EU Car Makers Manipulating Fuel Efficiency Figures

pev writes with a report in The Guardian that "European car manufacturers are rigging fuel efficiency tests by stripping down car interiors, over inflating tyres, taping over panel gaps and generally cheating. This overestimates the figures by 25% to 50%. One would have thought that a simple clause stating that cars have to be tested in the conditions that they are sold in would have been obvious?"

Comments

Re:Human Nature

[JWSmythe]

    I've heard there are a lot of consumers who like to be open the doors too.

Re:Relativity

[dkleinsc]

Everybody knows hybrids aren't 'worth it' from a present value _or_ environmentalist POV.

Whether they're "worth it" or not depends on 5 factors:
1. Difference in initial cost.
2. The average price of gasoline.
3. Distance driven over the lifetime of the car.
4. Difference in efficiency between the hybrid and non-hybrid.
5. Potential investment income on the difference in initial cost over the lifetime of the car.

An example (using the ignorant American measurements I'm unfortunately used to):
A. Hybrid sedan - $25K, gets 44 miles per gallon.
B. Standard sedan - $13K, gets 22 miles per gallon
Price of gasoline at $4.25 per gallon, expected total driving 220,000 miles over 10 years, expected investment return of 5% annually.

1. The standard sedan uses up 10,000 gallons of fuel for a total fuel cost of $42,500. The hybrid uses up half that, 5,000 gallons of fuel for a total fuel cost of $21,250, leaving a difference in fuel costs of $21,250 in favor of the hybrid.
2. The hybrid costs $12K more initially, which over those 10 years can earn an additional $7700 in investment returns, for a total of $19,700 in favor of the standard engine.
3. That means that for the buyer in this situation, the hybrid will save him $1550 total.

So what "everybody knows" may or may not be true, and the best way to answer the question is to look at the numbers for the vehicles you're considering and your own driving habits, and do the math. The general formula looks like this, where Ch is the cost of the hybrid, Cs the cost of the standard, IR is the investment return, Y is the lifetime in years, M is the lifetime in mileage, Eh is the hybrid's miles per gallon, Es is the standard's miles per gallon, and G is the cost of gasoline:
Total extra cost of a hybrid = (Ch - Cs)*(1 + IR)^Y + (Ch - Cs) - M / (Eh - Es) * G

Of course, all this doesn't work if the numbers you plug into the formula are wrong.