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Hybrids Beware? EPA Revises Mileage Standards
Shivetya writes "The federal Environmental Protection Agency announced a new system for determining the fuel economy of many cars and trucks. Hardest hit will be hybrids as all-electric driving is not considered. At the same time, many medium-duty vehicles will get rated, but not have to be published until 2011 This move to more realistic ratings will severely reduce the high numbers some cars have posted."
Chili Palmer: How many miles to the gallon to you get on those Hummers, about 12?
Dabu: Nine.
From the EPA site itself http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/420f06009.htm#fuele stimates
u estVehicle
u estVehicle
A site to enter your own observed information http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addG
or lookup what others have recorded http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addG
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Look, the reality of milage doesn't change because the EPA changes their testing methodology. Yes, the current EPA numbers are inflated. Sounds like the new ones will be deflated. Regardless, I get a real world 40 MPG out of my Prius and that's better than the real world high 20's, low 30's I got out of my previous cars with similar performance. What's the big deal? Why do so many folks go nutty over proving that hybrids are the greatest thing ever or the stupidest thing ever? All cars have different performance, comfort, efficiency, safety, appearance, and cost metrics. So you choose one you like.
By the way, I don't hate HUMMER owners.
Cheers.
I have Hyundai Sonata and the mileage quoted on the sticker at the lot is *exactly* what I've gotten. Aside from the hybrid variety, are certain cars more likely to get lower mileage than the EPA estimate?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
This won't affect the Insight at all; it doesn't have an all-electric mode.
It is, that said, an exceptionally stupid rule; the Prius gets a huge benefit from the all-electric mode, and that ought to be included in the mileage calculations, because it's the bottom line that affects a real user. If your car can do three miles of bumper to bumper traffic with the engine off, instead of burning a quarter gallon of gas idling, you have saved a quarter gallon of gas. That your engine didn't need to be on to achieve this is a feature, not a bug.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Getting the US off of the foreign oil tit should be a national security imperative.
I thought MythBusters covered this one.
The final thoughts were that no modern air conditioning system should vastly impact gas mileage.
They even tested it on some SUV and came out with very similar gas mileage. (Windows down actually caused slightly more loss).
I'm sure someone will chime in here and clear this up a bit. I was just a bit confused when the article claimed air conditioning was a gas hog. (Note, on an older car I had when I kicked in the AC I really did feel the engine jump to compensate, but this was ages ago.)
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
...remains the bicycle. But I ain't riding one, I've got whole cows to devour...
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
My little 93 Geo Metro XFi would still get pretty much the same mileage as the old EPA ratings 51/58. I currently get 57 MPG driving it like a nut. There are a few metros on the road getting 70+mpg on the road right now.
Honestly, this sounds like a ploy from the Big 3 automakers lobby groups and Big Oil to make alternative energy sources look less attractive. And, I don't care how you spin it, a hybrid car should always come out better; if not by government standards then by common sense. Common sense has to win over when you burn less gas because the hybrid car has the electric drive. Leave it to government to pass another non-sense law. We need to end our dependence on oil, period! Not just foriegn oil but all sources of it! This will take a more grass roots campaign as Big Oil and GM only pay lip service to alternative energies. It will take us as consumers to make oil unfavorable. After all, this is a market economy and if no wants oil anymore than Big Oil will need to find something else or go bankrupt. There is little to no insentive for the oil companies to invest in alternative energies. We as the consumer create the incentive. You can pass all the clean air initiatives you want and continue to tout the party line but nothing will change until Americans collectively scream, "We want alternative energy vehicles!" Right now, this is far minority.
I really doubt Hybrids will be as markedly impacted by the new tests as suggested in the EPA's discussion. Rapid accelleration is a reason many car buyers buy their car - I own a Prius and I can't even list for you how many times someone told me about its 0-60 performance while I was considering buying it - as a selling point for buying the car! Even over on GreenHybrid.com where fuel efficiency is the point of the entire website, people made endless claims about the Prius' ability to take off off the line.
