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Japanese Mileage Maniacs
WY writes "Bloomberg reports on the quirky world of Japanese hybrid car hackers: 'Toyota Motor Corp. says its Prius gasoline-electric hybrid car gets about 55 miles to the gallon, making it one of the most fuel-efficient cars on the road. That's not good enough for Takashi Toya.' He managed to reach as high as 115 MPG. He is one of about 100 nenpimania, Japanese for mileage maniacs."
Don't they use kilometers there?
Cutting down on fuel bills AND bragging rights? Where do I sign!?
Sure, I'm all for more fuel efficient cars and less fossil fuel burning, but there is a tradeoff.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
he just won that multimillion dollar xprize for 100+ mpg from a practical car!
damn he's lucky.. if he knows about it and turns it in that is.
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I also wonder whether the driving techniques they use are applicable in traffic of any density. It sounds like they speed up and slow down a lot, which may be fine on the open road but not as traffic becomes denser. A minor point is that in most of the United States, at least, it is illegal to drive barefoot.
We have people who do the same thing here.. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermiling
the only way to enforce that is with invasive technology like cameras or that xray scope from eraser, never going to happen.
a cop pulls you over you get a very good amount of time to put your shoes back on.
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Getting hybrid cars to get higher mileage is simply a matter of running batteries to lower than 96% or whatever they're kept at normally. This drastically reduces the lifespan, and is the reason that they don't do it in the first place in the factory; Supporting it would cost too much down the road for the car companies.
It is good to see people getting "real" good mileage. The Prius gets 55 MPG, the Geo metro and Honda civic in the late 80's and early 90 got mid 50's. I heard some GM exec on the radio yesterday talking about the new 50 MPG small cars they were bringing to market, what, "used Honda's"? If a regular engine can get 50+ MPG it shouldn't be hard for a Hybrid to get 70 or 80+, if not 100+.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Mileage mania? What does that make stretch Hummer/fuel injected racecar owners? Sufferers of Mileage Dementia/Depression?
My favorite motorcar extremists lately are the guys strapping together thousands of dollars worth of batteries to make ultra-high performance vehicles that still get 40 mpg. Sure, they have to go light and limited to 100 miles range per charge, but they end up with a true racecar that makes no sound except the burning of the wheels. That's just damn cool.
Mileage itself is a bit of a red herring though - there's always going to be a need for vehicles with 'horrid' milage, and 'wasting' that fuel to move earth, or just push a lot of metal - it really isn't an inherent problem to 'waste' fuel on big cars. The only real concern is the effect using that fuel in a fuel cycle. If going through that cycle returns the earth to a carbon-rich atmosphere, that's not a good thing. If the cycle doesn't involve such troublesome consequences though, then as long as the fuel is worth it's other negative effects (like on your wallet), then I don't see how it's a problem.
We just need better fuels and energy source paths. The market's having a hard time finding a good set of somethings for now - but the dynamics look to be changing, thanks in large part to a lot of nations making some rather interesting long-term investments in fuel research. If you get the right fuel, then I'd much rather have a fuel-inneficient car that theoretically retails for $12,000 after mass manufacture, than a maximized fuel efficient car that retails for $50,000. We need fuels we can waste, so we can consider fuel efficiency completely in terms of direct cost rather than indirect environmental impact as a society.
I look forward to being able to waste a lot of new kinds of fuel in the future. Here's hoping they come up with one that smells like rich coffee ice cream!
Ryan Fenton
Oh, it's real. FTFA:
Toya accelerates, or pulses, to 29 mph, then glides down to 25 mph before pulsing again. The car uses no fuel when gliding.
This style of driving is as real as being able to drive 26 MPH to work. With stop and start traffic, which can slow you to an average of 4MPH despite bursts of 45, you can not do this. It is impossible in most US cities due to urban sprawl and poorly thought out streets.
It is possible in cities with decent ground streets like parts of Chicago and New Orleans. Where this is possible, you could also ride a bike or other human or solar powered vehicle and public transport also works. Finally, note that sprawl is still desirable as a protection against nuclear terrorism.
Low density, mixed business residential and leisure spaces built on grid street layouts should be encouraged.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
How's that karma whoring going, twitter?
Hot rodder s, bent on a number. Audi has a fuel+intake+ignition technique that got my attention; petrol engine, no butterfly valve on intake, direct and computer controlled cylinder injection of fuel. Mixture ratios above 60/1. FSI.
:)
BMW Minis have the same thing, only smaller. Yes, if you really want to you can get low sulfur in the US. If it were easier to get I'd use that fuel.
Europeans, pioneering cars for their roads.
it doesn't go into it much but with the price of those batteries and how often you have to replace them, how much are you really saving with getting a hyrbid? is it worth it or would it be more benificial to just get a geo metro or honda cvic?
problem with claims like this is that you can get incredible mileage from the FIRST gallon of gas, or the first 100 miles because you can fully charge the battery from a external source. once the "hybrid" part takes over, you are back to the regular 45mpg.
the speed of the car and the elevation changes greatly influence the MPG claims also. electric cars do not get great gas mileage at highway speeds because of the power required to keep the car at 60+mph.
If a regular engine can get 50+ MPG it shouldn't be hard for a Hybrid to get 70 or 80+, if not 100+.
Highway mileage has nothing to do with hybrid vs. non-hybrid. You're still getting energy from the same fuel, in the same way. Even with a hybrid's electric motor helping with acceleration for passing, guess where energy to charge the battery back up again comes from? Ding, the gasoline motor (some regenerative braking, but most of the hybrids don't wait that long before they start charging the pack.)
Take a look at the Insight. It gets noticeably more mileage than any of its hybrid siblings- I think it's in the high 60's or low 70's. Why? It's super-streamlined, complete with wheel skirts over the rear wheels. Now, notice that the shape is quite reminiscent of the Honda CRX, a car that got 50MPG, in the early 80's?
