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America's Cars Are Suddenly Getting Faster and More Efficient (bloomberg.com)
Kyle Stock and David Ingold, writing for Bloomberg: Sometime in the next couple of months, the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and its 808 horsepower will show up in dealership windows like some kind of tiny, red, tire-melting factory. Yes, 808 horsepower. There's no typo. Last year, U.S. drivers on the hunt for more than 600 horsepower had 18 models to choose from, including a Cadillac sedan that looks more swanky than angry. Meanwhile, even boring commuter sedans are posting power specifications that would have been unheard of during the Ford Administration. The horses in the auto industry are running free. We crunched four decades of data from the Environmental Protection Agency's emission tests and arrived at a simple conclusion: All of the cars these days are fast and furious -- even the trucks. If a 1976 driver were to somehow get his hands on a car from 2017, he'd be at grave risk of whiplash. Since those days, horsepower in the U.S. has almost doubled, with the median model climbing from 145 to 283 stallions. Not surprisingly, the entire U.S. fleet grew more game for a drag-race: The median time it took for a vehicle to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour was halved, from almost 14 seconds to seven.
Who would have thought??
But because car, it'll annoy all the usual cynics on /. and Arstechnica.
Essentially you can either use the same improvements to make the cars more efficient in terms of gas usage or you can make them have more total horsepower. Unfortunately, many of the people buying cars prefer the second, so this is what we end up with. The long-term results of this are going to be not at all good.
The idiots that hoon these things on normal roads provide one of the strongest possible arguments for a hard push for fully automated driving. Nobody (probably) wants a 4500 lb car rammed up their butt because someone wants to have fun. Take it to the track.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Newer cars likely weigh a lot more, because of all the safety & environmental regulations. Some part of the increase of HP is to accommodate all this extra weight.
Not all, but some.
Efficiency is un-American! It's a communist conspiracy!
On a more serious note, the increase in median horsepower of new cars in the US is probably a side effect from the US not having CO2-based taxes.
The purpose of these is the same as it's ever been. Dude gets dragged inside the dealership by his wife to fantasize about the muscle car, but still leaves with a minivan or a 4-cylinder commuter car plus a 5-7 year loan.
On the other hand, there are just as many of us who geek out on mileage (often just because we hate to blow money on transportation) so there's still hope for the planet.
I never understood this fascination with having stuff you can't use to its fullest extent.
It's like spending thousands of dollars on a water cooled over clocked triple GPU computer so you can check your email and play minesweeper.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
If highway traffic were anywhere near letting you go at a decent speed.
Or is it actually a gallon per mile rating? I suppose it's news that any 800+ horsepower car can be made street legal. Too bad for your 85 grand they can't make it look less... Dodge-y.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Did a Daily Mail (UK) headline editor suddenly
get hired by Slashdot?
Something between the lines jumps out and bites your arm off. Soltan Gris / London
I lived through the 70's, and one thing is certain: almost no good cars existed from 1972 on. The big 3 certainly weren't making any. Remember these?
Dodge Omni
AMC Eagle
Ford Maverick / Mercury Comet
Chevy Chevette
And there were so many others.
The point is, the bar is set pretty low to compare things of today to cars from 1975.
People with that kind of money usually buy German cars.
Who'd win?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Essentially you can either use the same improvements to make the cars more efficient in terms of gas usage or you can make them have more total horsepower.
And according to TFA is that cars are getting overall more efficient exactly because of that.
All the time that the driver isn't spending with the foot stomping on the gaz pedal (which isn't the majority of a normal comute) is actually time during which the car has better efficiency than it's fore runners.
Or, in other words : this efficiency vs. power has been made dynamic and varies according to driver's needs moment by moment.
Technology is gotten that smarter that the driver thinks he's buying a more powerful car, but 99% of time the car will function as an efficient one.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Newer cars likely weigh a lot more, because of all the safety & environmental regulations.
Actually *NOT*, according to TFA.
The opposite is actually observed : newer material used nowadays means cars are lighter.
Steel got replaced by aluminum and modern fibers.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You notice these cars are not Fuel Hogs. They are actually using the energy that used to dump into the squishy torque converter. The cars are actually streamlined unlike the box cars of the 80's. They are burning less energy by running a larger percentage of recirculated exhaust gases through the engine when at idle and power is not needed. This doesn't even take into account electric flywheel assist and stop start technology where the vehicles engine is shut off at lights. When the power goes to the road you go quicker. I'd wager the cars are lighter too aluminum engine blocks are the norm now.
But go on about how we're all bad and how we should all drive the Trabant.
The Challenger is a lot of things, but unless you're comparing it to an aircraft carrier I don't think "tiny" is a good adjective for it. Part of why it needs an 808 HP engine is because it weighs ~400 pounds more than the Ford Mustang that it competes against in the same class.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If your car goes 0-60 in faster than 10 seconds, then you should get a 33% tax slapped onto it. Maybe use the tax to improve public transportation for the rest of us that can't afford a nice car.
Then all Tesla's would get a 33% tax. Might as well get rid of their subsidies too.
Works for me.
Is an oxymoron.
You mainly notice the idiots with them. The rest of us that observe traffic laws and common courtesy are not going to be on your radar.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
are the last throw of a death spiral.
