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EPA Proposes Grading System For Car Fuel Economy
suraj.sun writes with this snippet from CNET:
"The EPA and Department of Transportation on Monday proposed a fuel economy label overhaul to reflect how electric and alternative fuel vehicles stack up against gasoline passenger vehicles. ... The changed label, mandated by the 2007 energy law, includes the same information on city and highway miles per gallon and estimated driving costs based on 15,000 miles a year now available. But the new labels add more comparative information, rating cars on mileage, greenhouse gas contribution, and other air pollutants from tailpipe emissions. That means that consumers can look at a label to see how one vehicle compares to all available vehicles, rather than only cars in a specific class. One label proposes grades, ranging from an A-plus to a D. There are no failing grades, since vehicles need to comply with the Clean Air Act."
Just how stupid do you have to be to need a giant letter grade on a car? I hope that version doesn't fly.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
One label proposes grades, ranging from an A-plus to a D
So is every car going to get re-graded every year, as technology progresses? Seems like a silly way to do it.
If you're going to have an arbitrary system, at least do it like FutureMark / 3Dmark... where you get a score which can be relatively compared to older and newer hardware.
They already have a 1 to 10 scale on the stickers, how is that any more difficult than an A+ through D system?
Why don't they go with something like the Windows Experience Index? The scale is from 1 to 10, except you can't buy anything lower than 3 and nothing can be rated higher than 7.9 until we feel like changing it.
Stop with the dumbing-down idiocy. Give the people some god damn credit. If I give a rat's ass about fuel efficiency, I can do the basic, I mean BASIC, algebra.
Give us a reasonable set of numbers. This A-D is a bullshit, a marketers' dream, but it's a pure, unadulterated insult to the people of the US.
Keep this up, it won't be long before our children start migrating to Asia and Europe for better life.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
'Greenhouse gas emmisions'?
Does this include the source power generation? Of course not, because some regions use wind/solar/nuclear, which have a vastly different greenhouse gas emmsiions then others.
Why not use SIMPLE standard units. It's up to the buyers to know the source of the fuel.
N/m@0-10km/h, 11-50km/h, 51-80km/h, 81-100km/h
All cars can compete on this scale. If a 3000kg SUV takes 40kN/m to go from 0-10km/h, and an all electric 1000kg Prius takes 5kN to achieve the same task, we can figure out what is better.
They should also mandate the energy density be displayed at all fuel pumps/charging stations.
e.g.
diesel: 1000N/L
gasoline: 300N/L
natural gas: 200N/L
(my mind is fuzzy on how to apply this to all-electric, but plenty of the folks on here are smarter then I am), but my point still stands.
Label everything based on the one common denominator: energy.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Think of the SUVs!
I'm generally in the "fuck copying Europe" camp, but they've got something with the liters/100 km approach. Gas and Diesel cars should be rated in gallons/100 miles, and electric/hybrid cars should be given an equivalent assuming that the power comes from a modern coal plant delivered to San Diego, and that CO2 emissions are measured in gallons of gasoline. Of course, the activists won't go for that, because they'll be forced to admit that their precious cars pollute arizona instead of socal. However, it'll give a fair comparison for everyone else. Nobody knows what a newton or erg is, so Newtons are absolutely useless. However, we know how much energy is in a gallon of gasoline ... roughly a gallon of gasoline.
A van that carries 15 people at 15 mpg is not worse for the environment than someone driving a 50mpg vehicle by themselves, but I'm guessing the same ratings will apply. Have they given up on the concept of multi-passenger vehicles and just assume everyone drives alone?
I don't think this will make a difference. 99% of the car buying public goes after features first: they may be looking for a pickup to haul stuff, a minivan to move people, something inexpensive but fun, or even just looks and the need to express masculine virility. It's a very rare person who goes specifically after emissions, and they're all driving a Prius. The rest will be going after price they can afford versus the features they want. There is also the fact that most people know the cost of fuel is small compared to the cost of a new vehicle, so it often makes sense to buy something cheaper and pay more in gas. So the whole idea of grading cars is next to useless.
