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America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

bloomberg.com

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Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#191

Post by djrogers »

dangrossman wrote: post #170
Someone1234 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric vehicles are a tough sell now though. The Chevy Bolt EV has a 60 kWh Lithium-ion battery; to charge that fully costs $8.7 in Utah (14.5 cents per kWh). Per the EPA's measure that gets you 238 miles. Gas costs approx $2.24/gallon in Utah. A Prius has a 11.3 gallon tank and a 540 miles range (again, EPA standard). That means that $11.15 would get you the same distance as a full Bolt EV charge in gas. Now, befo…

> The Bolt EV costs $36,620, the Prius $23,475. The Chevy Bolt has a $7500 electric vehicle tax credit, many states have rebates of $1000 to $3000, and some utility companies offer their own rebates and incentives. That narrows the price difference quite a bit, and drops it well below the average new car selling price. You're also not going to be producing gasoline at home, while a lot of people buying these expensiv…

> You're also not going to be producing gasoline at home, while a lot of people buying these expensive early electric vehicles are also early adopters of solar panels

I'm an electric car fan, but to be fair, unless your solar installation is proceeding more than you can use, and you don't have net-metering, then this is a false advantage here. Every KWh you use to charge your car is one you'll eventually have to buy from (or not sell to) the power company.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#192

Post by jdhn »

epistasis wrote: post #158
acchow wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is due to the rising power curve of ICE.

There's that, plus the time that it takes for the automatic transmission to decide that yes, you really do want to accelerate, and yes, maybe it ought to get around to increasing the RPMs one of these seconds. Electric cars opened my interest car performance. I now have a higher performance ICE than I ever thought I would spend money on, but I still miss my tiny little electric Fiat 500e, even though my ICE is defini…

>Fiddling with gears, monitoring RPM, what a terrible system.

For some of us, this "terrible system" is one of the best parts of owning an ICE vehicle with a manual transmission.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#193

Post by oneshot908 »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #52
oneshot908 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 1999 Camaro Z28: 320 HP and ~3,400 pounds My 2016 Camaro 2SS: 457 HP and ~3,700 pounds Well, half-right at least... That said, IMO that 2016 car drives like a budget Porsche Cayman while the 1999 car was a glorious tire-smoking muscle car. Ironically, I get slightly worse mileage out of the 2016 edition (22 vs 25 mpg).

Hey, another member of the two-Camaro club! I had a 1996 Z28 automatic and a 2000 SS 6-speed. How do you like the 2016 (apart from its Cayman-like ride)?

Love it to death! And I've driven both the current Challenger (didn't like) and the Mustang (more practical, but not as fun). I actively chose the Camaro over a Cayman because of the price difference and over a Corvette because of the blind spot indicators and better storage space.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#194

Post by YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #190
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You forgot oil changes in you calc. Are you, perhaps, being sarcastic with your comment? Anyway, there are few countries (if any) on Earth where EVs make financial sense for an average person. Their time will come, but buying into it now is not investing – indeed, as the GP commented, you do it for altogether different reasons.

No, he's not being sarcastic. Are you? EVs don't require oil changes. Or muffler/exhaust service. Or transmission service. And their brakes last longer.

Are you non-sarcastically implying that an oil change presents as a major expenditure in owning and using an ICE vehicle?

If so, I get it.. you don't own a car; which begs the question of why are we discussing this?

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#195

Post by kmm »

irixusr wrote: post #69
kmm wrote: post #60

I always wondered why American cars are so inefficient. Seems such a waste of your significantly cheaper gas :) I drive an Opel Astra H 1.7 CDTI and I can get up to 50 mpg (4.7 l/100 km) on the highway, and I never dip under 40 mpg (5.8 l/100km) even when doing a lot of city driving. I understand that my car is comparatively somewhat smaller (1200 kg) and underpowered (100 hp), yet I can't imagine needing more horsep…

Having lived (and appreciated) Europe and their cars: 1. You guy drive a lot less than us. I do trips three times as long as what would destroy me in Europe (twice a month I drive 500 km without stopping and back the next day) 2. Are you using the imperial gallon or the american gallon? Very common mistake (the mile used in the article looks like and probably is the 3.8l gal) Edit, you're using the right gallon.

Sure (if true), but that's not the point, because driving more doesn't increase mileage. Why does driving more make you prefer less efficient cars? What do you get back from it?