So bravo for these changes being added. Toyota and Honda are obviously the leaders in this field and they'll either make no change to their strategy and just keep having the highest EPA numbers, or adjust their strategy slightly to keep high EPA numbers but handle rapid accelleration with good mileage numbers - something that, by the way, the current Prius does not do, regardless of how many claims salesmen and Prius enthusiasts made. It gets its great numbers when cruising, or starting and stopping at low speeds - which is just what the old EPA standards tested.
Any environmentalist worried about the Prius dropping from 60mpg EPA to 44mpg should keep in mind 2 things:
The Hummer will probably drop from 11mpg to 9. Single digits won't improve sales. They might harm them. Might.
The 2008/2009 Prius has been claimed by Toyota to get 75mpg under the current standards - so it's entirely possible the new EPA measure will put it at... 60mpg.
So even if the new tests somehow favored gas guzzlers, which I doubt, Honda and Toyota have the technological lead and their MPG numbers are only going to continue to run away from the rest of the pack leaving GM and Ford's "hybrid" sub-30mpg numbers further and further behind.
The summary is misleading. The summary states that "all-electric driving is not considered". The article states that hybrids will be most impacted by the rule changes, because aggressive driving and cold weather driving will theoretically minimize the impact on gas mileage provided by all-electric drive.
We bought a Prius in September. We average about 55 MPG in warmer weather, and 47 MPG in driving in cold Michigan/Canadian weather (both city and highway), so I don't think Hybrids will see as big of a drop as the article claims. The only time we see bad gas mileage is for short city trips of 5 minutes or less from a cold start in cold weather. During those for 3-4 minutes, we average anywhere between 15-25 MPG. Once the car is warmed up, the average jumps to around 45-50 MPG. If the goal of the EPA is to make hybrids look as bad as possible, the test should be a short, four minute drive from a cold weather start. In any other condition, the hybrids (at least the Prius) will continue to score well above other consumer automobiles in gas mileage ratings.
Changing the way the numbers are calculated WILL NOT change the way people drive or how the vehciles perform. Hybrids will continue to be more efficient than gasoline powered vehicles despite how the numbers fall out.
In order to get off the "foreign oil tit", as you put it, we'd have to do alternatives for lubricants, plastics, asphalt, jet fuel, diesel oil, heating oil, etc.
Sure, there are alternatives for may of those (biodiesel, corn-starch plastics, electricity generation fueled by something besides oil, etc), but the alternatives are often more costly (and less efficient) to create than the original... or can be worse for the environment (e.g. coal-fired electrical generation vs. oil-fired). Until oil is expensive enough to make those alternatives more attractive, we're kinda stuck.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Typical drive train loss is 15-30% depending on the configuration. Smaller front wheel drive 5 speeds have less drive train loss then a rear wheel big v8 automatic with OD. I've found some comparisons with Google in the past when I was reseaching figures for my own car and setup. I have 450 rear wheel HP as indicated by various dyno runs and was trying to estimate engine HP.
Even more important then the markeeting driven "HP rating" should be a simple graph showing a dyno run with peak torque and HP noted. Oh, the graph might confuse consumers! Well we are even more let down, fooled, and confused by the peak HP claim that companies use now.
One of my compact cars is rated at 140HP. My mini van that weighs at least 1500lbs more is rated at 165HP. My van will blow that car off of the road even while pulling a 1000lb trailer. The peak HP are almost meaningless. Torque is more important for determining real world output and neither alone are as informative as looking at a dyno run sheet would be. Hell, I guess you could skip the dyno chart and include a 60ft, 1/8 mile and 1/4 time with the trap speed.
the epa can do whatever they want and it won't change the "real world" results that most people get.
how many people do you know who always have their foot flooring the gas or brake? if people learned to use the accelerator and brakes effectively they would probably save 10 mpg on every tank.
i'll bet i get better mileage in my eclipse than a decent percentage of hybrid owners, simply because most people don't think about how they drive.
-- lol pwned
http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/26/news/companies/gm_ fuel.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
t /index.html
Personnaly I am sort of happy to see GM get thier lunch eaten. They've been asleep at the switch for too many years.