I'll use myself as an example. I went car shopping 3 years ago, after my old car died. I wanted something cheap as I had to finance, I wanted enough room to be comfortable, and I wanted enough power to make the car fun and able to tow a trailer. I ended up getting a Chevy Optra hatchback (sold as a Suzuki Reno, Buick Excel, Lacetti, etc., in other parts of the world). And you know what? It's bad on gas (~30 mpg). But it's roomy enough that a full size adults are comfortable in the back, and the 120 hp engine/manual transmission can handle a 2000 lb trailer plus 1000 lb of cargo in the car. It'll do 0 to 60 in under 10, and with the right tires it handles great (Yokohama Avid Envigor). I could have gotten something 20% or even 50% better on fuel (diesel), but it made no economic sense.
Be relentless!
The CO2 emission numbers would be misleading for battery electric and plug-in hybrids because it only states the tailpipe emissions.
Example... A battery-electric vehicle may use 34 KW/h of electricity per 100 miles. According to official data, in the USA, about 0.6 Kg of CO2 is emitted for every KW/h of electricity consumed. So for every 100 miles, about 20 Kg of CO2 is released into the atmosphere. So the data should state that 200g of CO2 is emitted per mile, not the 0g it currently states.
Ignoring other sources of CO2 emission and only looking at tailpipe emissions are misleading for technology which does not have a tailpipe. For example, a battery electric vehicle which uses 40 KW/h of electricity per 100 miles would release more CO2 into the atmosphere than many small gasoline vehicles.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Anyone know what's going to be in the "Smart Phone" QR block? I'd love to see it have enough data so an app could take that info, plus a the data from a week/month/year of GPS &/or accelerometer data (recorded by my GPS or smart phone) and give me a better estimate of how much a car would cost me to operate, if my driving habits remained roughly the same. At the very least, it could probably factor in my true mix of city/highway, and it might even be able to tweak that if I've got a heavy left foot, and insist on 1G starts at every stop sign.
Hopefully they factor the environmental cost of manufacturing the car into the grading system, so that consumers can make a fully informed decision about the environmental impact of their purchase, instead of one based only on the post-purchase impact.
"There are no failing grades, since vehicles need to comply with the Clean Air Act"
Likely rather closer to the truth that there are no failing grades because the manufacturers' lobbies would never have allowed it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/science/earth/26star.html
THL phish sticks
No failing grades? Have we already forgotten "No child left behind" and how that worked out?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
So if there's a solar car with really poor efficiency, would it be rated "D Flueless"?
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
battery-electric vehicle may use 34 KW/h of electricity
That IS bad. After only 3 years of engine-time, you'll need a full Nuke plant to power just *one* of those.
per 100 miles
Criminey! Assuming it averages about 50mph, that means it'll only take 23 hours to require a 1GW dedicated power plant, and it only gets worse from there!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I submitted a comment to the EPA suggesting that the "Gallons / 100 Miles" number be more prominent relative to MPG. (Converting to metric is a lost cause, unfortunately.)
I also suggested that they add "Gallons SAVED per 100 miles" relative to an average car in its class. This statistic can be surprising: switching from a 33mpg Corolla to a 50mpg Prius saves one gallon per 100 miles, but switching from a 10mpg Hummer to a 14mpg Land Rover saves three gallons per 100 miles driven.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
It won't make any difference. Then why the complaint?
I suspect it will indeed make a difference. People will get a story going forward. There is already experience in the marketplace that labels like this work. Energy Star being the biggest example.
The fact is, that the labels do provide a wide variety of information. This along with features, price and lust will make a difference (If we were all about features and price we would all be driving Kia Amanti's but very very few people do).
There are a universe of new cars out there, and the car industry cannot be trusted to provide much objective information that can be compared to other cars. Information that may or may not be useful to all customers, but for some and I would propose a significant number of customers, they will look and understand the information. If presented in a way that makes sense.
I think the comparisons between all cars, like cars, and cars in its class pretty much provide the information that is most likely to be valuable.
If you don't think it will work, who cares? If you think it will cause harm, by all means speak up.
But I really do not think that you should limit the information about cars to that just limited by the manufacturer or the car dealer. To do so, actually does provide harm to the customers. And to expect them to all go to some third party doesn't make sense either. Only a small amount of consumers do that. That is why were are not all driving Ford Taurus's.
You know, no matter how much some of the Slashdot crowd will complain about how this is a guide for stupid people, and that they don't see why this is a bother...well, it's because people aren't all math geniuses with nothing better to do with their time than crunch numbers.
But you know what? It does help to have information on what you're buying. A test drive will tell you something. People on the internet will too. But some things you can't learn on your own. Given how terrible corporations tend to be about giving out information, I don't mind the government coming up with some useful standards. Whether or not these standards are good enough, well, that's open for debate, but when you are derogatory to the idea of having them?
