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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 unconvinced anyway by mileage claims. I can't speak for the US system but in the UK it's done in a test where the car runs for a set period at certain speeds then either accelerates or decelerates to different speeds, all cars are tested at the same speeds and intervals to get comparable figures. On A Rolling Road
If they were comparable to real life it'd be nice: It makes no adjustment for whether some cars coast better than others downhill, effects of wind resistance, effect on drag of the car's turning geometry.... In the real world some cars do significantly better than their official mileages and others can't even get close.
My VW Passat 2.0i 16v (1991) once managed 56mpg on one long run and always beat 45mpg when it was officially meant to do no more than 42mpg, my 1.8D Ford Escort didn't even come close to its official range of 50-60mpg on long runs and my dad's Passat 1.8 20v likewise drank far more than the label indicated it should, and both my mondeo 1.8TD and Volvo V40 2.0i 16v significantly beat their official figures (the Mondeo with ease, it once managed 932 miles on a single tank, the V40 takes careful handling).
TL:DR? Summary: "Official mileage figures are unreliable, live with it"
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
YMMV
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
which are bigger.
The miles, or the gallons? :-) Also, everyone else, note that liters and kilometers are the same everywhere! ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
Ridiculous. Cars are more reliable than ever, and that's because they are designed well. For god's sake, we are at a point where a car needs practically no regular maintenance. No adjusting carburetors, no cleaning points, no timing adjustments, no changing spark plugs every spring, no adjusting brakes every fall, no engine rebuilds because bearings wear out.
The tradeoff is that every now and then, a sensor fails and you have to replace it. The problem is that they are more difficult to diagnose. You need to know how the engine's control systems work, and you very often need diagnostic equipment to pinpoint which sensor is the source of the problem. Dudes who grew up fixin' on cars by feel and superstition have no idea what to do, and just throw parts at the problem until it disappears- either the problem eventually gets fixed by one of the parts, or the customer goes away.
Very few people understand the important part of machine diagnosis: narrow the failure down to which part *actually* failed. Advising customers to replace rather than repair is giving up on that- its hard to do diagnosis, so the easy way out is to just replace the whole thing.
A classic example of dumb-ass diagnosis is the oxygen sensor system in a car. There is a sensor that tests for the right mixture, and then there is a sensor after the catalytic converter that makes sure the converter is working right. If the first sensor gets stupid, the catalytic sensor will think the catalytic converter is broken, and idiots replace that sensor, and then the catalytic converter, and then throw up their hands. If you know that the first sensor can feed false information to the rest of the system, you know to test it first.
...yet no mention (that I read, anyhow) of the lower numbers caused by fuel contaminated with alcohol. Interestingly enough, I live in one of the only states (if not the only state) that requires gas stations to state whether their fuel contains ethanol or not. I've driven to each and every one of the surrounding states and people looked at me funny when I asked them if their fuel was 100% gasoline. For what it's worth, I can get gas w/10% ethanol (87 octane) for $3.03 a gallon and 100%-pure (87 octane) for $3.19 a gallon. The cost savings of running the contaminated stuff (~5%) don't even begin to make up for the greatly reduced mileage I get - on anything I've driven.
So you are one of those jerks who is constantly speeding up/slowing down and, as a result, forcing others to do so at times when it harms their gas mileage by causing more congestion and/or making others apply their brakes.
Thanks and one day soon may you misjudge or drop you attention for a few minutes and cram your car and your empty head under the underride guard on the truck you're drafting behind and thereby improve the gene pool.
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.
It's true, there are no laws against being a dick.
But some people's time is worth more than the $1/hr you're saving -- perhaps even your own. Not maintaining a steady speed demonstrably reduces traffic flow, increases congestion, and is, in the big picture, a bigger waste of fuel. Focusing on one aspect of driving -- your MPG -- to the exclusion of all else is shortsighted at best.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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.