Here an interesting article as well. http://www.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/12/22/toyota.reu
A choice quoute from the head of Toyota: '"The important thing is to be a leader in car-making, and that's done by improving products," he told a year-end news conference, adding that vehicle quality will be Toyota's top priority at a time of rising vehicle recalls.'
An American manager would have spoken some crap about "leveraging synergys for value added customer delight", in other words not admitting to a problem and just engaging in window dressing. American management seems to have lost thier way, focusing on image without addressing fundamentals.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
51.4% of a barrel of oil goes towards gasoline according to the state of California.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I drive a diesel (VW Jetta) and it is awesome. No cold weather starting problems, either, even when I lived in central new york, where the temperature was regularly in the single digits. Most fuel sellers put additives in their diesel in the winter to prevent the fuel from gelling, and engines have very good glow plugs these days. The motors are even quiet and soot-free these days (unless you really floor the gas pedal)...every time I've told a passenger in my car that it's diesel, they've been surprised and/or didn't believe me.
It's also zippy as heck. The motor produces a ton of torque at really low RPMs so it feels a lot faster than it really is, but the feeling makes it a ton of fun to drive.
The biggest reason that more diesels aren't sold in the states is that California banned the sale of new ones. Several other states adopted California's emissions laws (New York and most of the northeastern states). Consequently not many car companies are interested in investing the time, effort (replace previous two words with 'money') to bring diesels to the US -- it's illegal to sell them in many states so it would be a lot of money spent for not much return in sales revenue.
You can buy used diesel passenger vehicles in any of those states, but it's hard to find them (since they were never sold as new there in the first place) and they fetch a premium. Case in point: I bought mine *used* for $19,500 in New Jersey (where new diesels are actually legal to sell), and it had 42k miles on it at the time. New, the car's sticker price was about $22,000. Now it has 60k miles on it and my car will fetch $21,000 without too much trouble (I live in California these days). It's kind of a shame they aren't more common, as the mileage is good (36 city/50 highway is my real-world driving).
Before people call me a diesel zealot, I'll definitely mention the bad things: they are bad in that they create more particulate in their exhaust, which has been shown in studies to be a carcinogen. Old-skool diesel fuel sold in the US also contained lots of sulfur, which created sulfur dioxide in the exhaust, which in turn created acid rain. The sulfur also prevented good catalytic converters from being used, so diesels create way more NOx. Now that we have low-sulfur diesel in the US, I think diesel cars will become quite a bit better...but the reputation they garnered as smoking, smelly, sooty, bad-for-the-environment cars through the 70s and 80s will probably hurt their chance at widespread adoption in the US.
Diesel is also interestingly becoming more expensive than gasoline where I live. I find it funny, because diesel fuel is a lot easier to produce than gasoline, or so my fuel engineer friend tells me. Still, mile for mile diesel fuel is cheaper, since I get about the double the mileage that I would in a similar gasoline vehicle...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
5 Passengers and a load as well...
http://phoenixmotorcars.com/models/fleet.html
An electric vehicle has almost no parts which require servicing; no valves, no spark plugs, no oil to change, no air filter, no piston rings. Basically it'll last as long as the chassis is structurally sound and the bodywork remains reasonable. The only bits which'll wear out are the consumables, the battery and bearings. With a battery which can last for 20 years, there's no real reason the vehicle shouldn't do a million miles with bugger all servicing.
The battery:
"In addition to high power the Altairnano NanoSafe
batteries deliver:
Long life - potentially up to 20+ year life
Very fast charge - rechargeable in minutes
Extremely wide operating temperature range
from -50C/-60F to +75C/165F
Inherent safety - no risk of thermal runaway"
Deleted
All current hybrids use NiMH batteries, which have no cadmium toxicity issues (unlike NiCd). They're soon going to switch to Li-ion because the specific power (kW/kg) and energy (Wh/kg) are better with some of the new chemistries.
Li-ion batteries have few toxicity issues either, and the new chemistries like iron phosphate and titanium spinel have even less.