It makes me cringe.
Is there any reason for us to think this new system will be any more meaningful and less arbitrary than the last? Case in point: my twenty year old Audi was rated 18 city, 24 highway... but I actually get well over 30mpg on the highway (closer to 40, even, if I stick to 55). Granted, she's extremely aerodynamic with a rather tiny, multi-valve, turbo-charged engine and very tall gearing... but that's beside the point: the fact is, if we couldn't rely on the EPA for fair and accurate info back in '91 (when corporations generally had far less control and influence over the regulatory bureaucracy than they do today), how likely is it that this new system will be a worth a goddamn thing?
Haven't we had fuel economy ratings for decades? Slow news day at /.?
If a car performs really well, it might get an A...
But then a few years down the road, improved technology could make that A rating in 2010 look like a C- or D in 2015, and other "A" rated cars come out that perform far better. Yet the 2010 car still has the "A" rating... so it isn't fairly compared to newer cars.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I know a lot of people think all of society's problems can be solved with more regulations and laws, but don't you think that manufacturers will just find another way to game this new system?
I guess i really don't have an alternative, but it's just a little frustrating to watch us go through the cycle again...
Do all cars really meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act? I can name a few that I'm pretty sure killed trees as they drove by.
The real measure of a car's operating cost (even taking into account CO2 emissions--more on that in a bit) is the cost per mile. However, since that is usually in the too-small-to-be-meaningful range, let's assume a typical fill-up, or charge-up, will take a car 400 miles tops. That seems to be the typical range the engineers design a tank for.
(Side note: I'm not counting driver's insurance, since that cost is incurred before a driving pattern can be observed. Life's surprises can alter those calculations too much for my purposes here.)
Okay, my Taurus gets about 25 miles per gallon. A low-ball gas price around here is US$2.50/gal. Figuring that (cost per gal)/(miles per gal) gives cost per mile, that means it costs about $0.10 per mile. Over 400 miles, that's $40. Therefore, the fuel cost per 400 miles is (cost per gal) * 16.
My last car was a Honda Civic CRX, that got 42 mpg typically. Its fuel cost per 400 miles came to roughly (cost per gal) * 9.5.
Now, take a look at an electric car. My current cost for electricity is $0.06/kWh. To cost the same $40 as gasoline at $2.50/gal, and get the same 400 miles (giving the same $0.10 cost per mile), the car would need to consume 667 kWh.
The Chevy Volt's charge-per-distance figures come in at 25 kWh/100 miles. At $0.06/kWh, 400 miles would cost $6.00.
Once you find a place to plug it in. And assuming you never go farther than 40 miles between charges.
I said I would consider the CO2 emissions, and I will. The fact is, the central generation points are better maintained, and much more efficient, than the millions of vehicles' emission points. Putting those millions of vehicles onto the grid would do wonders for reducing CO2 emission.
estimated driving costs based on 15,000 miles a year now available.
Uh, there's your problem. I know conservation isn't as sexy as buying a new hi-tech solution to ease the guilt, but our own wastefulness is our greatest resource.
I've often wondered why you couldn't make a measurement based on the efficiency of a vehicle class. Here in AUS there are people driving 4wd's which burn 26l / 100 km, right next to people driving TDI's of the same make which burn 8l / 100 km... I don't think it has a lot to do with being misinformed.
There should be a tax / rebate system based on the average consumption of vehicles in a given class. If you choose to drive the fuel hungry version of the 4wd, you pay an additional ... 5%(?) which is passed on to the environmentally conscious consumer as a rebate on their wise choice of the economical version of the vehicle. This would promote long term movement toward energy efficient vehicles ... informing somebody that their vehicle is c+ rated because they can't buy a diesel 4wd with a b+ rating ... well, that's kind of like saying a VW that uses less fuel than a Prius is less environmentally efficient because it not lugging around 200kg of batteries..
However, the mere fact that a coffee machine or a breadmaker is safe doesn't actually make it any use for making coffee or baking bread - in fact, in the UK, makers of nonfunctioning "water treatment" products market them as WRAS approved - which is purely safety testing.
Any commercially sponsored test is flawed. Did you ever see a car magazine give a BMW a bad review? Usually they give critical reviews of second tier manufacturers or small cars, which have near-zero "marketing" budgets, and criticise very expensive cars (that their readers can't afford and whose makers don't advertise with them). I'm happy to pay taxes to an organisation that won't go out of business by telling the truth.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Putting grades on emissions doesn't really make any sense whatsoever.