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#196

Post by anarazel »

ghaff wrote: post #149
kartan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure. I don't have statistical data, but I have that experience. I have never heard of anyone doing that in Europe. Long car travels are avoided as much as possible. I heard of a guy that did a really long trip by car because was relocating and didn't want - or was too expensive - to move his dogs in any other way. He was not happy a…

>But when people wants to visit the USA, to travel long distances by car looks like something you want to do. Especially out West, for vast areas of the US, there really are no good alternatives to driving. For example, there's very limited ability to visit most National Parks without a car. And most of the cities are too far apart to reasonably take trains between them. So you're left with flying which gets expensiv…

> Especially out West, for vast areas of the US, there really are no good alternatives to driving ... > And most of the cities are too far apart to reasonably take trains between them.

Heh, that's a very USian response ;). That's largely because the US doesn't have proper long-distance trains. In a lot of other countries you'll be about as fast or faster with a train rather than a car, and can comfortably work for most of that time. Even if a 6h car-trip becomes a 7h train-trip, I'd almost always take the train.

Compare driving Cologne-Frankfurt Airport by car (2h, if the traffic gods smile), and train (45min). That's a faster track, so not quite representative, but even Berlin-Freiburg on mostly slower tracks - I've done that over a hundred times - is ~6.40h train vs. ~8h by car.

I don't see the US getting comparatively nice long-distance trains anytime soon.

> For example, there's very limited ability to visit most National Parks without a car.

Yea, that's true. I've so far done that with rental cars, works well enough unless you're going in winter... Hm, I should plan a trip soon.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#197

Post by grandalf »

azinman2 wrote: post #165

For all the talk by liberatians and their ilk that regulation is bad and unnecessary, that chart of median fuel effeciency due to government requirements should give them pause. Wow. Well over a decade of non-progress until a path forward is mandated. Suddently the needle starts moving, with car owners, the environment, and energy import needs as big winners here.

Libertarians are not anti-regulation, they just believe that the good and bad consequences of regulations should be understood.

Often, those who are not libertarians will support a regulation simply because they agree with its stated aim... things like "the patriot act" or "the affordable care act".

Those names are chosen to sound good, not because they reflect the intent of legislation or the outcome of it.

To give you an example of the folly of fuel economy regulation, consider that 90% of automotive pollution is created by the oldest 10% of cars on the road. Does it really make sense to force all buyers of new cars to pay extra? Why not charge a tax that increases for every year a car gets older, so that the person driving the smoke-emitting clunker has an incentive to upgrade into something that is cleaner and safer.

Libertarians value having a clean environment just like anyone else does. The question is how to create regulations that are fair and don't create disincentives for innovation. Note that several automakers needed government bailouts partly due to the cost of complying with fuel economy regulations. But rather than letting those companies fold and allowing Tesla to rise to prominence much sooner, our regulators propped up the makers of the most polluting cars, a move which set back US emissions significantly (compared to the counter-factual I described).

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#198

Post by eanzenberg »

YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 wrote: post #172
vvanders wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot oil changes in you calc. Also your $8.70 is only $4.19 in Washington :). Costs are dropping on EVs and will continue to drop as economy of scale picks up. They may not make sense today but there's a good chance they will tomorrow.

>You forgot oil changes in you calc. Are you, perhaps, being sarcastic with your comment? Anyway, there are few countries (if any) on Earth where EVs make financial sense for an average person. Their time will come, but buying into it now is not investing – indeed, as the GP commented, you do it for altogether different reasons.

100,000 miles changing oil every 3,000 miles at $30 a pop is ~$1000 so yes, within consideration.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#199

Post by asteli »

mtm wrote: post #82
asteli wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get spoiled a bit by how amazing noise suppression in modern vehicles is. A modern car rolling 60 MPH down the highway makes almost no engine noise, it's all aerodynamic whoosh and tire noise. Pretty impressive for a machine that's creating several thousand tiny explosions per second.

Actually, assuming about 2000 RPM at 60 mph in a 4 cylinder car you are getting more like 17 detonations/second

Shame on me! Mixed up my units.

Note that we haven't accounted for _n_ cylinders either. For a 4 cylinder engine you'd average ~67/second. :)

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#200

Post by merraksh »

mtm wrote: post #82
asteli wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get spoiled a bit by how amazing noise suppression in modern vehicles is. A modern car rolling 60 MPH down the highway makes almost no engine noise, it's all aerodynamic whoosh and tire noise. Pretty impressive for a machine that's creating several thousand tiny explosions per second.

Actually, assuming about 2000 RPM at 60 mph in a 4 cylinder car you are getting more like 17 detonations/second

2000 / 60 seconds * 4 cylinders ~ 133 detonations/second.
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