Of course, it still makes sense to recycle batteries instead of landfilling them. Lead-acid car batteries are already the most-recycled items in the USA, and the more valuable the materials in the battery (nickel, lithium, cobalt in the old Li-ions) the more attractive it will be to recycle them.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
My '96 Chevy Impala SS hit its estimates right on the head - 20/26 isn't bad at all for a corvette-powered 4-door.
...is something like a Nielsen rating for mileage. Pay some people to put a black box in their car that records the mileage. For new models, you just publish the EPA "laboratory" mileage. For cars with a year or more of real-world driving, they could post "actual" mileage. One big problem however, is that you might not be able to get enough people to sign up. You need enough people to sort out the lemons (although if mileage lemons are produced, that's important to know).
Kudos to the EPA for taking this a step closer to the real world.
Now, it wouldn't carry the same weight as a controlled data-gathering or testing effort, but is anybody aware of a mileage website, where people just enter their mileage for various makes and models? Sounds like something GasBuddy could add as a feature.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Just look at the wonderful job they did deregulating their power systems. ...
DOH!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
saying "I have a bomb" on an airplane.
They hiss and spit and shun you. Because, as the movies have taught (sorry, wrong word.. CONDITIONED) them, nuclear = bad. PERIOD. All they need to figure out is how to shut down that damn "sun" thingee, and everything'll be right with the world.
So remember now. Nuclear power makes Baby Jesus cry!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It very well may be included. The article summary omits a couple of words -- namely "some of"-- from the sentance in the article that says. "Hybrids will be hit harder because the new test eliminates some of the all-electric driving that helped them produce impressive results under the present system" The article is not specific about what driving will not be counted.
My guess (and it is a guess) is that they will try to end the test with the battery in the same charge state that it started the test and won't count 'borrowed' miles that come from running on the battery and not restoring the charge.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The biggest problem I see with the EPA is that they use static tests that haven't been updated much in 30 years. Thus, there are two ways vehicle manufacturers can go about engineering for fuel effeciency. The first way is to engineer vehicles that are efficient in real world driving conditions (driving 65+ mph on the interstate, lots of stop and go driving less than 45 mph). Or, they can engineer cars to utilize the testing process to achieve the best possible numbers, which may or may not reflect real world economy. Either way is an acceptable way to conduct buisness. The problem lies in that manufacturers may only legaly advertise the numbers determined by the EPA. So, if they design their cars to pass the test, so to speak, you get inflated numbers. The inverse is true of vehicles designed for real world efficiency. Engineering a vehicle for real world results net deflated EPA numbers. And since you can only post those numbers, your negative difference from actual economy plus your competitors positive difference from actual ecomomy gives a severly biased comparison to window shoppers.
This sig only exists because you are observing it.
Your claim is refuted by the facts.
It would be quite difficult to run the US without imported oil, but it would be even harder to get all ground transport and electric generation off fossil fuels — but even that looks possible with current technology.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
I had a 1978 Dodge Omni that got 36 to 38 mpg when it was out of tune and half dead, it got much better mileage new. I'm not talking EPA I'm talking real world miles. Based on the revised EPA estimates that 30 year old technology would compete with the hybrids. Something is seriously wrong here. For all the R&D they are going backwards.
Take your Omni and add a ton of safety features (airbags, side-impact beams, and a chassis that performs WAY better at protecting you in a collision).
And add a bunch of features - power windows, door locks, steering, brakes were not as common in high-mileage vehicles in 1978. You'll have to invent and install ABS and stability control, too. Make the car much quieter, handle better, and ride smoother. Most of these either require power or add weight or both.
Now reduce the emissions of your Omni by 90% or more. Keep the power the same. No, wait, add 30HP.
NOW tell me how many miles per gallon you get with your 70's engine tech while matching ALL aspects of modern-car performance.