10 years from now ICE vehicles will be in the minority and incur heavy tax penalties. Electric Transmision will be the norm.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
All Tesla drivers are tax dodgers and not paying for the roads they use. Electric vehicles need an extra tax on top to compensate for the lack of a gas tax.
Most BMW and Audi drivers should pay a tax because half of them are pricks anyways.
Not sure but yes fuel injection is one, but the computerization of the whole shebang helped a lot too. It can meter the fuel, change the valve parameters and generally eke out maximum HP for very little fuel usage.
We can't have both ? Make it very efficient, all while allowing more headroom for power. That's how you use technology.
Not at the same time. You can have horsepower or fuel efficiency but not both beyond a certain point. If you increase horsepower with a 100% efficient engine you necessarily are increasing fuel consumption. But engines aren't 100% efficient so once you reach the limits of current efficiency you have to make a trade off between horsepower or efficiency. You can increase one or the other but not both at the same time. The only way to increase both is to develop/use technology that is more efficient at translating fuel into movement.
This is why hybrids and/or EVs will (probably) eventually win out over internal combustion. Internal combustion engines are remarkably inefficient and unlikely to improve substantially. To move the efficiency limit more than marginally you have to switch technologies and electric motors are significantly more fuel efficient for a given power output in most cases. The limitations on EVs are in fuel infrastructure rather than performance. As that limitation gets pushed back (better batteries, faster charging, etc) then ICE loses regardless of whether you want fuel efficiency or power.
Those Hellcats are major guzzlers. And those tires aren't cheap.
True though you must admit that anyone buying one doesn't give a rip about fuel economy. They buy them to go fast and impress other similarly minded people. Fuel economy doesn't even enter into the picture.
Very bad choice using 1976 as the comparison date. For a better clue tou need to go back before 1971.
1976 was at the end of a notorious low-point in power thanks to the US auto manufacturers responding to new emissions regulations and the 1973 oil crisis:
Example of just Corvettes:
1969: least powerful (base): 300HP Most powerful (LS7) 460HP
1975: least powerful (base): 165Hp Most powerful (L82) 205HP
There has been a lag in engine development for years now. I think some of what is driving this recent technological leap is the rise of electric cars. Electric motors have incredible low end torque. This makes your average electric car seem remarkably sporty in comparison to older cars. To keep gas cars in their performance leader roles, its driven a lot of gas engine innovation.
Tesla's smoking american muscle cars on the drag strip have arguably directly contributed to things like the Dodge's 840-hp Demon -- vehicles whose press for the initial product launch specifically called out how Tesla wouldn't be the fastest from the factory car any more on the drag strip.
According to the summary, "The median time it took for a vehicle to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour was halved, from almost 14 seconds to seven," so in this case more HP does mean faster, or at least, means faster to reach cruising speed.
More HP will get you to speed faster provided you do not exceed the traction limits of your tires. That's why simply putting a bigger engine in a car may not result in substantial performance gains unless attention is also paid to the tires and suspension and traction control systems.
Back in the '70s I drove an old (60s vintage) Volkswagen Beetle that used to impress people with its great gas mileage: 26 miles per gallon.
That's because you were comparing it mostly against cars that were designed without fuel economy as a consideration. I drove a '76 Impala many years ago which got something like 16mpg on a good day. The beetle was a complete crap car but it was small and light so compared to the land yachts of the day it seemed efficient.
What I drive now is bigger, more comfortable, safer, faster, and in short better in every possible way, and still gets almost twice the mileage.
Engines have improved a lot in the last 40 years but they aren't going to get dramatically better. If you want to realize significant fuel efficiency gains you will have to go to something based on a different technology. Most likely that will be electric motors whether in the form of a hybrid or EV. No general purpose ICE can touch an electric motor for fuel economy at a given horsepower in most circumstances.
33% flat seems weird. why not something like.. for every n seconds under 10, 2.5^n % tax. So under 9.5 would be a 2.5%, under 8.5 would be 6.25%, under 7.5 would be 15.625%, and under 6.5 would just be 40% flat (instead of 39.0625%).
Basically, something not to screw over most of the cars on the road today. It's very hard to find cars that aren't under 10 that also aren't a cracker box with a tiny sub-1.5l NA engine.
Don't consider this advocacy for such a tax, just that AC's suggestion was bad. Mine is also bad; I suspect I thought about it a whee bit more though.
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I never understood this fascination with having stuff you can't use to its fullest extent.
Same reason people buy ludicrously expensive Rolex watches. To show off. It's conspicuous consumption in most cases. Muscle cars however do have one quasi-practical aspect depending on your perspective. They are good at straight line acceleration which is really the only kind of fun thing you can do on normal roads. Basically they do a burnout between stoplights.
808 hp in a country with 70-75-80(-85) mph speed limits,
What will happen with american built high power cars when - perhaps even by committing a crime - being pushed to the max speed? (breaking apart?)
Because its no such big deal to put much power into a car, the problem of aerodynamic lifting forces come into play interacting with shock absorbers.
The space between the street and your cars under-floor at high speed can make out the difference between driving and flying,
because more distance to the road = more air being pushed under the car = lifting your car off the ground.
So a bump on the road can send you flying, and I don't think american highways are designed for speed like the german "Autobahn".
Just saying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
sucks to be you. Maybe you should move.
If only there were some option other than "make it illegal" or "do nothing"...