If you completely switched off the hybrid system in a Prius or Honda Civic or (snicker) that hybrid Lexus SUV, guess what- highway gas mileage wouldn't change. The overwhelming factors for highway mileage are aerodynamics and rolling friction (tires, bearings, drivetrain components.) Lowering weight helps too; less energy required to accelerate and go up hills- and hybrids have that working against them because the battery packs, extra electronics+wiring, and traction motor all add weight.
Diesels like the VW TDIs get 45-50MPG on the highway, and they do it with the same aerodynamics as standard VW's AND the extra weight of the heavier diesel engine, because diesels are more efficient. Put a diesel engine in a Insight, and you'd probably get a similar boost in mileage as between an gasoline Jetta and a TDI Jetta. Heck, you might crack 100mpg without breaking a sweat.
Please help metamoderate.
Nihon deha, kuruma ga anata wo untensuru! (i know, its bad :p)
Why in the hell would you immediatly think of "Finally, note that sprawl is still desirable as a protection against nuclear terrorism." ? Are you so quaking in fear of the possibility of nuclear terrorism , when there hasn't been any terrosim related to nuclear material, only conventional explosive ? Low density is fine if you IGNORE the cost of transportation. In case you are not aware of it , low density sprawl is terrible for goods distribution and unsustainable if there is a fuel shortage.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Nyjnlf fnir shry sbe gur xnzvxnmr nggnpx!
55 MPG ? Can I return mine that gets in the 30's at best?
He's just karma whoring. "Erris" is a sockpuppet account for the well-known troll twitter. He doesn't really have anything intelligent to say other than to repeat what the article already makes clear enough.
If you think US roads are poorly designed, please come to Japan and spend some time driving. These people in the article must spend all their time on farm roads during off hours. Japanese roads are by for the worst anywhere for cars. (and I have driven on four continents.) Nothing but stoplights, traffic and people. The stoplights are never synchronized and going anywhere in Japan by car painful by US standards. Why do you think they developed the hybrids in the first place? --- because of all the stop and go driving.
two) How exactly does sprawl help protect against nuclear terrorism? Maybe you mean low density sprawl, but only killing 10,000 people per square kilometer is hardly protection! especially since the terrorist would simply bomb the high density bits.
three) If low density development is encouraged, mass transit and bicycles become impractical, highways become necessary for most travel, and you end up with LA. have you ever driven in LA?
Since I only post to counter "groupthink", I EXPECT to be modded down.
How fast can this Tofu driver make it down the mountain after his morning delivery.
I'm hearing rumors, that so many folks [in USA, etc.] have converted Priuses to 100% Electric power, that Toyota has plans to release such a variation themselves...
Anybody know how likely this is to be true? (Is there such a version in any other market?)
These former record holders in the US achieved ~110 mpg in a Prius.d .htm
http://hybridcars.about.com/od/news/a/100mpgrecor
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05220/550484.stm
One of them achieves 59 (US) mpg in a non-hybrid 2005 Honda Accord by adopting crazy hypermiling techniques. See http://hybridfest.com/MotherJones.htm.
Reducing weight would help a lot. I seem to recall reading on fueleconomy.gov that if all the current vehicles kept their drivetrain technology but had the same vehicle weight as the average car in the late 1980s, the US fleet fuel economy would go up by about 33%.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
My friend was like this. He had a Insight which featured a real time projection of fuel economy, and he'd do crazy things like draft RIGHT BEHIND a semi going downhill just to see how far he could press it. It was kind of entertaining to see the extents he would go just to save a few dollars of gas. Of course, the kid delivered pizza in his insight, so I suppose the cost of fuel was offset by the premium he paid for the car. He eventually grew tired of his Insight, and traded it in for an old Civic EX.
The article says "In a country where gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon, at least $1 more than the U.S. price" Well yesterday I paid 1.18 Euro/Liter for Diesel (I live in France). If we convert that to $/gallon makes more than 5.5 $ per gallon. Gasoline ? Bffff I think it's sold at 1.3 Euro /Liter -> more than 6$/gallon
It's the same reason as seatbelt laws: it's not taking yourself out of the gene pool that's the problem, it's you taking someone else out *with* you. Sealtbelt laws arent there as a "nanny-state" precaution as so many of our laws are, they're to stop you from flying through your widshield and causing more damage to everybody else! Remember, driving on public roads is *not* a gaurantted right, you need a license to operate your several ton motorized weapon on public roads. If some idiot wants to ride their motorcycle barefoot on their own property, I don't care. They do that on the same highway I'm driving at and I do.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
- Sorry, not sure how it's spelt in the US. I think what you mean is Low Sulphur Diesel (LSD! makes for an interesting till receipt). Back to the OP with the Skoda, I'm using a heavy Ford Mondeo with a 1.8 litre Turbo-Diesel and it can go from Watford to Aberdeen and quarter of the way back on a single tank of fuel - a range of about 800 miles. The article mentions a user aspiring to a range of just over 700....
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Regenerative braking comes in handy even in a real world highway mileage scenario.
Help me on this one folks. Old European here. The slashdot intro says that 55 miles per gallon makes the Prius "one of the most fuel efficient cars on the road". But over here in Old Europe, a quick look up suggest that's more like about what you'd expect from your typical little runabout hatchback. Millions of them on the road, it's your typical student/ low budget / cheap and cheerful commute to work - down to the shops - off to the parents in another town at the weekend car. Does 70mph happily on the motorway all day with a couple of folk and all their stuff for a camping holiday.
I had a check at a UK govt. site - purely random, it was for driving instructors (!) and it suggested my girlfriend's hatchback, a Peugeot 106 should be happy doing 40mpg in urban areas and 55 in cross country runs (56mph best fuel consumption) - check http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/bens/ben23.htm Appendix 2. Diesel cars get even better mileage, all the folk I know who are in 'trades' (like plumbers, carpenters, etc) that have to do lots of miles for their business drive these for better mileage.
So why is over 25 miles per gallon (or so) such a big deal in the US? Is it just the fact that petrol is so cheap that you buy bigger cars that do poor mpg? (Here in the UK petrol is about 6 dollars per gallon, how much is it there?)
