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Hyundai Overstated MPG On Over 1 Million Cars
Hugh Pickens writes "Reuters reports that Hyundai and its affiliate Kia Motors conceded that they overstated the fuel economy on more than 1 million recently sold vehicles, and agreed to compensate owners for the additional fuel costs after the EPA found the errors in 13 Kia and Hyundai models from the 2011 to 2013 model years. The findings were a blow to the two carmakers, which have centered their marketing campaigns on superior fuel economy. The mileage on most labels will be reduced by 1 to 2 miles per gallon, with the largest adjustment being a 6-mpg highway reduction for one version of the Kia Soul, the EPA said. Hyundai previously touted the fact that many of its models get 40 miles per gallon on the highway. Now three Hyundai models, the Elantra, Accent and Veloster, as well as the Kia Rio fall short of that mark, as will the Hyundai Sonata and Kia Optima hybrids."
I'm british, when I say 'mpg' I mean miles per british gallon, which are bigger.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
In 2007 I bought my wife a KIA Soul
One of the main factors was the advertised mileage.
In our experience the mileage was not very good.
Even my wife commented that it was barely better than our Honda Odyssey!
Finally, earlier this year we sold it.
GM always owned Saturn.
...and whether or not you have the common sense [that God gave a grapefruit] to stay the fuck off the ass of the car in front of you so that you're not forever riding your brakes!
The EPA randomly checks a couple hundred models every year. If cheating were widespread, they would know it.
My real world mileage on my Fiat 500 is about 5 mpg more than the sticker label. (42 mpg average)
In my experience the EPA figures have usually off by several MPG, with "American" cars typically having lower MPG than the EPA estimates and "foreign" cars typically higher. It's odd that I don't see GM and Chrysler being investgated. Or perhaps the EPA itself needs to be investigated...
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
The idea that you "can never get" the EPA gas mileage on an actual real-life car is this Gospel According to Leaden Footed Car Reviewers in hip car review magazines and Web sites.
You can, in all likelihood, get close to the EPA gas mileage -- if you drive an EPA drive cycle.
First off, the EPA numbers on the window sticker are way de-rated from the mileage numbers in the official EPA tests. The De-rating is in response to all of the whining and howling "The EPA numbers are a fiction! I never get the EPA numbers!"
The EPA City cycle originally meant to represent a trip on Los Angeles "surface streets" -- in other words, main arterial roads, not a congested downtown like Manhattan. The average speed was 20 MPH. The EPA highway was meant to represent a trip on "the 405" under mildly congested conditions, essentially urban freeway driving in the days before the 405 became a 24-hour parking facility. The average speed is 50 MPH on the cycle, well below the 65 (or much more) that people do bombing down rural Interstates. The choice of test conditions was not meant to confound people trying to match published gas mileage, rather, it was meant to be a sample of the kind of driving taking place day-to-day in L.A., for purposes of evaluating auto smog controls, not for energy efficiency.
So if "no one drives like the EPA", why do they still use the same test? Because it is written into the CAFE-standard fuel economy laws. The automakers are held to the legal EPA standard so "the government isn't making up the rules of the game as they go along" whereas consumers get a de-rated number so their pride in being good drivers is not hurt.
My experience with a Scan Gauge (bought at Think Geek) that I have calibrated by putting a gas-fill adjustment for the particular car, is that you can too get the EPA City mileage, not the one on the sticker but better than the sticker, the "back room" number (Google "EPA Test Car List" inquiring geeks are going to want to see this data when car shopping). What you do is drive an EPA cycle. Pick a no-wind 70-deg F day, start up the car, and drive it across town (about 10 miles, I believe) without the A/C going, and drive a non-rush hour non-freeway route where you average 20 MPH. If you have a Scan Gauge, you probably can identify a route where you can safely and legally average 20 MPH.
For the highway test, pick a highway where you can drive a constant 55 MPH without people "flipping you off" for holding up traffic. Seriously, if you go out do road testing, you don't want to be a self-righteous person holding people back from going about their daily work, even if they are going a couple miles and hour too fast -- leave that for the cops to enforce. I betcha you can at least get with 5 percent (1 MPG at 20 MPG, 2 MPG at 40 MPG) of the "raw" EPA numbers and you can do a lot better than window sticker.
There are a couple YMMV caveats. I believe the EPA standardizes on a particular fuel that may have higher BTU's gallon than the ethanol-watered-down stuff you get at the pump these days. Also, summer gas has more BTU's than the more volatile winter gas mandated so people can start cars in cold weather (actually, the summer blend is mandated for higher vapor pressure, both to prevent vapor lock stall-outs in hot conditions and to reduce smog from gas left standing).
The other caveat is that the EPA tests rely on the automakers supplying "resistance data" based on "coast-down" road trials -- these result in resistance coefficients that get dialed into the chassis rollers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There is some opportunity of mischief there. Us true geeks could in our infinite spare time look over the EPA Test Car List Database to see if there are any inconsistencies on either the coast-down times or the dynamometer coefficients reported for the different cars -- this is maybe where Hyundai and Kia got their wrists slapped.
The fuel economy isn't great? Which care of similar size gets much better? An Avalon gets 28 highway. A Chrysler 300 gets 31 highway. A BMW 5-series (which is significantly smaller) gets 34 which I guess is good. How long is it going to make back the $25,000 more the BMW costs you in fuel savings?
And it makes 300HP, which isn't less than any normally aspirated 4-cylinder I've seen for sale. And it's higher than any production turbocharged 4 on the market in the US. Also, turbochargers and intercoolers add cost, size and weight. It's not a slam dunk to use a turbocharged 4 over a V6. The thing is the Impala isn't designed to make a ton of HP. The same engine makes 318 or 323HP in a car that is designed to make that much (Cadillacs, Camaros).
I don't see what's wrong with using a V6 when price constraints are in play, especially when it does get decent mpg.
The Impala suffers more than anything from being a cheap car. You don't expect the cheapest anything else to be the best on the market, why would we expect it from cars?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You don't have to be right up on a semi's rear end for drafting either. A few car lengths still keeps you in the envelope.
Here's German traffic rules: The correct minimum distance in meters is your speed in kilometers per hour, divided by two. So at a speed of 100 km/h (about 62 mph), the correct distance is 50 meters. You can get fined if your distance is less than 50 percent, that is 25 meters. The fine increases as the distance decreases. What gets you into real trouble is claiming that what you do is right. It is totally accepted that people make mistakes and therefore sometimes drive to close. But as you say, intentionally and persistently driving at no more than half the correct distance means that you shouldn't have a driving license.