Some people get a large amount of utility out of vehicles that use a lot of fuel (e.g. people who need high towing capacity). An omniscient social planner would want to allow these people to pay for the environmental cost of their driving while discouraging others from using inefficient vehicles (and discourage unnecessary driving too). Is there anything that could accomplish these without mind control? Hmm, let's think about it.
Lo and behold, higher fuel taxes accomplish all of the above while still letting people make their own choices. Amazing!
Serious economists generally agree that our gas taxes are too low by $2 per gallon or more. (A prominent example is Greg Mankiw, Harvard prof and economic adviser to GWB and Romney, though, like all economic advisers, too often ignored.) We aren't making drivers pay the cost of building and maintaining the roads, much less the social costs of gridlock and pollution. The road construction subsidies given to private transportation, on top of the externalities involved, distort people's incentives tremendously. Those perverse incentives affect a lot of other choices people make (e.g. employment and housing markets). We could fix this at a stroke, and even do it in a revenue-neutral way by reducing taxes on productive behavior like payroll and income.
Most other first world countries have had this figured out for a long time now. UK fuel tax is something like $3/gal. German fuel taxes are over $6/gallon, and other than problems due to some dude named Assad, they've been doing just fine. Unfortunately, here in the States it's a political third rail, so even though people on both the right and left will admit it makes sense in private, either will lambast the other to oblivion if they ever propose it in public.
Every car I've owned could do 0-60 in less than 10s with the biggest engine being 2.8l (a '83 Capri). Even my shitbox 13 year old Opel Astra Club 1.6 can do it and that's not even close to a luxury car.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
there's bits and pieces of road way everywhere the cops don't watch. I talked to a guy recently who rented a Mazarti for his birthday and had it up to top speed. The gearheads keep track of blind spots in the cops radar and share the info. Now, I suppose that's ridiculously dangerous for us non-gear heads if we happen to be on the road with them, but it is what it is.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The thing is, not everyone is cheap. Some of us have disposable cash, and like to enjoy it. Why is that suddenly something wrong?
Who said it was suddenly wrong? It's always been wasteful.
Our whole lives are NOT about the greater good, if it is..then something very troubling has happened to culture in the US.
Nobody ever claimed they were. But you also cannot credibly argue that you can safely utilize those 800HP on normal roads or that you aren't needlessly polluting. You might have the legal right to do it but don't pretend you aren't taking a big old shit on the environment.
I'm not saying "fuck your neighbor" but geez, folks, life is short....no reason to shame someone that is enjoying the freedoms this country offers (or used to offer at least).
Yes you are saying "fuck your neighbor" in a very real sense. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you aren't imposing consequences on others. If you buy a high horsepower car you necessarily are polluting more and probably increasing some safety risks as well. It's legal but to pretend you aren't putting a burden on others is to be willfully naive.
I have disposable income, and I have never looked at gas mileage as one of the parameters on whether I buy a car or not. I don't like SUV's personal....I've only owned 2 seat sports cars in my life
I have disposable income too but I don't see that as an excuse to not give a shit about the world around me.
People need to face it...not everyone lives with austerity as the major component of their mindset. And that is not a bad thing....
We could not disagree more on that point. I'm not suggesting we all move into the woods and live primitive lives but being responsible with the resources we all share is important.
Straight line speed is wholly irrelevant in a car. Americans roadsters like this one handle like garbage. A little Nissan 370z with 350hp but built to maneuver like an actual sports car will run circles around this thing on a track. No one who has ever taken anything out on a track would buy this monstrosity. This is for dentists pushing 50 who have no clue about cars but have too much money.
I could see it if we were hauling large amounts of things around, but for people, 200 hp should be sufficient. Unless you are hauling massive amounts, and/or racing, you don't need all this horsepower. What we need is more efficiency, but the auto industry does not want us to have this, because it would cut into their executives pay, and their stockholders' profits.
Once again unregulated capitalism fails us miserably.
sucks to be you. Maybe you should move.
Why? Do you think sitting at the speed limit would be any more amazing at 800 horsepower than at 150?
Great. Muscle cars are back, and they're high-tech. Meanwhile, we haven't been educatiing, training, or testing drivers properly for at least 20 or 30 years, which means we have an entire generation on the roads who really aren't competent, which has sparked an entire legion of idiots who claim that 'humans aren't capable of operating a motor vehicle competently, therefore we need to ban them from driving and have self-driving cars instead!' which of course is nonsensical bullshit. So we'll have under-educated, under-trained, inadequately-tested drivers behind the wheel of vehicles as powerful as a goddamned Formula-1 racecar, who will wrap it around trees and telephone poles and kill more people, which will just strengthen the strawman argument in favor of taking away everyones' driving privilege and making us risk our lives riding in shitty so-called 'self driving cars' that are not anywhere NEAR up to the task.
Bull-fucking-SHIT.
What we REALLY need is reforms in driver education and trianing (read as: fund highschool driver-ed and driver-training programs again!) and reforms in how the DMV tests new drivers.
Oh and while we're at it: Educate and train new drivers to recognize and properly, safely deal with cyclists on public roads. There should never ever again be an excuse of "I didn't see him" when someone hits a cyclist.
America's Cars Are Suddenly Getting Faster and More Efficient
With a title that notes cars getting "faster" and "more efficient", it would be nice if the, fairly long, summary actually mentioned both things rather than just the faster part -- especially as the latter is more important. Seriously, I can only go so fast so quickly, but efficiency helps out all the time.