I know this is probably flamebait anyway, but I'll bite. First off, saying American people like to drive "big SUV which have lazy fat motors" is like saying Europeans drive cars that make them look stuck up. There are plenty of people who don't like big SUVs. Why do you think Toyotas, Hondas, and Hyundais sell so well in America? Fuel stingy Toyota has already surpassed Ford and its lazy fat (discontinued) Excursion in market share, so what does that tell you? I'm not defending many Americans' decision to drive fuel inefficient vehicles, but I won't go so far as to take that choice away from them. I do wish that Europeans' tastes' for diesels would reach our shores. I think they are a great alternative to anemic small displacement gas engines and hybrids. As for American cars' "several decades old" motors, that may have been true even 8 years ago, but today is the exception rather than the rule. Look at Ford's Duratec, GM's Ecotec and LSx engines. Even the small block Chevy, now in its 53rd year, bears little resemblence to the original, or event o its predecessor from 3-4 years ago.
This sig only exists because you are observing it.
I own a 2005 Toyota Prius, and I can get 53-57 miles per gallon (or more) easily. This is not just measurements on local roads, but includes highway driving, some stop & go traffic, and all the things seen on my daily commute.
The above was calculated not just over short distances, but over the full 400+ miles I can get out of the ~11 gallon tank before I decide to refill it (typically, I put 8-9 gallons in, and calculate mileage both via the on board computer, and how much fuel I put it versus the trip odometer). Over shorter distances (40 miles or so), I have gotten potentially 60+ miles per gallon.
Granted, I am in somewhat ideal conditions (the warm Southern US (Air Conditioning is almost always on), lots of streets where I can go 40-50 MPH (one of the Prius' sweet spots), reasonably timed traffic lights...), and I am a reasonably cautious driver with a good insurance rate, so that may factor in a bit. Daisy-chaining short trips, or otherwise not just doing them, helps with the gas mileage a lot (a few short trips takes 2-3 MPG off a tank of gas' result easily).
So while I may be exceptional, it is definitely possible in my view to get the EPA mileage for a Prius. But I did not get it because it was an efficient car - I got it because it was a reasonably priced mid-size vehicle which fit my needs (and height!), and was comfortable to drive.
Dual drive axles, power steering, Bendix ABS, 80,000 pound GVWR. 6.9 miles per gallon average on #2 diesel. Pulling loads that average about 34,000 pounds (averaged over the 300,000 miles that are on it - some loads have weighed 45,500 pounds, sometimes I have to pull an empty trailer over 450 miles to get a load).
Want to improve the average fuel economy of a hybrid? Put 10 of them on a trailer and pull it with an International (or Freightliner, or Peterbilt, or Kenworth, etc.)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Going up grade the car performs great. Last week I drove up to Flagstaff and had no problems maintaining 65 for the 5-10 mile stretches of 5-7% grade with 4 people in the car. The electric engine augments the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) and that helps the performance.
On the A/C front, the Prius has a multistage compressor so the hit on the car is minimal under moderate heat. I see plenty of hot conditions out here and the milage doesn't seem to be effected much at all even at maximum cooling. If anything, the mileage is a bit lower in cold conditions due to the engine running longer to bring the engine up to temp for emisions management. It also is an ELECTRIC motor compressor so the power used is not directly from the gas engine. That should help with the new EPA tests.
Do I drive like a type "A" personality? No, that never did appeal to me to race up to a stop light to get one car ahead. I do drive to take advantage of the car I have. YMMV.
Hi,
I did the hill calculation for going over Barlow Pass in Oregon (Mt. Hood..) before I bought my 02 Prius. Don't have it, but I remember how I did it: For your example...
calculating vertical climb horsepower.. assuming grade is rise/run proportion.
Given that 1 horsepower is 33000 pounds 1 vertical foot up in a minute.
50mph is 0.833 miles/minute. at a 7% grade up, its 0.05833 vertical miles, or 308 vertical feet/ minute.
3500 pounds of car and load, that's 1.08e6 feet*pounds lift per minute.
1.08e3/33000(ft*lbs/min)/hp gives about 33hp for the vertical climb, leaving 42 hp for friction (aerodynamic and road) I believe this car only uses about 14-15 horsepower for friction and windage at 60. Even derating for loss of power at altitude, (70% at 10000ft?) there's still margin to do this.
Huge horsepowers in modern cars (>100HP) are not needed for climb, they're used for acceleration performance.
Now.. accelleration 0-60 in the 02 Prius is not great. It's fantastic 0-20, okay 20-35 and terrible from 35-65. I believe the '04 version and up really improved that by doubling the electrical torque. The surge torque you get from the electrics are not affected by altitude, which can be nice.