In many European countries, the rule is you must have rubber soles, in order to create good grip on the pedals. It makes sense really, you don't want your foot sliding off the instant you need to brake hard; same as not keeping loose items on that part of the floor, as they might slide and lodge underneath the pedals.
So yes, that technically rules out driving barefooted, along with the fancy leather-soled Italian shoes. Anyway, most car pedals aren't meant to be used without stiff soles, so they're just too uncomfortable to use any other way.
"Good news, everyone!"
He is not : Starting Score: 1 point Moderation +1 30% Informative 40% Troll 30% Insightful Apparently 40% of the folk moderating saw through him.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
I think, though i'm sure i'll be corrected if wrong, that a US gallon is smaller than a UK imperial gallon.
The US gallon is only 80% of the imperial gallon - it's not clear which units they are using. FWIW, I've got 47mpg (imperial) over 25000 miles in my Jaguar X-Type diesel without doing more than roughly keep to the speed limits, so I'm not overly impressed whichever units are in use.
Do note that this is entirely impossible. The Prius transmission is the hybrid system. It neither resembles nor behaves like a conventional transmission - it is far more mechanically simple and has far more electronic control.
Note that the Prius hybrid system also replaces the starter and the alternator as well, and (from the 2004 model onwards) also runs the air conditioning.
Yes, although engine efficency also plays a big part. The Prius uses a small engine running on the more efficent Atkinson/Miller cycle. The 72HP 1NZ-FXE in the Prius would be undersized for a car of its size, but it's fine with the electric assist.
(Here in the UK petrol is about 6 dollars per gallon, how much is it there?)
About half that. And we think it's the worst thing in the world.
Try driving in Costa Rica. The potholes are just unbelivable anywhere outside pan american highway and people consider traffic laws and speed limits as minor nuisance which is to be ignored.
Yabbit, hypermiling is a lame term. Just try saying "nenpimaniac" out loud... let it roll off your tongue... see?
...have a pipe and pump between the bottom of the driver's seat and the fuel injector, and eat liberal quantities of chilli beans.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
1) The car was a total death trap, weighing just over 1800 lbs, it offered VERY little crash protection and poor traction in adverse weather. (even rain)
2) The way they achieved high mileage was to make it extremely polluting. By running the gas very lean, you don't get complete combustion, and emissions of NO2 and others were dangerously high.
To call it a practical car, you might not need 2 tons of steel, but you certainly need some heft to haul around an engine, 1000 lbs of people, emissions equipment, safety equipment, etc.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
And yes gasoline is so cheap for the most part that we can and do by bigger cars that do poor mpg. They sell gas at 25-30p a liter and 9p of that is road tax, so we don't have the extra payments like you do. At that price it just doesn't make much of a dent in the pocket book even when you have to commute more than 30 miles each direction everyday. The other thing we have is wide roads, lot's of parking, and big garages (you can actually get a full sized SUV into most and have the people on both sides of the vehicle and be able to get out fairly easy). The newer houses typically have room for 3 vehicles and easily fit 2 SUVs and a car. (Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, a Landrover Defender 110 station wagon is what I mean by an SUV.) Those things seems to have a bigger damper on large vehicle sales here in the UK than the price of gas. I cannot get my "tiny", a behemoth by British standards, regular cab Toyota Tacoma (like a hi-lux but bigger) through the door of my garage, and have to park it in the street. Of course as you know most houses in town don't even have garages. People in the states regularly drive pick-up trucks large enough to haul around the typical British car in the back and rarely ever have a problem finding an easy spot to park in.
Hope that puts things in perspective for you. Of course my dreams of buying a new Tacoma or an FJ cruiser, both larger than I have now, are on the back burner, so I have been eye-balling one of the new Mini's. (The sad thing is it won't fit in my garage either.) It get's a respectable 35-40 mpg better than the 20 I get with the Tacoma. Of course the one I want is the S model rather the eco model. :)
cheers! most informative, thanks.
hehehe Toyota Hi-Lux considered "tiny" ! yup, there's definitely a different culture in the USA from the UK then, grin! As you know most people would laugh at you in the UK if you have one of those and don't have a serious reason to be using one (farmer, builder, park ranger) - though that said there's increasingly an SUV culture here alas. I agree that it's luckily been slowed down by there just not being the parking space/manoeuvring room in most towns for monster vehicles.
In English, taking extraordinary measures toward achieving maximum fuel efficiency in an automobile is known as hypermiling [self-link].
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
Oh noes, some people did something that you find distasteful. Better hate their entire culture!
Do you really not see how stupid that is? Do you think that Americans have never done anything similarly offensive? Heck, ever since WWII, we've regularly gone around to smaller counties and uprooted their governments, turning them into a warzone and then pulling out when we've decided it's too big of a mess for us to deal with. All in the name of spreading "Democracy." Ask people in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, or any number of other places how they feel about America.
Go ahead, just try to pretend that you're better than Japan.
The problem with reducing weight is that the majority of the increased weight is due to increased safety requirements. While crumple zones don't have to be heavy, there are still mass requirements.
Oddly enough; I blame CAFE standards for driving people to SUVs. By requiring such high milage requirements, the car companies economized in ways that drove many people away from them. Simple things like sitting too low for somebody with limited mobility* to comfortably enter/exit them. The increase in available storage space; flexible useage of passanger/cargo area.
*And I'm not talking about seriously limited mobilitiy.
I don't read AC A human right
> Diesels like the VW TDIs get 45-50MPG on the highway,[...] because diesels are more efficient.
What many people forget is that Diesel has a higher energy density, so a Diesel per se engine should have a better mileage.
k2r
That style of driving would work in Japan except for Metro Tokyo.
it is not distasteful.
they are BLEEDING the dolphins to death because "their meat will taste better due to adrenaline rush".
coupled with the fact that dolphins have an iq roughly equal to goofy rednecks, or any other portion of the human society that is not "intellectually gifted", this becomes a genocide. justifying and approving that would plainly mean one approves/justifies cannibalism, and even with torture too, of the less intellectually gifted portions of human demographic. or, mentally retarded people.