As for "suddenly," the only time comparison in TFS is between 1976 and 2017:
If a 1976 driver were to somehow get his hands on a car from 2017, he'd be at grave risk of whiplash.
We, apparently, have different definitions of the word "suddenly".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Getting up to the speed limit is the fun part.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
One word: Merging.
With all the idiots on the road that do not know how to properly allow cars to merge* onto the highway I need max acceleration so I can get on the fucking thing and far away from those idiots.
*Slow down and they slow down. Speed up and they speed up. It's like a fucking game, except they are playing with my life. Also all the idiots on texting.
To everyone thinking people are suddenly going to be blasting around in the Dodge Demon, it's quite obviously a car designed to be capable of fast drag strip times while also being street legal. And yes, I'm sure some dunce will wrap one around a telephone pole, but they are not going to be hugely prolific cars.
And as someone who is involved in both drag racing and oval dirt track racing, I prefer a car with good mileage, only modest power, and very good handling for a daily driver.
There ARE pretty high performance cars that get mileage I never even believed would be possibly, usually to displacement on demand technologies where cylinders are literally shut off when not needed. This was tried many many years ago with little success, but now they have the ability to actually collapse the lifters and keep the cylinder sealed so pumping losses drop to a minimum and you can realize the full benefit.
And as for the "squishy" torque converter, that was solved years ago with a lock-up converter. The converter only acts as a converter during necessary transitional states. The rest of the time, a clutch inside it locks up and turns it into a direct drive mechanism, removing most of the fluid losses inside.
One of the big gains to thermodynamic efficiency can be had with compression ratio increases, which has been seen. Historically, due to only crude control over the combustion process (carburetor, mechanical/vacuum based ignition timing curves), an increase in compression ratio pretty much necessitated increased fuel octane. Now this isn't as true, given the much more precise control over combustion with direct cylinder injection and individual coil per spark plug . So compression ratio can be increased with advanced control to prevent getting into knock, then detonation, the pre-ignition, then ultimate failure.
EGR is good for efficiency in some cases, but is a horsepower killer. Racing engines intentionally keep the exhaust valve and intake valve open simultaneously (known as overlap) to pull fresh air and fuel through the cylinder on every cycle to "scavenge" out and clean all combustion products out from the previousl cycle. The downside is that some raw fuel is discharged out the exhaust.
Bottom line is we have cars now with horsepower ranges from a 4 cylinder that would have been tough at times with an 8 cylinder engine and getting 2x or 3x the mileage (sometimes even more!). We are on the right track. High performance cars have been ingrained in auto industry DNA for a long time.
Even before any modification, my current Crown Victoria did 0-60 in about 9.8 with less than 200HP to the rear wheels, and 2.73:1 rear gear ratio.
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Yeah, because everybody's commute involves driving on an interstate. Always. Even on days off.
Every car I've owned could do 0-60 in less than 10s with the biggest engine being 2.8l (a '83 Capri). Even my shitbox 13 year old Opel Astra Club 1.6 can do it and that's not even close to a luxury car.
This. So much this. With only the driver (no passengers or cargo,) I'm pretty sure *most* commuter cars could do 0-60 in 10. Especially modern ones.
Load one up with four people and a trunk full of suitcases and not so much. But that's not the normal operating mode of most commuter cars.
Even my 4-cyl crossover can do 0-60 in 8.5.
Nanny state ... do you remember the US History?
In the USA, we have some core beliefs which appear to be changing for many.
They are forgetting history where govts have too much power over their people. It always swings too far, before there are uprisings. Then it swings back, too far in the opposite direction.
Where the happy middle of govt interference is, we haven't found in the last 40-ish years.
THIS is where we disagree. Your aren't wrong. I'm not wrong. We just disagree.
I'm inclined to trust individuals over the govt, to make the best choices for themselves. Freedom of choice is one of the few things anyone really has.
The govt says you cannot smoke pot, but many people do.
The govt says we can't drive over 70mph on most interstates, but many people do.
The govt says we have to pay 3x more for health insurance, but I'd rather have my old insurance. Plus the govt says if I don't buy a plan that THEY approve with things I DON'T NEED, then I have to pay a penalty.
The govt says we have to wear seat belts and motorcyclists have to where helmets, but I'm inclined to let idiots take themselves out of the gene pool.
Personal freedom. It is important. The USA was founded by people who didn't want the STATE to have more power than the people. Our founders specifically limited what the federal govt could do, because they KNEW any place with so much concentrated power is a bad thing.
The govt which governs least, governs best.
That is what I was taught. I believe it in my core. Perhaps you were taught something different?
Laws about car performance have no place in the USA. I'm ok with limiting emissions, provided performance isn't touched. I'd be ok with the Indy and nascar racing teams being forced to use ZERO emission vehicles. I think the NFL should remove all pads and switch to touch football. We should have a law. I think the NBA should change their rules so that fouling isn't part of the game. There should be laws for all these things, because they teach that breaking the rules is part of the game.
Don't you agree?
The power output of an engine has little to do with it's efficiency. It's a factor, but weight, tuning, and transmission ratios have more to do with fuel efficiency than overall available horsepower.
