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http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/../photos/data/2/AmericanFlag.jpg Author is excellent in presenting us with graphs, but let's not be awed by graphs alone - what does it mean? His take is fuel economy has improved modestly the past 25 years and we should expect small gains for the future. (http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/the_myth_of_ever_increasing_fu.html)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/moses_graph2.jpgR H Higgs - American "Thinker" (http://www.americanthinker.com/) – May 24, 2009

Got a bit irreverent about the presentation of graphs. Sorry - I'm not going to react as if Moses just brought the Ten Commandments. The past 25 years, America has enjoyed cheap credit, cheap oil, and could afford to spend both. Those days are over and fuel economy will take precedence over performance and size. --Ed.

Two months ago I did what most environmentalists would consider unthinkable. I purchased my first 4X4 vehicle.

Since I wasn't planning on using it as my primary vehicle, I wasn't willing to shell out the multiple thousands of dollars involved in purchasing new. The logical choice was to pick an early 1990's model which was still in good condition. I found one with electronic fuel injection, A/C, and power everything. Even though it's verging on its twenty year birthday, it is still a sharp looking vehicle in very good condition.

So, imagine my surprise at the responses of my friends and acquaintances.

The comment, "You bought what? What a gas guzzler!" was generally quickly followed up by, "you should have purchased something newer for better gas efficiency." .... http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/the_myth_of_ever_increasing_fu.html

Yeah, I think in the past year or so I've seen more graphs than I could ever need. :rolleyes:

I got a chuckle out of the picture of Moses presenting the graph.
Thanks. I needed that today!

A textbook Strawman argument.

The comment, "You bought what? What a gas guzzler!" was generally quickly followed up by, "you should have purchased something newer for better gas efficiency."


Does that really make sense? Have vehicles improved so drastically compared to older models?

Of course that conversation never occurred and likely wouldn't.

More like "You bought what? What a gas guzzler, You should have picked something smaller for better gas efficiency" or "You should have picked the base I4 instead of the V8"

Seems the American Thinker doesn't expect it's readers to think?

So the moral of the story is that cars have to become lighter and more aero clean to reach the new standards-So what!! Some will be electric, and they will get FE ratings of 100+ mpg- Toyota- is already producing a 47 mpg 3000 lb car- it could be scaled up to 3600 lb and still get 39 mpg.



What is this guy whining about? We already have cars that exceed the standard, and the all electric will be 2.5x the new standard. This is ignoring diesels.
I don't think we in the USA have any plain ICE spark motor cars that currently get 39 mpg, but several 2900 lb cars-Civic,Corolla, brush up against it. The Prius HCHII, the TDI VW, the Smart beat it by a bit.

Just a whiner,
Charlie
Charlie

He didn't even look far enough back to see the increase during the fuel crisis of the '80s. Fuel economy nearly doubled in a few years.

Yeah, I think in the past year or so I've seen more graphs than I could ever need. :rolleyes:

I got a chuckle out of the picture of Moses presenting the graph.
Thanks. I needed that today!

There are lies, damn lies, and statisticsGraphs are like statistics and can be twisted accordingly.

He ignored efficiency gains in the 1970s which were significant. But what he should have drawn was the HP gains over 20 years which were quite impressive. I think we all know where the engineering went to in ICE design in the last 20 years.

Obviously hybrids meet the standard but it would be even easier to take the civic for example. Lower displacement by 10% and work on the aerodynamics for 10% and weight for 10% and you will easily get combined to high 30s with a decent car.

Aerodynamics are easy - it is just physical appearance attitudes that need to change (and they are slowly already). Weight costs money. Displacement is easy and since weight went down there is no downside.

Those comments to that article - wow!

Now the downside of CAFE increases this fast are - why should I get a new car that looks a little funny (aero) and is slower than my current family sedan with 300HP? It will hurt new car sales - which normally is not much of an issue but as we are facing a possible deflationary spiral - it is a consideration.

Another option is to reduce the weight of the vehicle to get the gains Obama so desires. Continuing down this path, the automobile quickly becomes a motorcycle.

As many others have pointed out, this results in designs where a vehicle becomes lighter and proportionally less safe as the inertia is decreased.

My most fuel-efficient vehicle used to be my motorcycle. Now my Prius actually gets better fuel economy than the bike, which is almost inconceivable, but true. It puts the lie to this article.

In the second part of the quote, it is not inertia that is decreased, it is mass. The author, besides being ignorant of physics, is oblivious to hybrid vehicles like the Prius, which proves the main idea of his article to be nonsense.

Harry

By 2016, new cars sold in the US will get the same FE as cars currently in the EU. ;)

What concerns me is today's trend of people seeking out not facts, but what they want to hear - American Thinker is just one of countless places of various points of view.

This author piles on statistics in a laughable attempt to simulate a peer-reviewed study with a totally wrong analysis. The first sentence or two should be a clear hint he was not going to be dispassionate in his study. This is more of a rationalization for gas guzzlers.

I can't get this concept of driving gas guzzlers as patriotic and it make me worry about my country.

By 2016, new cars sold in the US will get the same FE as cars currently in the EU. ;)

What concerns me is today's trend of people seeking out not facts, but what they want to hear - American Thinker is just one of countless places of various points of view.

This author piles on statistics in a laughable attempt to simulate a peer-reviewed study with a totally wrong analysis. The first sentence or two should be a clear hint he was not going to be dispassionate in his study. This is more of a rationalization for gas guzzlers.

I can't get this concept of driving gas guzzlers as patriotic and it make me worry about my country.

I have to agree -- the fact that he didn't mention the increase in engine BHP versus displacement over the past 15-20 years really undercuts the value of this article.

Now it may be true that we're not likely to see a really big gain in fuel economy of vehicles without altering horsepower, vehicle weight/size or aerodynamics. Maybe his point was that there aren't many fuel efficiency gains to be had while retaining current vehicle size/weight and horsepower? If so, he sure didn't go about it very well. (He says he compared similar engine sizes but engine size does not equal BHP.) And certainly, he isn't actually putting comparable cars together. The Corolla of 1990 is probably more comparable in terms of size and engine power to a Scion of today. Just as the Civic of 20 years ago is more comparable to a Fit, and an old Accord to a modern Civic.

I like reading intelligent critiques of ideas, especially ones coming out of Washington, but this one just falls flat.

Having just come from a 2-week trip to Europe, if Americans end up driving vehicles similar to those I saw there as a result of the Administration's new fuel economy policies, I don't exactly see the problem. (Which is not to say I endorse BHO's way of going about it.)

There could be some very valid criticisms of how the Obama Administration goes after Energy policy, but this article is not one of them.

I've got comment no. 76 posted on that article. Let's see how the low-forehead types deal with it...

Harry

American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. Contributors are accomplished in fields beyond journalism, and animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.I thought is was the humor - not the about link.

So the moral of the story is that cars have to become lighter .....

I give the dude credit for making an effort to compare apples to apples, but I think you ID'ed the biggest problem with his analysis right there. For example, the Corolla gained 330 pounds (ballpark 15% weight gain) between 1990 and 2009. If he'd compared a more sensible efficiency measure "work per gallon" (e.g. Ton-miles per gallon) he would have reported a more optimistic efficiency trend.

That said, it will likely be necessary to "right-size" vehicles a bit to meet the new standard.

Originally Posted by About American Thinker
American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. Contributors are accomplished in fields beyond journalism, and animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.

"animated"???? They probably mean "motivated". Certainly not accomplished in journalism if they can't use the right word??

"animated"???? They probably mean "motivated". Certainly not accomplished in journalism if they can't use the right word??

I've seen that word used with roughly their intended meaning before. Connotations of an attitude of cartoonish exaggeration, although accurate, probably weren't what they were shooting for though.;)

Yeah he's probably right about how we've pretty much gotten all we can out of the internal combustion engine. It is definitely a very well understood thing.

However the idea of aerodynamics has slipped his mind. You can see the jump on the graph in highway mpg for when they added the 4th gear to the F150. What kind of jump would we see on those graphs when the drag rating of cars is half of what it is now?

You know with trucks, eventually they'll have some kind of sloping cover over the bed and some fancy aerodynamics all around to increase the highway mileage way up there. Also with cars, eventually we will have cars shaped like Basjoos' aerocivic.

I think one day we'll have two kinds of cars. There will be electric city cars that will look similar to what we drive today, and then they'll be ICE cars that have heavy aerodynamics on them to get the high highway ratings.

Yeah he's probably right about how we've pretty much gotten all we can out of the internal combustion engine. It is definitely a very well understood thing.
However the idea of aerodynamics has slipped his mind. ...

I don't agree, when we look at the majority of the engine / transmission combinations now offered. Most of them are way behind what is being achieved in the recent hybrids with heavily Atkinsonized engines and tall gearing.

If U.S. consumers could drop their requirement of being able to quickly pass other cars at 70 mph, uphill, without downshifting, then we could immediately get a large jump in new car fuel economy simply by getting more appropriate displacements and gear ratios.

This is before any aerodynamic improvements and weight reductions.

He compared CAFE to 08 EPA. That's a major no-no right there.

Let's see, how to improve FE just from the engineering standpoint...
- carbon fiber
- smaller engines
- battery assist
- auto-stop
- better aerodynamics
- low rr tires
- different types of engines (clean diesel, 6-stroke, clean 2-stroke (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/1286526.html))
- electric motors/PHEVs

Last I checked, none of those violate the laws of physics.

And those don't even consider driving style, alternate transportation, or road improvements.

- different types of engines (clean diesel, 6-stroke, clean 2-stroke (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/1286526.html))



And of course Atkinson cycle, heavily tweaked Prius 1.5 liter, et al.

The fact that my Prius gets better mileage than my motorcycle is a bitter pill for the "the only way to get better mileage is to make cars so small they become motorcycles" crowd.

Harry

And of course Atkinson cycle, heavily tweaked Prius 1.5 liter, et al.

The fact that my Prius gets better mileage than my motorcycle is a bitter pill for the "the only way to get better mileage is to make cars so small they become motorcycles" crowd.


You beat me to it. But I did find a cool link to something else.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/concept_a_rotar.html

You know with trucks, eventually they'll have some kind of sloping cover over the bed and some fancy aerodynamics all around to increase the highway mileage way up there. Also with cars, eventually we will have cars shaped like Basjoos' aerocivic.

I feel this is what the Honda Ridgline and Chevy Avalanche were headed towards.

The fact that my Prius gets better mileage than my motorcycle is a bitter pill for the "the only way to get better mileage is to make cars so small they become motorcycles" crowd.
Harry
Even more so the Insight-I. The mpg I get in it is about TWICE what I get from my bike, which is (a) amazing and (b) seriously reduces my enthusiasm for riding the bike. And probably a better comparison than the Prius because both the Insight-I and the motorcycle are two-seaters.