Read radical news here
The problem with reducing weight is that the majority of the increased weight is due to increased safety requirements. While crumple zones don't have to be heavy, there are still mass requirements.
What BS. Most SUVs do not have crumple zones.
Oddly enough; I blame CAFE standards for driving people to SUVs. By requiring such high milage requirements, the car companies economized in ways that drove many people away from them.
You must be joking.
CAFE standards have been pretty constant since the late 1980s. CAFE did not have high mileage requirements. Meeting these minimal standards is not difficult - other countries have far better average fuel consumption.
What Detroit figured out was that if they built "trucks" instead of "cars", the mileage requirements were much lower, the safety standards were much lower, and they could continue to use outdated body-on-frame manufacturing techniques instead of moving to modern unibody construction.
And for big trucks (over 6000 pounds) like the Suburban, they were exempt from all mileage requirements since they were classified as "commercial vehicles".
Most importantly, since the Japanese were killing Detroit with better cars, Detroit could shift to trucks with much less competition and much higher profit margins.
Through most of the 1990s gas was very cheap - the SUV owner wouldn't be paying much for gas anyway.
Of course, these days they Japanese are building SUVs as well...
What BS. Most SUVs do not have crumple zones.
Yes they do. They're designed differently, but then, they'd have to be. You have less room to crumple, but then, you also have more room for shoving the engine underneath the passangers.
CAFE standards have been pretty constant since the late 1980s. CAFE did not have high mileage requirements. Meeting these minimal standards is not difficult - other countries have far better average fuel consumption.
They still disallow the types of vehicles many consumers want.
My whole point is that SUVs fulfill a demand. If there wasn't a demand, no amount of fiddling would have the domestic manufacturers being able to sell high-margin large vehicles while under competition from foreign manufacturers making efficient and high quality cars.
And the whole 'body on frame' vs unibody construction has it's own tradeoffs. Body on frame makes more sense for larger vehicles, but most SUVs are unibody today anyways.
Look at the market today. We've gone from nearly 100% 'full size' SUVs to a majority of mid-size to small SUVs, built more like cars. Clearly, despite the lower gas milage and higher cost, there are reasons for people to select the SUV over even a mid-size car. Higher gas prices have depressed, but not killed, the market.
Unless this demand of the market is addressed, you're not going to get rid of the 'gas-guzzler' SUV. Though producing hybrid SUVs are at least a stop-gap. It'll be less efficient than a car type hybrid, but the purchaser of a hybrid SUV is more likely to purchase a gas SUV instead of a hybrid anyways.
I don't read AC A human right
Anyway, getting back to the point, Toyota's claim to 55 miles per gallon isn't that special. My old Morris Minor that I had back in the '70s would comfortably do 50 mpg.
What's more, I was able to do a complete overhaul of the beast with a very much standard toolbox. I can guarantee that the modern machine would require a bunch of electronic gizmos that no bush mechanic would ever be able to afford or find space for.
...reason 1: Americans like what everybody else has. We REFUSE to drive anything simple and efficient because it's not a Navigator or a LS460 or a Corvette like that kool rich guy/gal with all the 'biddies' on his/her arm has. If poeple were dancing and singing around and being sexy around a Saturn hybrid, then we would want that too. Instead the marketing poeple drag out children and birds when advertising them. Makes me want one, what about you?
reason 2: America is V8 land. Who the hell wants a 4-cylnder ( or I4, or I-force, or Eco4((or force))? We settle for V6's, but only if we REALLY can't afford a V8. But that 4 -- that's for tree huggers and whipped mama's boys.
reason 3: Anything mildly fuel efficient or innovative in the American auto market seems to look like, well... a spaceship. The Civic, Camry and Lexus hybrids seem to be the first batch of hybrids that don't look like hybrids. If the Prius looked more like a Corolla, I might consider it. But instead it looks like a "future car." I refuse to look like a effeminant pinhead tooling around town in a Jetson's car. This is also a jab at the GM, Ford and Honda forward looking styling they foist on thier innovative products. I'll never buy on, and apparently millions feel the same way -- cause they don't sell.
reason 4: Gas is cheap. If I can still afford to fill my tank, gas is cheap. When I have to decide between eating and filling my tank, then gas is starting to get out of hand. Until then, it's cheaper than a gallon of milk, so that's cheap.
reason 5: There are no controls in my car to keep my from pushing the gas pedal all the way in whenever I want to. It's fun, I reccomend it to everyone. Especially the poeple in the Prius' and Explorers that drive in front of me and keep me from being able to keep my gas pedal pushed all the way in.
reason 6: There's no profit in it right now. Not much of a market despite the fact that it gets lots of airtime. See reason 3.
reason 7: No one knows how to drive right in this country. Average American can drive badly enough to bring a 65+mpg car down to 25 in daily driving I bet.
I could go on, but I think I've earned my Troll rating for the day.
Heybiff
Even the Sun goes down.
This is among the most horrible things I have ever seen.
This is barbarism embraced as heritage.
Racism? This isn't about race. It's about (fucked-up) culture. Much (most?) barbarism happens outside the lines permitted by cultures: There are Americans who torture animals too -- but they are jailed if caught; the culture does not permit it. The problem is when culture encourages this stuff. Bullfighting, in Spain and Mexico, is another example; there is no good excuse for it.
In each case, it is "ethnic identity" which is the excuse used -- a concept which is hugely conflated with "race," but not the same (and that's important). The whole process by which ethnic identity works relies on othering -- defining who is outside the tribe. And race is great for that: it's pretty obvious most of the time. But it's just one way of achieving the more-general goal of defining a them.
So, to justify their dolphin-killing, I am sure that these "fishermen" call it their "heritage:" this is part of ethnic identity, and so relies on defining a them. "What, do you want to not kill dolphins," runs a dialogue which is neither spoken nor even explicitly thought through, "and be like one of those others?" You can insert the name of any derided out-group (local or global) for "others" before: Say, "Koreans," or, "white people."