Even in the gas-guzzling 70's, Corvettes had relatively decent fuel economy, because of their lightweight construction. My brother-in-law's '69 Stingray averages 17MPG highway, which isn't bad for a non-EFI big-block V8 pushing out 340+HP.
If I ever decided to own such a beast for some mad reason (and believe me, I've proved I can get into all the trouble I can handle with even a Chevy Vega), the first thing I'd want is training at any one of several professional race driving schools around the country. That way I'd be able to drive it to its limits and not needlessly endanger myself and others.
With that kind of power and torque, things can get out of control in a hell of a hurry.
My second thought is: what kind of/size of tires and what sort of suspension does it have. Raw power is completely useless unless it can be efficiently transferred to the road and kept in control.
I can easily do 7 mph on a bike. I guess since you're the sucker stuck in traffic that you're really not that much better off, you just like to make it sound like you are.
Oh, what's that? There's plenty of other places/times you can do over 7 mph in your car? Yeah, so can the other guy. Now stop being so smug about it.
Sorry, what about a Volkswagen Beetle impresses people?
At the time, the gas mileage. Pretty much nothing else.
Oh, and the fact that they floated. Although I personally never verified that fact.
There is a turbo-charged one on Street Outlaws that is pretty cool but it can't keep up to the other beasts on that show.
This was way before anybody put turbochargers onto street cars.
Yea the Challenger is a pig. The Mustang is still a bit of a pig but it's come a long way. The Challenger isn't tiny in any sense of the word, super heavy for a coupe...
The averge, single horse-power vehicle gallops at between 40 and 48 km/h. I think we're doing it wrong.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
There is absolutely no need for a 800 horsepower car on the road, 0.
I never understood this fascination with having stuff you can't use to its fullest extent.
It's like spending thousands of dollars on a water cooled over clocked triple GPU computer so you can check your email and play minesweeper.
I've never understood the mindset of steering-wheel attendants.
I have a powerful car. Electronically limited to 155 MPH (about 185 MPH derestricted), I'm buying an even more powerful car that is also limited to 155 MPH. I enjoy driving my current car even though I'll rarely get to 155 MPH because fun is not defined by reaching the maximum possible speed in a straight line.
Even in traffic I like having the extra power, why? because it makes it easier to get around steering-wheel attendants like you in their Priuses doing 15 MPH below the speed limit in the overtaking lane. I do enjoy doing 0-60 in less than 7 seconds, having sufficient power that when the zombie, lane blocking steering-wheel attendant i'm passing wakes up and drops their phone, they cant speed up enough to block me because I'm willing to go faster than they are. Beyond this, there are lots of places to have fun, track days, twisty B-roads, motorways at 4 in the morning, a nice cruise through picturesque countryside doesn't need to be fast to be enjoyed.
People like you don't understand passion because you don't have a passion of your own. My passion is motoring, I like everything from sporty Japanese Kei cars like a Honda S660 to Italian supercars to luxury European limousines to capable offroaders like a J70 Land Cruiser or LR Disco. My passion means I can enjoy cars, even when they're not at their limits. Few activities whilst wearing clothes are more satisfying to me than a nice bit of road on a nice day with a good car. What I don't have a passion for is Golf.
Now using your logic, because an amateur Golfist cant play like Tiger Woods, he should just give up and go home to sit in front of the television watching bloody reality-TV home renovation shows. However, having a passion of my own means that I wont say that even though I find Golf to be one of the most boring activities on the face of the planet. I mean I'm nodding off just thinking about it however if Golfing is your bag, if it's something you enjoy even if you're a bit shit at it then I say take your Golf Bats, go forth and enjoy yourself as much as you can.
TL;DR
Stop being bitter that others have a passion your don't understand.
Also, take you Prius out of the overtaking lane, especially if you're not willing to do the speed limit and don't be a passhole.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Unless you spend 100% of your driving time stuck in 7 mph traffic. In which case I would suggest the problem isn't the car or the commute, but the government where you live in encouraging growth but failing to keep its transportation infrastructure up to date.
Even at low or normal highway speeds, these high-hp cars get good (or at least decent) gas mileage. Cruising at highway speeds only requires about 20-25 horsepower. So if you tune an engine with high peak power to be efficient at the 20-25 hp power band, it can get decent MPG, yet still have gobs of power on tap if you decide to floor it.
And a truck with 33" swamper tires would destroy your little nissan in an offroad race. And a motorboat would destroy the truck in a race across the lake...
Just because something is irrelevant to you, doesn't make it some sort of universal truth.
Lol when I'm driving my 500 hp vehicle I st{e}p on the gas at every light.
Yeah, once the traffic light turns back to green, you push as far as possible on the accelerator to have the car jump forward as fast as possible.
But once you've reach the normal driving speed (which on modern car you'll reach in only half the time than before, according to the summary),
what do you do ? Do you keep pushing the pedal all the way up to 250 km/h and/or until you collide something ?
Nope, at some speed, you'll coast, and at that point the emission of the car will drop dramatically.
The car will automatically go for a different compromise point on the efficiency vs. power scale.
(e.g.: it might even shut some cylinders down).
So, unless the road you drive is not only empty, but consist entirely of red lights spaced each only 20m appart (with red-light cameras to force you to stop and re-accelerate at each), you'll spend most time coasting, and only sporadically accelerating.