A bigger concern might be the cold weather performance. I've noticed occasional starting issues in the 02 Prius under sub 20's F. Basically, if the car can't start itself on the first crank over it freaks out and lights up a lot of scary indicators. I've had this happen 3 times. I believe they've got a fix for this on the car.. I'm of the mindset to just not care as long as I understand why the indicators are up when this happens. Of course, I live in a valley where it rarely gets under freezing. I would be worried about sub zero F temps for this vehicle.
The Hybrid is started by the traction battery.. so in theory... they could give it far superior start performance in cold weather.
Cheers,
Alex
I admit that it bothers me a little that hybrids get a free Carpool/HOV pass.
I thought the point of HOV lanes was to have fewer cars on the road.
Allowing hybrids there does not encourage fewer cars out there.
But, you say, hybrids are really efficient, and the allowances helps fight polution.
Well, hybrids, by design are the most efficient in stop and go traffics.
Braking charges the batteries.
But in the HOV lane, hybrids are slowing less, so using the gas engine more.
I think a better metric is how much total fuel is used per driver. For example, I used to work 26 miles from home but drove a more efficient vehicle. I've since changed jobs but now drive a less efficient vehicle. However, the total fuel I use is much less. I.e., before I used about $60/week on gas, now it's $40/2 weeks on average. I don't drive an SUV, but I still don't escape people telling me that my average MPG is OHMYGOD, under 20. I'm not saying there should be rations, but I get a little upset when some joker with a relatively fuel efficient vehicle gives me guff because my car is not so efficient.
Yes there is and it is called "forced induction"(turbo|supercharger|both).
With the number of suckers paying insane amounts of money just to save $1 on gas, we'd probably be better off with a total cost of ownership measurement.
I am an American so I am perhaps blinded by my proximity to the problem, but as near as I can figure...
* SUV's are the only category of vehicle that is available with 7+ passenger seating, aside from minivans. There are whole swaths of suburbia where mommies and daddies cart their kids and their kids' friends around every weekend. A 4 passenger econobox is simply not adequate for this task and I absolutely guarantee that this is part of the purchase decision. (Minivans, as an alternative, are not much more fuel efficient than SUVs.)
* There is a big safety hangover from when someone published the obvious conclusion that a heavier car will suffer less damage in a crash than a smaller car. Since then, very few people will buy anything smaller than a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla and the rest will buy the biggest vehicle they can afford.
* The big motors are there because we have a lot of hills (in some parts of the US) and a *lot* of stoplights. The big motors supply a lot of torque and they accelerate without fuss. A small motor will of course suffice but they can be noisy and at times require work on the part of the driver to select the correct gear. (Yanks like auto transissions, don't forget)
* A lot of us Americans have owned and driven small cars, especially during high school and college years. Generally, these are cheap used cars that, frankly, suck. The first thing everyone does when they get a decent job is to buy a new car, and they always get a larger, more powerful one to erase the bad memories of the datsun or paseo or whatever it was.
Anyway, my point is that it's not entirely about the big american wasteful image. There are some practical concerns that weigh into the choices Americans make re which cars to buy and if someone wants to get us to use more fuel efficient vehicles, they need to address these concerns rather than just insulting us for our choices.
It would seem much more logical to expose a truly random selection of cars to exhaustive tests over a wider range of conditions for longer periods of time. Instead of averaging, you plot against a distribution and take the average of the distribution. This, however, is not the quoted figure for any car. It's merely the baseline for that model. Each car has to have some nominal testing - at least to see if the engine will start. Assuming that the distribution will be the same with merely the offsets being different, you then derive the effective MPG from the distribution and where that specific car is believed to be on it.
You now have an MPG per car, but it's still a single value and single values are useless. I'd therefore do the above with nine distributions, not one. One for 0-25 mph, one for 25-50, one for 50-75, and each of those for smooth traffic flow, heavy traffic and stop/go traffic.