Now here's the problem with what you said: When you made killing dolphins about race, you used the same kind of "othering" process that those killing them use as their justification. It's tempting, I know [fuck have I had some race issues in my life (interracial dating: didn't think it would be a big deal -- it was)]. But it's the wrong route, because as a side-effect it creates the same us and them categories that provide justification for horrors like this.
There's a huge area within which everything is relative. But outside that, there still exist objective right and wrong. And outside the relative zone, "ethnic identity" creates evil. I don't care if your grandfather did it: Think for yourself.
US auto manufacturers have convinced Americans that they need 4,000 pounds of steel wrapped around them to feel "safe" on the roads, and that 25mpg is the price you pay for "safety." What they can't bring themselves to say is that the best safety gear is between your ears, but that's just because most Americans don't seem to have come with that as standard equipment.
(I'm an American, so I can speak from experience.)
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Maybe I'm just an asshole, but I never thought the Prius was a big deal to begin with. 55 MPG for an overpriced hybrid vehicle, or 35 MPG for a cheap city car that costs 1/3 of the Prius; seems like an easy choice for most people. Buying a Prius still means spending a ton of money over the lifetime of your vehicle, except you're giving more to the auto manufacturer and less to the fuel distributors.
Come up with a car that results in net savings over the lifetime of the vehicle, then people will have a real financial incentive to buy it up. Being environmentally friendly is something most people agree is a good idea, but the tense economy we live in takes precedence over long-term green ideals whose impact will be felt only after this generation's passing, if at all.
100 MPG ? If it means I could get 3-4 times more distance out of every dollar of fuel pumped, sign me up! Until then, I'll keep driving my thirsty little speeder.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It's poeple like you spreading the virtues of diesel efficiency that made the oil companies take notice last gas season and raise the price of diesel to keep pace with gas so that all would share the pain. You keep talking like that and who know what all would happen next.
Heybiff
Even the Sun goes down.
Bought a Toyota Aygo about a year ago to go to work, i do 50mpg, and some hills on the way. But that's not all,this car costs about half of a Prius, it has 4 doors, smaller ok, but stil..and in my opinion it looks better than a prius.
you have to look at total cost of ownership too, not only mileage, i pay less insurance, tires are probably cheaper..
anyway,
It's great, and I appreciate you pointing out the inconistencies. Thanks. But do you really need to attack the guy? Can't we all just get along? Let make Slashdot a happy happy place to grow and learn from oneanother. Can't an American V8 Hummer type get along with a Euro 3cylinder diesel pod-car type?
Heybiff -- modded:Troll since '99
Even the Sun goes down.
I wouldn't mind eating some of the stupider members of society. Some of them are too scrawny to make it worth it, but most of them have been fattened on a steady diet of potato chips and bud light.
I imagine they'd taste quite a bit like pork.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Even a modest attack would, apparently, severely tax emergency services, and would also tend to take out a large amount of capacity, as capacity tends to exist where there are lots of people:
s equences_of.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/con
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
i am aware of the "otherism" process that comes with any sort of differentiation, and the pain it brings in the form of estrangement and resulting enmity and ultimately wars.
but
a measure of differentiation is needed to distinguish between what is right and not, and to discourage, in fact disallow what is not right.
no "culture" or "ethnicity" should be allowed to do uncivil, barbarian things on ANY grounds, even if thats their 10.000 year old heritage, culture, or religion.
if we allow these shitheads to continue with that "culture", then we have to permit some tribes in africa and amazon today to continue cannibalism "tradition" that they had practised for a few thousand years.
it is not justifiable or by any means acceptable.
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Typical American, did you know pigs were intelligent animals as well, even more intelligent than dogs?
You think your pork, beef and chicken dinners were happily frolicking in the fields, then just appeared on your plate, painlessly and obliviously? You're so fucking far removed from the reality of your food supply, it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
Have you ever killed a chicken, a pig or a cow yourself? Do you even know where that meat comes from? The meat industry can't even pretend to be humane. waaaaah the fucking dolphins, waaah the torture *starts chomping on your big macs*
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Hmm.... "Fuel Consumption". How is it measured in the UK ?? First you have to buy a CALCULATOR. Then you convert how many litres bought into "imperial" gallons. Then you divide by miles travelled !! or the other way to get litres per 100 kms...
The UK government's design speeds in highway design software suites have been metric since 1969 !! yet road signs and car speedometers are in "miles"....
UK children (for a couple of generations at least) don't know what a "mile" is, yet they are surrounded by street/highway signs in miles and miles per hour !!
In the USA they started talking about 3.5 litre engines etc.. but Americans have no idea what litres are ! On a different slant, however, you cannot ask them to shoot photographic film in 1.4 inch format because they are used to 35 mm film !! Nor do they refer to cocaine weights in ounces or pounds, but in grams and kilos !!
What a confused world we live in !
If you think US roads are poorly designed, please come to Japan and spend some time driving. These people in the article must spend all their time on farm roads during off hours.
I spent a summer in Tokyo and thought the roads were well built for my purposes. I got everywhere I needed to go by bike and public transport. Grids work, even when they are intentionally convoluted as they are in Tokyo and Washington DC. If you live close to your work and play, you are always better off. I understand there are people who spend hours on trains everyday and that is sad, but they would never get where they are going by car. It would be better for them if their company had places for them to work that were closer to where they lived.
If low density development is encouraged, mass transit and bicycles become impractical,
Tokyo, which is low density because of earthquake danger, is a good counterpoint to that. Paris is also a place that has intentionally lower density but excellent public transport.
It works when you have mixed development and a decent street grid. The kind of development that does not work is the large unmixed kind, where square miles are carved out for houses or business or shopping and then connected with two or three roads that everyone must drive. A low density grid system is much better than that. Everything is close because you have not banished grocers and other business from your neighborhood. Everyone takes a different road to get where they need to go because they can and they are not all going to the same place. Less transport is needed because things are made close to where people are.
How exactly does sprawl help protect against nuclear terrorism?
