires, buy new one. You SUV is not a car, and should not drive like one. Don't drive fast, especially if you make frequent stops. The energy profile will be against you. This is why hybrids are do good for the city. Do not drive fast period. Not only does it waste gas, but if imperils all other drivers.
The day that I see most SUVs in the right two lanes, going 5-10 miles under the speed limit, is the day I believe that gas prices are too high. Right now gas prices are just inconvenient.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Sure, you may walk to the grocery store, but those groceries didn't grow in that store, they were shipped in.
It is much cheaper -- and more fuel efficient -- to transport 2 tons of food in a single shipment than it is to transport 2 tons of food in a thousand 2kg shipments inside separate vehicles. Yes, the food you buy from the grocery store had to be shipped there, but economies of scale apply to the pre-grocery-store shipping.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
How about we just stop making car engine sizes so big? The average European engine size is somewhere around 2l, why do north Americans think they "need" engine sizes in excess of 4l?
Lower the engine size some, that'd save fuel.
Ford Taurus comes to mind. V6 mid-size sedan plus a big trunk. Does better than 22 MPG!
But it's not as cool.
Blar.
We know. I'm an offroader and an electrical engine would be great. Unfortunately they don't hold enough charge and aren't reliable enough. Try dumping one in water a few times and see what happens. :) But yeah, the torque would be perfect.
modding other people down because you dont like what they say smacks of fascism
Either you don't quite know what "fascism" means, or you think that some government agency is modding down comments you like. Neither of those positions is any more lucid than you would appear to think the modders' opinions are.
You combat uninformed contrary opinions (in mod format or otherwise) by making unassailable, rational, non-whiny points. If you can't rise to that standard, then perhaps moaning about the mods is the more comfortable venue. Better, though, to work on the subject at hand, than to blame the audience for how poorly some comment landed on the thousands of people here who will see it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
How can you say that someone should find better recreation just because YOU don't feel that it's worth the cost? I really wish that it was not necessary to use up so much of our limited resources to do what I enjoy, but I'm not about to give up all of my hobbies just because they are not good for the oil crisis.
;)
Myself, I take part in many of these fuel consuming activities. My favorite activity is skydiving, talk about waisting fossil fuels for fun, we burn gallons of jet fuel per person everytime we go up, and we do this multiple times a day. It's my money, my free time, and I'm gonna do whatever I enjoy! I also enjoy speed boats (fuel hogs), and like the author, 4x4 offroading.
I enjoy having a great time, and I have faith that we will adapt and overcome before we run out of oil. At least I hope we do, because solar powered planes are gonna be a bitch on cloudy days.
Earth First, we can drill the other planets later
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
Actually this is only partially true. While the energy costs for living in the city are higher than living in the country without a car it's really hard to counterbalance the inefficiency of using a 3000 ~ 4000 lb vehicle to transport a 180 lb of cargo. Unfortunately that's exactly what the average person does when they jump in their car to run an errand. On the other hand a fully loaded semi trailer carries 80,000 lb of cargo. Even if the tractor and empty trailer weigh 80k lb then they are doing alot better than the individual person getting groceries in a car.
If I make the assumption that the cost of a useful Kj is constant across electricity and gasoline then your math doesn't add up. I just switched from driving to work (gasoline) to using light rail (electricity) and that has reduced my monthly energy bill by 75%.
-- Ecks
It's really trendy here on /. to whine about SUV's in terms of energy consumption, but, the fuel burned by an SUV pales beside what a semi full of goods headed into the city burns.
The average SUV weighs 4242 lbs and gets 19 MPG. Larger ones like the Escalade are rated at 13 MPG in the city. The cargo for your average grocery store trip is, let's say, 100 lbs. A tractor-trailer rig is somewhere around 25,000 pounds empty, gets 5-6 MPG when loaded, and carries up to 40,000 lbs cargo. Let's assume that the average is half that. If I did the math right, moving groceries by semi is then 57 times more efficient.
As a kicker, truckers use 13% of fuel purchased in the US versus 63% for cars and other light vehicles. So you're right about the "pale" part, but it appears to be the other way around.
Economy of scale: it costs less energy to ship in bulk than seperately. Plus, cities have shorter distances, so they'd be perfect for use of electric vehicles. Unload goods from an electric train at the freight terminal. Use an electric "milk float" type truck that can plug in to a ubiquitous charging station whenever parked and has regenerative braking to deliver the goods to customers. How to make the electricity? Nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wind, solar - plenty of "clean" options...
If city folk REALLY want to make a difference, it's easy. Turn the heat off, turn the airco off, turn the lights off...
Guess what? City folk usually live in smaller spaces than their suburpan brethren. Smaller spaces take less energy to heat and cool. And, by "city", I'm not necessarily meaning something as overwhelming as NYC. There are plenty of smaller towns/cities that are walkable, and where the average house isn't a 4000 sq. ft. McMansion.
The McMansions are a real problem because they're huge and often really cheaply built, making for poor efficiency. If houses were a bit smaller (~1200 sq ft avg) and incorporated architectural features that made them capable of passive climate control - areas of glass in the appropriate place to catch the sun in winter and passive air circuation in the summer. As I said before, we had a beach house in NJ with a broken furnace. I went there during the coldest part of winter in 1996 - it was about 10 deg. out for a few days and the indoor temperature didn't drop below 55 deg. The large glassed front porch caught the sun and trapped heat - the masonry floor stored that heat and radiated it evenly through the day. In summer? The windows could be opened or removed, and the house was pretty comfortable, even without A/C.
-b.
Ha! I don't even bother running my AC (Saturday was 100F here in Denver); in the winter I keep the heater at 56 most of the day (raising it to 64 in the morning, 'cause 56 is miserable when getting out of the shower); I drive a 15-year-old car which gets 35 mpg. Oh, and I normally cycle to work (in fact, I recently completed a month without driving to the office).
I'm like the Green Avenger or something. Only thing is they won't let me into the local environmentalist meetings since I always vote a Republican/Libertarian mixed ticket:-(