Depending on the model year emissions have to meet a certain target. Stay below, and the vehicle can be sold. Any further improvement of emissions has negative effects on a number that actually matter to the consumer: Cost.
To decrease emissions, additional hardware may be required, which adds to the price, and increased maintenance, sometimes additional consumables (say, for SCR systems). Additional hardware is additional weight, which increases fuel consumption. Strategies that do not requires additional hardware either have two kinds of impact: First, on the possible power output, where the consumer gets less power than without this change in strategy, and lower powered vehicles are supposed to be cheaper, and thus the more emission-friendly vehicle is unnecessarily expensive. Second, on fuel efficiency, because tuning of the engine for emissions naturally results in a tuning that is less efficient in terms of consumption. Reduced efficiency of course again leads to increased costs for fuel.
As a results, all vehicles will be designed to be "D" in terms of NOX and particulate emissions to ensure the only other relevant number "cost" is acceptable.
There are some odd cases where on change of emission levels its not necessary to reach the new targets immediately with the whole fleet - in such cases the newer types of vehicles may temporarily be under-cutting the currently applicable minimum thresholds. But something like that is just a transition-thing. Optimizing to make it look good on transitions doesn't seem to be something that should be promoted with better-than-D stickers.
americans are still using imperial measurements .
Deleted
One label proposes grades, ranging from an A-plus to a D. There are no failing grades, since vehicles need to comply with the Clean Air Act
So we start with cars with A rating. Then next year we get A+ or AA. And in 20 years we'll have, what, A++++ vs A++++++ like an eBay rating ? That's pretty dumb. If it was for me I'd give a Hummer a Z and a Prius a U or something, and then let them fight out to get better letters, A being a perpetual motion machine !
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Is this similar to what the EU has been using for a while yet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label#Cars
Seriously, can we not expect people to know what numbers are bigger than others now?
If the "average" citizen does not know if 25 is bigger than 31, we have serious problems that we should be working on rather than wasting resources coming up with a letter-based grading system for fuel economy.
Also, I don't want to know if my car gets an "A" or a "C." I want to know how far I can drive on a gallon of gas. "A" does not tell me that. "31 MPG" does tell me what I want to know.
Yes, let's dumb everything down for the LCD some more.
If you use gallons or miles, please also use proper last century(ies?) units for energy and power, like calories and horsepower (not the metric one of course), and don't measure CO2 in grams but in pounds to stay (un)coherent !
Please act towards your governement to use officially the international units system !
Coal produces 4 times as much C02 as gasoline for the same amount of energy. Even if it's a bit more efficient to produce electricity in central locations, it's not more efficient C02 wise. Also consider that the more efficiently gas or coal is burned, the more C02 is produced per unit of fuel.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Is really bad, whatever technology you choose. Plastics, rubber, glass, metals and the likes. Fuel is just a piece in the puzzle.
Those things sound more like marketing than real stuff.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Letters?! Who has the freaking time to learn letters these days?
Use colors! Everyone can see, and those that can't shouldn't drive. Just for spite make two of the colors red and green against color blind folks.
Also why even bother having a set of defined colors... then you have to worry about how many graduations etc... Just make a spectrum (or use THE spectrum if you wish), and label one end "Bad" and the other "Good".
How can you give just one letter, or one number grade.
How about a table with miles/km on one axis and tonnage/kg on the other axis?
The Prius might get an A for 5 miles/0.2 tons, but an F for 200 miles/1 ton.
A Suburban gets a C for 5 miles/0.2 tons, but a B+ for 200 miles/1 ton.
And how do you factor in towing capacity?
Wait, how about if we just list everything separate: MPG Hwy, MPG Fwy, # seat belts, towing capacity, fuel capacity, etc.?
Then people could evaluate all the data and determine which is best for their needs?
True enough, but coal is hardly the only source of electricity. Natural gas, water, windmill, solar, and nuclear are also on the grid, and of those, only natural gas puts out CO2.
So it's still possible to have a five-ton, 5MPG vehicle that is A-rated because they figure emissions per volume of exhaust spewed, not per mile.
The CO/NOx whatever emissions and limits should be per mile, not ppm. One doesn't get a license to pollute more simply by virtue of being to afford a larger engine.