The type of development I'm talking about creates redundancy and spreads the target out. Fires don't spread, people can evacuate to avoid fall out and fewer people are obliterated and exposed to begin with. A tool that's not effective is less likely to be used.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
That style of driving would work in Japan except for Metro Tokyo.
Yeah, there you need to get on the subway or ride a bike. I don't know about the rest of the place but apparently it happens.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Is there a country in the world which hasn't done some horrific things?
Or killed animals for food in cruel ways?
I'm not excusing their behavior, but it's not like the Japanese are especially bad. Humans are especially bad.
(See also And you are lynching Negroes!)
That is why we need family-sized vehicles. The ecos made station wagons illegal, so the car companies invented the minivan to replace it. And somehow that, and pickup trucks (farm vehicles, northern winter vehicles) are all classified as Sports Utility vehicles, when it isn't about sports, but practicality in real life.
Comparing a one person, incredibly unsafe, walled-in motorcycle with a family-sized vehicle is apples and oranges and completely unfair.
What you typically find promoting these hybrids and walled-in motorcycles are unmarried people with no offspring who have contempt for families and for people who don't live in major urban centers.
In reality, they are misanthropes.
Here's a list of the European vehicles that get over 40mpg US (107 in the list...113 total). Al figures are in US, not Imperial gallons.
http://bigmileage.com/40mpg.htm
http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/
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Wrong way around. SUV's , and some station wagons (Subaru Outback for one) are classified as light trucks. There is no official SUV class.
And when, exactly, did station wagons become illegal? Nobody told me when I bought my wagons. If you are referring to the 70's oil crisis, I think you might be a little confused as to what exactly happened. Or, you might be referring to the EPA's emissions standards. I remember, when they completely stopped making six and eight cylinder engines for 20 years because no one could pass emissions. So, if you could just remind me of when that period was again?
It seems we agree.
1 - I am not american. I am turkish.
2 - Self consciousness (or cognitive level) of pigs, cows and such are much lower than humans, dolphins, whales, parrots and chimpanzees.
3 - I dont think porks, cows or any other animal happily and instantly fill my plate whilst frolicking in the fields just a moment ago. I know how it happens. That is why I am a vegetarian.
4 - I have not killed anything, and i am not eating anything that is killed.
- bleeding dolphins to death can not be justified or made to appear a light matter with the fact that a brutal meat industry exists in the world. if such a logic would apply, then it would easily be proposed to legalize torture for retarded, idiot, moron human beings or any being with less cognitive skill.
- evolution allows survival of the fittest. best form of being fit, is COOPERATION. species which are pitiful in physical or intellectual strength, cooperate, and this way manage to keep up or ahead of many stronger and more adept species. if intelligent and higher level species create any form of symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship, effect is multiples of the lower levels of organism.
this is why there shouldnt be killing of any species for survival. sustenance with byproducts without killing anything leads to abundance. this is actually where the evolution of this planet is heading, however futuristic or sci-fi that may sound.
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we are not talking about history. and we are not talking about illegally doing it either. also, we are not talking about "animals". we are talking about year 2007, and a country which is supposed to be civil.
dolphins are comparable to humans in cognitive terms, along with a number of chimpanzee types and gorillas. we are talking about semi-sentient/sentient murder.
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From my personal experience driving a Prius for a couple months now it is best to leave it on cruise control during highway driving, unless of course it is rush hour in which case you will naturally pulse and glide as traffic ebbs and flows. The Prius gets significantly better gas mileage at these lower speeds as long as traffic isn't coming to a complete or near stop and then speeding up quickly again repeatedly. Cruise control set for 70MPH will not get as good MPG as 65MPH, but you would probably do better than pulse and glide at 70MPH.
My best average to date has been 54MPG on a single tank of gas, traveling during the beginning or ending of rush hour (i.e. not actual peak rush hour) with cruise set to 63MPH for the majority of my commute. Initially I was getting about 45MPG for the first few weeks but since then I'm averaging around 47-49MPG for any given fill up.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
a 100+ mpg car could easily be made, just put a very small engine in it. It will be horiffically underpowered, but itll get you there eventually.
I think we're all too tied up in wanting the power to be there when we call on it, but i think i could get by with a 1 liter engine, or even smaller.
The original beetle only had 34 hp & it could get up to 70mph... eventually.
Still, I'd like to see someone do it. We really need some Hondas with modifications other than huge, farty exhausts.
Everyone uses SI units but you. Who the fuck do you think you are?
The Prius' CVT seems to be mechanically simpler than a conventional automatic transmission. AFAIK there are no clutch plates, no torque converter and only 1 planetary gearset. I took some pictures of FWD and RWD automatic transmissions and put them up at http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=30245&st= 0&p=403617&#entry403617. You can look at what the Prius' CVT/PSD (power split device) look like a little further down and at http://privatenrg.com/#Planetary_Gear. http://eahart.com/prius/psd/ has some more info and a simulator.
A Prius doesn't have an alternator, the inverter works to charge the 12V aux/accessory battery. It doesn't have a starter either, MG1 acts as the starter.
Hybrids are not tied to a particular fuel source such as gasoline. There can be ethanol based hybrids and there are diesel hybrids already.
s _rgb.pdf, a barrel of crude oil produces many products but it produces 2x the amount of gasoline as it does diesel. So, getting 60 mpg of diesel used the same amount of mostly imported foreign oil as a 30 mpg gasoline car.
That said, reducing the amount of REFINED fuel and saving $ != reducing crude oil consumption. Per http://www.api.org/classroom/tools/upload/oilfact
A Prius starts at around $22K. What kind of new car can you buy for ~$7500? Will it have all the features that are in the $22K Prius? Will it be a deathtrap compared to a Prius? You do realize that there still is a tax credit for Priuses of $787.50 per http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=157557,0 0.html and http://www.aceee.org/transportation/hybtaxcred.htm #table. It was $1575 before 3/31/07 and before that it was $3150.
s ing/most-fuelefficient-cars-206/index.htm. The only one that even gets 35 city is the Prius. The next best get 28 or 26 mpg city. The Yaris is a crap car and the Honda Fit is very slow (even slower than a Prius).
4 023460.
As for "35 mpg" cheap city car, what mileage #s are you quoting? The current EPA mileage estimates are quite overinflated, esp. city. For example, when Consumer Reports tested an 06 Civic EX w/1.8L 4 and 5 speed auto, they got 18 city, 43 highway for an overall mileage of 28 mpg. They hybrid version got 26 city, 47 highway, 37 overall. You can see a list of vehicles w/top gas mileage at http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/buyinglea
Consumer Reports found a shortfall in mileage for 90% of the vehicles they tested http://autos.msn.com/advice/CRArt.aspx?contentid=
The regenerative braking really cuts down on brake wear. If you're light on the brakes, you're doing regen almost the whole time until you're down below ~5 mph when the Prius switches to friction brakes. There are documented cases where Prius owners are still on the original pads after 100K miles. That's a pretty significant cost savings in itself.
Contrary to popular belief, there are many parts of LA that are actually larger and more dense than say, San Francisco. If you think LA is not densely populated then I must ask, have you ever driven here?
Nempimania is strictly for Japanese. US drivers simply don't have the culture, patience, stamina, and long-term stick-to-it-ness to get these kinds of mpg over long term useage. US drivers think they get bragging rights by increasing tire sizes, driving Humvee's, out accelerating the next guy, and paying extra for high-octane fuel. In the US status = consumption. The higher your consumption the greater your status.
In the US, bragging rights might more likely go to the guy who says he gets 150 mpg in his OldMobile convertible and can make everyone believe he does, even though he really gets 15. In the US perception trumps reality when it comes to status.
Mother Jones published an article some weeks back about the "hypermilers," a number of automotive enthusiasts whose method of madness is getting as much gas mileage out of a car as possible.
Some of the techniques they use include avoiding use of breaks whenever possible, attempting to stay at 50mph a much as they can, taking turns at the fastest possible speed, and strategizing as they drive to hit traffic lights when they're green as often as possible.
In short, a very very Slashdot way to drive....
Per http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s0600 3.htm, the average curb weight of 2006 model year vehicles sold in the US was 4142 lbs. 50% of them were "light trucks" which includes SUVs, minivans, pickups and some vans.
There are an insane # of solo and/or soccer mom driven 5000+ lb. SUVs such as Ford Expeditions, Chevy Suburbans, Yukons, Tahoes and Lincoln Navigators. Hummer H2s are even worse w/ 6400 lb. curb weight. They're exempt from even being TESTED for mileage and don't even count against GM's CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy Numbers) per http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/which_tested.shtml because they have over 8500 lb. GVWR.
They're gross polluters and a danger to other drivers.
I just paid $2000 for my 91 Corolla stick (exact blue book). At 1/10th the cost of a new Prius, it doesn't even have to last very long to be much better for the bottom line.
What are these maintenances hassles? There aren't any. The hybrid battery is warranted for 10 years/150K miles in CA and a few other states. It's 8 year/100K miles for everyone else. http://john1701a.com/prius/owners/jesse3.htm is at 280K miles on his previous gen Prius on the original battery.
As for your misinformation about high-mileage range, the Prius can only go a couple miles on electric alone and can be on electric only at 42 mph max. The rest of the time, it's providing assist. If you accelerate VERY slowly, you can accelerate on electric only. When you're braking and coasting, you're regenerating and recapturing some of that kinetic energy instead of having it become useless heat and brake dust.
There are documented cases of people still on the original brake pads after 100K miles due to the minimal brake wear. That's a savings in maintenance.
Reducing the amount of REFINED fuel (in this case diesel vs. gasoline) and saving $ != reducing crude oil consumption. Per http://www.api.org/classroom/tools/upload/oilfacts _rgb.pdf, a barrel of crude oil produces many products but it produces 2x the amount of gasoline as it does diesel. So, getting 60 mpg of diesel used the same amount of mostly imported foreign oil as a 30 mpg gasoline car.
From what I've read, the taxation system in Europe is goofy and setup in such a way that diesel is much cheaper than gasoline. So, of course it makes sense to sell lots of diesels there.
hehe. Another good reason not to own a truck! :-) A friend of ours has a Ford Transit van - I asked him if he was some kind of masochist owning it, he probably moves friends' stuff every week/ pick up some logs / take rubbish down the dump for his family etc...
:-)
Maybe you're both just really nice community minded people and are building up vast reserves of good will and social capital
So it makes sense that you want to cruise with as few engine RPM's as possible, and automakers reporting big V-6 gas mileage (Impala, Malibu, V6 Camry, Avalon) have very tall gearing. But do you want to accelerate in Granny fashion? The optimal efficiency is somewhere in the 2000-2500 RPM zone. Perhaps if you accelerate very slowly you can keep the engine at a more efficient load longer and keep your average speed down as well to reduce losses?
The other interesting thing is that pulse driving around 25 MPH gives better gas mileage in a hybrid than steady driving at 25 MPH -- seems to contradict the advice of a steady foot on the gas pedal. I guess even with the small, electric-assisted gas engine in a hybrid, that engine is oversized for constant cruise speed too and you benefit by cycling it on and off. I suppose someone could program the control system to cycle the engine on and off and be constantly alternating between gas and electric operation, but they don't do that because it would either be bad for emissions, annoying to the customer, hard on the battery, or not effective on gas mileage because the round trip of energy from the gas engine through generator through the battery to the motor.
If pulse driving where you try to switch the gas engine on and off with involving the electrics is optimal, it will be interesting what can be achieved with the GM belt-alternator-startor "mild hybrids." Some in the hybrid enthusiast community have derided the GM effort as being window dressing and not a proper hybrid, but if the GM BAS hybrids have motor stop or fuel cutoff during coast, there may be a way to get high gas mileage out of those using such techniques.
Some form of pulse-glide seems to be effective in my gas engine non-hybrid Camry, perhaps for a 10-20 percent pickup in gas mileage in city driving. While the motor doesn't shut off, the transmission is set up to freewheel during coast at low engine RPM's. Applying short bursts of engine power together with coasting as much as possible seems to be better than a steady cruise application of the gas at speeds of 25-35 MPH based on Scan Gauge gas mileage readings.
I have looked to see if pulse-glide has wider applicability than just the Prius. On one hand you don't want to drive in a way to be dangerous or obstructing traffic. But on the other hand, in traffic you are always adjusting speed to match conditions, and if you can get better mileage through better understanding of engine operation, that is useful.
3.8L is roughly a gallon in terms of liquid volume. Or so says the markings on plastic milk jugs and water used per flush on practically every toilet or urinal. Also most beverage bottles are marked in liters along with the oz. equivalent. It's not like we're not exposed to metric measures here... As for sticking with other measurement units? We probably need an excuse to do some math which we'd avoid otherwise. Conversions involves a bit more work than moving a decimal around. Also the older units tend to work better in a literary sense.
In Chicago, any savings you could make with a fuel efficient car is offset by ridiculous parking costs. Despite having a nice grid, traffic also tends to suck and you lose time trying to find a parking spot. CTA or Metra really is the way to go in that town. I'd even argue for bicycle on some routes if the weather is actually nice enough.
If you're just going between Chicago's 'burbs, sprawl, mostly free parking, and poor Pace Bus coverage makes the public transportaion situation the complete opposite of the city proper. Sporadic pedestrian sidewalks, and lax enforcement of roadway bicycle rights as a vehicle (which they do have in Illinois) make those options difficult too. In which case you really do need a car. Prius would excell in this environment, since most cars get 0MPG while waiting on traffic lights.
I don't want to sound like a crazed liberal, but Herr Bush, the representative of the People in the Government, thinks torturing people is A-OK, so I guess I'm "ill-disposed" towards anything American, by that crazed ridiculous logic which is incapable of seperating aspects of a culture, in a knee-jerky sort of way. yippee!!
I agree with you on the mobility part. My dad has a mini-van because it's easier for him to get in and out. Unfortunately, the CAFE standards were never modernized, so the car companies ended up creating classes of passenger vehicles that would allow them to be exempt from the CAFE standards for cars. IIRC, the PT Cruiser isn't considered a car because of how the rear tailgate is designed allows it to be classified as a light truck, even though a large number of the various components are identical to the Neon.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
In regards to point 4- I bet the [local insect of annoyance, be them flies, gnats, mosquitoes, ticks...] absolutely adore you.
But on another note- remember: Plants are people too! [And on another, but slightly more serious note, there was actually a Discovery Channel snippet about an 'intelligent' slime mold. From the video snippet I saw, it looked like it "memorized" the shortest path through a maze and could run it consistently.]
we are not talking about "intelligence". self cognition, cognition of others and the immediate entities as a social environment counts as sentiency. in the respect you are thinking computers are "intelligent" too.
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Don't forget that air resistance goes up exponentially with speed. When I drive my 2003 Hybrid Civic at 75 MPH, I get close to 40 MPG. When I drive at 90, I get about 33-35 MPG. Fortunatly, I can still squeek into the EPA limit that allows me to drive in the carpool lane. ;)
No, I will not work for your startup
http://www.calcars.org/priusplus.html
The proper way to modify a Prius is to get rid of the redundancy and margins that Toyota built in(ie - it can function entirely on gas or electric for silly ranges). In a nutshell, they hacked the software to allow the car to run on batteries up to 45mph or so and put in a bigger battery pack. So the average commute went from 40mpg to about 75-80mpg. No change in driving style, and when the battery pack runs down a bit(long trips), it reverts to a normal Prius at about 35-40mpg average.
These guys probably have the X-prize thing wrapped up, but then again, there is a LOT of pressure forming right now on the X-prize community to either severely limit electric use or to get rid of most hybrids entirely.
A 100mpg fuel-only powered car would be very very tough to make - as tough as the original X-Prize was. A 100mpg Hybrid, shoot, I could build one in my garage in under six months, as could most of us here.
Beating the EPA - The Why's and how to Hypermile
Engine tech has a lot to do with it. Same fuel source by very different MPG. Let's compare something fairly similiar. Prius example, what 1.5L Civic gets ~48MPG if you added stuff into it to push it 2900lbs?
NONE! Why? The 1996 Civic HX isn't that aerodynamically inferior to a Prius. The Civic is lighter, has a CVT transmission, smaller tires, and a super-duper VTEC-E efficient engine, and generally representative an efficient non-hybrid vehicle. It still does not get 48MPG!
What makes the Prius's Hybrid Synergy Drive better then? The battery and the hybrid tech. Why? One is the hybrid tech smooths the peak energy demands from the ICE and ALSO laps up the excess splash:
a) When you accelerate hard in a ICE, the engine goes to high RPMs immediate and pumps out power, and not usually at high efficiency. When you foot off, the engine spins down; if you had a turbo, you would hear the puuushhh of pressure being let off.
b) What does the hybrid engine do? It lets the electrics accelerate the vehicle first, and the spools up the engine to its peak efficiency to assist in acceleration and moderate battery drain.
Different.
If you watch the energy monitors, the hybrid system is constantly assisting even in highway driving to smooth out energy demands. You can call it squeezing the maximum possible efficiency it can out of the ICE's performance.
Diesels also have 10% more energy content than gasoline, so that 45-50MPG is actually 40.5MPG to 45MPG, and I'm assuming that's with conservative driving. That puts it 10MPG below a Prius's conservative driving of 55MPG. Fair EPA numbers still puts it @ 41MPG, or 36.9MPG gasoline, which is still about 10MPG below a Prius's 2008 EPA numbers.
So, it's perfectly reasonable (and has been demonstrated) that hybrid tech can push a normal engine beyond normal MPG.
Now, if you coupled a 1.5L TDI with hybrid tech, you can get 80MPG as demonstrated by the BIG 3 in the 1990s with the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles.