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Hybrid Cars to Get New Mileage Ratings
Skidge writes "Wired is running a piece showing the drastically reduced mileage ratings for hybrids after the upcoming changes in gas mileage calculations by the EPA. While the cars themselves aren't changing, plugging these new numbers in to the equation makes a hybrid much less cost effective: "The two top-selling hybrid vehicles, the Prius and Honda's Civic Hybrid, will lose 12 and 11 miles per gallon respectively from their city driving estimates." The new values come from more realistic testing; the old, over-inflated ratings were higher in part because the cars idled a lot, allowing the hybrids to completely turn off their engines. The new ratings should be more in line with what hybrid drivers are actually seeing."
It's important to have accurate mileage ratings on cars, and it's hard to understand how the EPA could be so bad at it. Why do they try to estimate instead of just sampling?
Here's a simple approach: When a car comes in for an oil change, read the mileage rating stored inthe on-board computer and upload it to an EPA database. Problem solved.
I thought the key to getting good mileage with a hybrid was understanding how to drive it properly and, when that was done, folks were getting close to the listed mileage.
Hax-fu?
It's important to note that these new ratings also change the mileage estimates for pure gasoline engines as well.
root@allevil:~#
Far as i know they still test EPA mileage ratings by using an exhaust sniffer and rollers.... indoors.... it fails to account for AIR RESISTANCE!
/actually drive/ the damn car through an /actual city/ and average the results to get the fuel rating.
far as im concerned they should require someone to
For 'real world' numbers: http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It's sad how every article about hybrids always focuses on how many years it takes to save enough gas to pay fro the added cost of the car. That's not what it is about! Especially not if you use the gas prices in a country where said price is held artificially low!
It's about how much more we could do by using technology in a sensible way rather than spending it on finding ways to allow every Joe to accelerate a 7 ton monster truck 0-60 in under 4 seconds!
Realistically you do idle a lot. Red lights, idiot drivers, and traffic, and you're spending a lot of time idling. Not idling is not realistic. Even on highways you have some idling time, between dallas/houston(abt 4 hrs to 5 hrs) I idle about 30-45 minutes because of traffic and construction, and that's between the cities, where you can have even more traffic depending on what time. Traffic sucks, but it's a part of life. And yes, if you know how to drive a hybrid, you'll get mileage over what the EPA currently says(and drastically that over what it will say soon).
And with the tax credits (I think ending this year or ended) it's been typically cost effective depending on what type of hybrid you get. A civic hybrid from last year would have paid for itself within 8 months with my level of driving, a 3000 premium over regular civics with 2000-2500(I forget where it was last year) back from the gov't means a difference of 500-1000 to make up, which is pretty easy with how gas prices went last summer.
I hate these people who run the numbers and leave out other numbers. Tax Credits on IRS page
Yeah, they aren't guaranteed, but if you buy early you can get them pretty easily. Or who say "Batteries are expensive" when they have very long warranties that cover it. If you want to pretend to know what you're talking about, then do the proper research. If you want the most cost effective vehicle, gas wise, get a bike. You have to be comfortable with your car, hybrid or not, and if you don't like them don't get them. But don't make up fake reasons.
It's probably because they're three lanes wide, weigh six tons, and get about five-miles-per-gallon highway. Doesn't hurt that they're ugly and most people who drive them drive like dicks.
The Farewell Tour II
We have a 2003 VW Jetta TDI, and we consistently get 40-45 MPG. If I drive very conscientiously I get over 50 MPG. As I understand it, the main reason that diesels aren't picking up in the US is that the EPA restricts their sale: car companies can only sell up to a certain percentage of their fleet as diesels. Demand for them cannot legally be satisfied, so they are not marketed at all.
Add to this the facts that diesel fuel requires less energy to produce, and can be made (mostly) renewably from just about anything that grows, and diesels blow hybrids out of the water in terms of fuel efficiency.
Maybe this change in rating schemes will take some of the marketability out of hybrids and raise awareness for diesel... though more likely it will just encourage people to say fuck it and buy an RV to drive their kids to soccer practice.
AC remarked: They are shit 'cars' for a sick society. If you 'drive' a Hummer, you are - almost by definition - a total asshole with no aesthetic taste, no interest in cars, no basic grasp of physics and no financial sense. You are, for all intets and purposes, an American idiot.
I doubt it has anything to do with Americans being the way they are. Hummer driving, like driving V12 Benzes and BWMs 200kph on the autobahn, is conspicuous consumption. This is a species-wide phenomenon which proves they have the resources to burn & some like Freud would say, proves their fitness for reproduction in attracting the female of the species.
It's too damn big. You youngsters probably don't remember this, but there was a time when you could actually see what's going on ahead of you in traffic.
Yeah, the earlier model Saturns were more economical. I have a Saturn V and it burns about 3 tons of fuel a second.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
they got it mixed up... they rate the Hummer in gallons per mile.
Collector's Edition
Alright, time for a reality check here. The Prius is doing such a damn good job on mileage not because it's a hybrid, but because it's an exceptionally well-designed car. Your own experiences with highway driving demonstrate that. Hybrid vehicles should actually get worse highway mileage because of their design. But the Prius doesn't. Why?
The answer lies in more than just its batteries. There are plenty of auto manufacturers jumping on the bandwagon by battery-backing their existing engine designs. That won't do much. Toyota took a different approach. For one, the engine of the Prius was replaced with a more efficient Atkinson Cycle engine. This engine would normally not be viable in a car, as its peak output is quite poor. However, the Prius uses stored battery power to provide maximum torque when accelerating. This makes up for the engine's poor peak power output. Furthermore, the torque delivered by electrical power is more fuel efficient than driving an Otto-cycle engine to sudden, peak power-output conditions.
But the engineers didn't stop there. They used the research behind Continuously Variable Transmissions (CVT) to develop a transmission that can evenly split the power between the electrical and gasoline powered components of the car. This transmission can smoothly transfer power between different sources and outputs, avoiding the limitations and excess power consumption of the traditional geared transmission. This transmission (which Toyota calls a "Power Split Transmission") is only workable in a small car like the Prius, due to the torque limitations of most CVT designs.
Finally, Toyota further hedged the car's bets with computer control and tuning over the entire power system, a low air-resistance body design, lightweight aluminum construction, and vacuum flask coolant storage for fast warm-up times.
What you're looking at is the modern equivalent of a Chevy Sprint. Those three bangers got great mileage at the expense of power and comfort. (My mother had one and managed to get 58 MPG on the highway!) The Prius uses modern technology to provide similar returns, but without the drawbacks that made the Sprint so unpopular in the first place.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Also, due to global warming, the outside air just doesn't cool as well these days.