So even if the acceleration are optimised for power and don't emit less, the rest of the time the car will be in efficient mode, and over the whole trip, they tend to emit less.
If I had a Tesla Model S I'd probably get frustrated that the battery couldn't even take me on a single night's cruise.
Actually, electric motors are much more power-efficient at accelerating.
You won't be killing your battery as fast as you would be emptying the gas tank.
If you need to constantly stop and accelerate, electric motors are actually much better. That is the reason why electrical vehicle have been used by public services for quite some time. (e.g.: in France, Citroen have been making electric vans for the post office delivery service for nearly 4 decade. This thing even *predates lithium batteries*, the first vans used nickel) (e.g.: unlike in the US with Tesla which concentrate on passenger cars, in Europe most electrical vehicle company have also been producing electrical utility vehicle for quite some time. See also Renault's Z.E. Kangoo)
(This is also where part of the better mileage of hybrid vehicle comes from: if they accelerate on electric, they are more efficient).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
My 6 sec 0-60 car isn't a crackerbox and it is more fuel efficient than 99% of the cars available.
Not sure why you want to tax it 40% just because it isn't slow
FTFY
Oof. I had no idea the rest of the world was so terrible that the average weight was only 20kg. I'll make sure to donate more to MSF in the future!
Been beat to death, in the 70s.
The Pontiac GTO (judge) is faster than the Ferrari GTO, not only on the quarter mile, but around Monza. It really pissed the Italians off.
There is no substitute for power/weight ratio. Enzo said: 'I wish Americans didn't put truck motors in all their cars'. These days Ferraris come with 'truck motors'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In Indiana, recently, tax law changed so electrics can pay their fair cost to the road. Thereâ is now a substantial additional fee to make up for the tax at the gas pump they don't pay.
Since those days, horsepower in the U.S. has almost doubled, with the median model climbing from 145 to 283 stallions.
How many is that in Geldings?
and it was fun.
But!
You eventually question why you have all that horsepower to play with when max freeway speeds are 65mph and police take up positions at every overpass to ruin your day should you dare to push things a bit.
Assuming, of course, traffic even allows for that. Most of the time you just sit in bumper to bumper traffic in your high dollar horsepower machine. Roaring along at 10mph next to the Prius in the lane beside you.
Then you factor in premium fuel, synthetic oils, Z rated tires, and sky-high insurance and you come to your senses and get something more practical instead.
people would actually use some of that power to enter the freeway at more than 40 MPH.
Woohoo. Those couple of seconds make it all worthwhile.
Do yourself a favour, go to a racetrack. You'll realise how boring roads actually are.
You realize that the least expensive Honda in 1996 did 0-60 in 8.4 seconds, right?
Seriously, EVs , namely Tesla, are blowing the doors off far more expensive ice cars. So now Detroit has to produce some muscle cars. Wait until several other EV makers show up being faster and cheaper as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There was a lot of wallowing and flailing about at first. And by at first I mean about 15 to 20 years for American cars.
They wanted to stick to the old tried and true designs, but the emissions were killing them. They tried variants on that from the mid 70's though the 80's and on in to the early 90's. And it sucked. Engines were huge and heavy, but power was small and dissapointing. A Firebird with a 455 pusjing 220hp? Who wants THAT when a Corolla GT has half the weight and more power to the road?
The partnerships they entered with japanese manufacturers opened their eyes. The re-branded models sold by US manufacturers had power, speed, efficiency, AND clean emissions. It proved it could be done. So they started re-designing. Threw out a lot of the old tech that just was not adaptable. Carbs, throttle-body injectors, 2-valve systems, pushrods- it all had to go.
Now we have big valves, triple and quad valves, variable valve trains, variable airflow and fuel delivery, constant sensor feedback to make it all work at peak performance. Superchargers and turbos overcome the shortcomings when big power is needed. And we can still go with large displacement if we need the really big numbers. We would never have the modern power and efficiency if they had not been forced to start re-thinking engine design in 1973. And it still took till the mid-90's to really embrace that concept.
You also tax smiling. Set a maximum normal length of a smile behind the wheel, like 2 seconds, and if someone is caught grinning for a full 10 seconds, fine them.
"some kind of tiny, red, tire-melting factory"
How are the words "tiny" and "factory" applicable to this car? And does it only come in red? The summary reads like it was written by a child that has watched too much Top Gear but can't write as well as Jeremy Clarkson
I always laugh when I see these YT-videos.
It's so pointless.
At least, in Germany you can max out these cars on the road (not always, but there are still parts of the Autobahn that are unrestricted).
And with an autonomous cruise control system, you can actually sustain 200 km/h for as long as traffic permits.
0-60 for an 800 HP car - that's just for drag-racing.
With a 60 mph speed-limit, the US might as well import Dacia Dusters en-masse.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
The Dodge Demon requires some upgrades before it can legitimately compete in sanctioned drag race. Yet the car is considered "street legal".I'm also finding out that Dodge is suggesting you get your insurance from Hagerty's as it is probably not available from your average common sense insurance company. It was the one reason for the demise back in the 1960's of the "Muscle Cars". I don't know why anybody would need 800 plus horsepower in a street vehicle. I know there are people that will say it is my God given right to have this, I say this is a track vehicle, not a viable transportation vehicle. General motors makes a similar vehicle in the camaro line up. It does not have as much horsepower as the Demon, but it is set up for the drag strip with safety equipment. It also comes with no title and is declared strictly a race vehicle only and is not eligible for use on the street. All I can say for marketing for Dodge is " Coming wrapped around a light pole near you". It will get away from drivers on the street. God given rights does not mean you are Mario Andretti or any Nascar driver either. The fast and furious guy was a passenger in a car with lesser horsepower.. It did not guarantee his survival either.I know there are enough traffic accidents that kill people every day, but senseless carnage will come from these cars. I have some performance cars and I do not believe in street racing either.