Consumers tend to drown out lots of stats, though, and nine numbers - trivial to any geek - would be murderous on your average couch potato. On the other hand, colours tend to be workable. Simply do a rainbow spectrum, where violet is so far above average that driving round the planet uses less fuel than a typical hummvee uses to get out the parking lot, and where red is where you're escorted to the grocery store by an oil tanker. Nice and visual, though with hard data for those who actually want hard data to work with.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Enron-style accounting lives and flourishes at the Departments of Labor AND at the EPA!
Why am I not surprised?
Forget hybrids. The entire model is screwy.
We need electric cars combined with mass transit. No one should ever have to drive more than 40 or so miles to the nearest town or bus/rail terminal.
Seriously, the entire model needs changing. Something like 3/4 of my travel is 8 miles to the nearest town. I could do fine with an electric car, even one that only went 40 mph. The rest of my travel is 40+ miles towards 'the big city', aka, Atlanta, down an incredibly common corridor, GA-400, with no mass transit at all until the end.
People in Europe get by fine without cars. We can't entirely do the same, because we're more spread out, but electric cars should remedy that.
With correctly planned mass transit of light rail and small bus routes, and electric cars with a range of 100 miles (and parking structures with the ability to recharge them), we could cover something like 95% of the transportation needs in this country.(1) As for the rest, well, you rent a car, or have a group of people who own one and trade it around. (Like my extended family does with the truck. You need a truck, you borrow it.) Or, hell, you just own one, it's not like it wastes energy to have a car just sit there, and the current cars aren't going anywhere.
But, anyway, we should slowly consider phasing that in, and there are some things to think about:
For example, we'd need shopping cart-like things that we can take on the bus and train, to remove one of the major problems. It would be really nice if they were standardized little rental things, and obviously buses need to be designed to accommodate them. (With the added bonus of them accommodating people in wheelchairs.)
Oh, and we'd sometimes need some sort of electric car rental place at the end. Which is why we need to gradually phase this in, so we can figure if it makes sense to have, say, a bus route, a taxi service, and/or a car rental place in a certain specific small town.
However, the start of this plan: Buses in major cities, we mostly already have, and light rail down major corridors, we mostly somewhat have, we just need to finish and the rest sorta springs from there. First you get a shuttle bus to take people to the light-rail from nearby cities, then bus routes around those cities, etc, and then we have to start saying 'I want a electric-only car that gets much better energy mileage than my hybrid, because it's not hauling around an ICE. I don't care my range is only 100 miles, I don't drive that far anyway.'
But, as most importantly, to get this plan off the ground, we have to make using mass transit cheaper than driving.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Sorry, I don't have "funny" mod points to apply to this. :)
:)
Just in case you seriously didn't know, though, the displacement is the difference in volume of the cylinder with the piston at top dead center and bottom dead center. That's a space filled with air (and atomized fuel, ideally), and the air is *displaced* by the piston moving through the cylinder. You change displacement one of two ways - change stroke length or change bore diameter. In other words, either the cylinder of air being displaced gets taller or gets wider. Oil's got nothing to do with it.
The compression ratio, while we're on topic, is the ratio of the total cylinder volume (including the combustion chamber in the head) with the piston at BDC (uncompressed) and TDC (compressed). In a piston engine with zero deck height (pistons are level with the top of the block at TDC) and flat-top pistons, compression ratio is 1 + ((displacement / number of cylinders) / combustion chamber volume). Make sure you keep track of those units (hint, 1L=1000cc, a small block Chevy will usually have either 65cc or 72cc combustion chambers, and a zero deck 5.7L V8 engine will be running around 10.5 or 11:1 compression).
Huh? Ethanol has even less power per gallon than gas. Diesel on the other hand has MORE power per gallon (aka BTUs) than gasoline! Diesel engines are also run without a throttle so there's no pumping loss and because they are cmopression ignition with a very stable fuel they can run higher cylinder pressures - hence massive turbocharging going on :-) The exhaust gasses are also cooler on a diesel so they can use nifty VNT turbos to get boost earlier. I want to see a diesel hybrid myself, that woudl rock. For now I'll daily my TDI and be happy with near hybrid MPG figures...
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