More horespower but brain power stays the same. I'm sure that there's no way this will go wrong.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Why does average commuter need such engine horsepower?
You can paint the poky I-4 golfcarts in any good light, but that doesn't make them any better than their full featured 6-cylinder+ cousins.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The idiots that hoon these things on normal roads provide one of the strongest possible arguments for a hard push for fully automated driving. Nobody (probably) wants a 4500 lb car rammed up their butt because someone wants to have fun. Take it to the track.
The freedom of the open road cannot be had with a fully automated car. You might as well just have a different type of track. That type of control might fly for European nations and their highly regulated colonies, but not the US.
Screw the track. Having full control of the car over the open road - whether by stick-shift, automatic transmission, or human override of self-drive - is how free countries drive.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Why would you stick to the speed limit? Nobody does here in AZ. Especially out in the desert,
On my commute I see a lot of wasted horsepower as we do our 7 mph traffic crawl across 4 lanes of interstate.
Same, which is why the smart ones go for vehicles with 2 wheels. I get to max mine out most times I ride it, even in rush hour, until I hit third gear at least :)
You can't push as far as you can on the accelerator because the wheels will spin with regular street tires.
A. I was under the impression that "flooring the gas pedal" and similar expression were a figure of speech for what I'm talking about (accelerating as fast as possible), not literally as in making sure that the pedal is level with the floor of the car. But maybe, I'm not expressing myself correctly (I am not a ntaive speaker, as you might have deduced already)
B. Actually with a modern car : Yes *YOU CAN*. Try it next time when entering the highway.
It's been ages since the gas pedal isn't actually directly actuating the valve controlling the gaz admission anymore (or actuating anything else directly, for that matters).
On modern cars, the gaz pedal is just an input that give the car information about how fast you want to go. The car reads it to get your intent, and then the on-board electronics try whatever they can to ful-fill it, within the set of parameters they have to comply to, including anti-skidding.
So, when you litteraly push on the accelerator, you're not directly causing the tires to spin to fast and start skidding.
You're just signaling the car that you want to go as fast as possible, and the electronics do the necessary step to help you achieve the above mentioned 0mph to 60mph (~90km/h) in the modern much shorter time.
The engine will start revving up, but only within what the car can reasonably achieve. The "There is an art to it" part is handled by the car it self.
By the way, it's also closer to the behavior of modern cars when left on adaptive cruise control : when the way is clear they tend to accelerate rather fast, in order to achieve quickly their coasting speed in shorter period of time, spending less time in the least-efficiency "accelerating" mode, and more time in the efficient mode. (If your car's adaptive cruise control is designed to also work in city - aka "City Safe" by some constructors like Volvo - try using it and observe the car's acceleration behaviour. Also pay attention at the drop of you "average consumption per 100km" - or rise of "mileage per gallon" depending on how the computer counts it) (To go back to the beginning of this discussion: modern cars will self balance on the scale of efficiency vs. power. Modern car aren't build for either one or the other as the top post implied, they try to compromise given the specific needs at a time).
Which brings us to...
And yes the lights are usually very close together.
But unless the lights are *literally* 20 meters appart, over all you won't spend a high percentage of the time accelerating.
You'll be spending most of the time at the normal street driving speed, and only accelerate after the red turn green, until you reach the before mentioned speed.
So indeed modern cars aren't all "power to the detriment of efficiency".
Which brings us back to TFA : it shows number that, yes, overall, even if power is going up, the end result is that efficiency is getting better too, no matter what the top power of cars has become.
Efficiency hasn't been neglected at the alter of power.
As far as I understand, the laws of physics dictate that many fast accelerations wear down the battery than casual driving. Correct me if I am wrong, but the laws of inertia also apply to a Tesla do they not?
Yes law of physics apply. To the car as a whole.
If you want to accerelate a car, you need to give an energy delta of kinetic energy (Ekin = 0.5 m * v^2).
The thing is, in reality, you'll never ever going to get away *with that little energy* in real life.
There's tons of other things going on to consider where laws of physics will apply too, and will cause losses, meaning at the end, you'll need to spend a lot more joules than just the difference in Ekin.
On an electric motor, and on a pure ICE these extra losses are different.
(e.g.: an ICE will usually have a be
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yeah they save 700lbs by using aluminium instead of steel, but then they go and add about 1000 lbs of crap you don't need
TFA mentions the *total vehicle weight* has gone down from 4000lbs (~2000kg) to 3400 (~1700kg), extra crap included.
like heated cupwarmers,
what the fuck is a "heated cupwarmer" and how does it weights several kg ?
(or maybe it is only "a thing" in the US and that's why I've never heard about it).
56 airbags
pressurized gaz canisters and firing mecanisms don't nearly weight as much as you think.
so it doesn't count much on the total vehicle weight.
Also something that can reduce risks of critical wounds in case of collision (as long as you also wear the necessary seatbelt) doesn't count as "useless" in my book.
Better add a few hundreds gram and avoid ending up with a broken skull or rib-cage with pneumo-/haemo-thorax.
and and a shitload pointless tech that keeps phoning home
big news for you : modern day electronics are suprisingly compact and lightweight.
Your smartphone actually contains much more stuff (screen, big lithium battery) than needed for tech that can phone home.
Also the power envelope of such electronics ( and basically means you can drive like a clueless distracted retard and the car will just sort it out for you.
(btw: adaptive cruise control, lane departure alert, and other such tech doesn't actually need to phone home to work.
it requires a very fast feedback loop, and a cloud-processing and unreliable cell uplink aren't acceptable.
the image processing actually run on chips and computers *inside* the car).
For the weight and power budget, see above.
And again (similar to airbags), a technology which helps avoiding that collision happens in the first place isn't pointless in my book.
it's a very nice additional security feature, both for the safety of the above distracted retards AND for the safety of all the innocent by standers who might find themselves on their collision course (this could be even you or me).
I find the extra couple of watts and hundreds of grams an acceptable compromise for the safety of everybody on the road.
Also :
The things which *do* phone home are usually thing in the category of car alarms/anti-theft features, and black-boxes/other insurance shit.
That I would be much more likely to call "useless".
But even if find the justification of presence is dubious, they don't count much in the total weight of a vehicle.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Hell, my 5500 pound, 15-year old extended-cab truck will do it in even less with a 3:73 rear end and still gets about 22 mpg on the highway. 10 seconds is not a very high bar to clear at all. I think the only vehicles I've ever owned that couldn't break 10 seconds were a '79 Chevette and an '07 Elantra. One of the happiest days of my life was a few weeks ago when the tow truck came to take that POS Hyundai away.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
This is exactly right. Just experienced it myself driving through LA.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
If you have a 100% efficient engine...
You could have stopped right there since there is no such thing as a 100% efficient engine. It was a rhetorical example to highlight a point, not a physics problem.
People were saying that back in the 90s. Heck, they were saying that in the late 70s.
And they were right. Internal combustion engines have improved notably (and will continue to improve) but even so the differences from a 1970s engine to a modern one are modest improvements. Their efficiency has risen a few percent and literally cannot go substantially higher because they are reaching the thermodynamic limits of the materials available to us. Even using turbochargers and other efficiency aids most ICEs have an average efficiency around 20% and even in the best cases cannot get much above 35-45%. They are limited by the material properties of the engines and the various operational tradeoffs. Electric engines are typically upwards of 90%-98% efficient which is an efficiency no ICE can hope to achieve or even approach. While I'm hugely oversimplifying the efficiency comparisons the point is that we know for a fact we cannot make an ICE that is even close to the efficiency of an electric motor and we've known that for a century. The reason we haven't already switched is because battery technology has only now reached usable levels of power/weight and cost.
Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress. We have for all practical purposes reached the thermodynamic limits of ICEs so to make substantial improvements we will have to move to a different technology. Baring something unforeseen, electric motors appear to be what will replace (or supplement) the internal combustion engine for most vehicles. The limitation on electric motors is fuel storage density which is a problem with far more headroom than trying to eek out a few more percent gains from ICEs.
I know people here in Japan with 800+HP cars who have drag raced on public roads.
I know people in the US who have done that. It's not legal either place for very good reasons because it isn't safe and cannot be made safe.
Late nights, low traffic, straight roads, experience from drag racing closed tracks AND the street, roll cages, etc....yeah, it can be reasonably safe.
Bullshit. It's barely "reasonably safe" on a proper drag strip where they have actual safety equipment like fire trucks and EMTs. It is never "reasonably safe" on public roads no matter how much you rationalize it. Your argument is akin to arguing that drunk driving is safe because most of the time people don't get killed. It's a faulty analysis of the risks involved. Drag racing on public roads is a great way to find yourself in jail when someone gets hurt - which happens with regularity. Spend 20 seconds on google if you need actual examples.
Also, newsflash: EVERYONE who is even born in an industrialized country is taking a Cleveland Steamer on the chest of the environment, just by existing.
That's a pathetic excuse for trying to justify purchasing an 800HP gas powered car.
Considering that automation/robots/AI are making human labor obsolete...
Umm, what kind of bullshit are you talking about now? This has nothing to do with the topic at hand nor is it actually true.
I'm not advocating genocide, I'm advocating reduced birthrates, globally.
Holy off topic batman. I think we are done here.
How many of the people here complaining about others buying "too much car" then go home to their glass houses to fire up their overclocked 5GHz i7700k processor, dual 1080Ti monster gaming machines?
A reasonable point though one should point out that even the most power hungry PC doesn't consume anywhere near the amount of fuel a car does and the pollution metrics aren't even close. Nevertheless it is hypocritical.
You must be a real bummer to have at parties.
Is this a party? I didn't see the invite.
People still insist on doing 50/60 in the *****ing left lane.
Starting this model year, more than half of the world will end all fossil fuel vehicle incentives and start rolling out cheaper all-electric and electric hybrid (80 percent electric in normal operations) cars, trucks, and SUVs.
You had time to adapt and get higher mpg, but you wasted it on speed. An electric turbine can accelerate full out with no lag.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --