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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

#291

Post by irixusr »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #178
ghaff wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I don't understand this comment: >too far apart to reasonably take trains between them // It's way nicer IMO doing inter city travel by train. One of my favourite journeys ever was from Wales, via England to South France. Aren't railways one of the main ways to do long journeys between cities?

Too far apart does mean that A to B is so much further than A to B in Europe. It means that there's nothing in between them, so it would be insane to build a passenger rail line (i.e. high speeds, high priority on the queue, locomotives, ect). A 1000 km length of track in Europe serves 10, 15 cities. In the American west it serves the passengers of 2.

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

#292

Post by Pxtl »

bpodgursky wrote: post #283
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.

(most) libertarians are perfectly happy to structure a market to internalize the externalities of pollution, since it's not practical to privatize air O2 and CO2. A different, possibly more market-oriented, solution would have been a carbon tax on emissions instead of mandated efficiency standards. I think it would have gotten us to a similar place. But there's not anything inherently anti-market in saying "you canno…

While small l libertarians may support that, my experience is that Libertarian political parties in the US and Canada are firmly against any action on climate change.

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

#293

Post by zanny »

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.

Obviously compelling improvement will result in... improvement. That, or manufacturers couldn't adapt with regulations and would have to drop out of the market. The US auto industry is mature and wealthy enough to be able to handle the burden.

However, in a general case, market forces should theoretically be pressuring the manufacturers to improve in that 10 year standstill. The real question is why they didn't compete. You could fill up an entire book exploring the economic motivations that might stifle that, though.

There is probably some low key argument here about how these regulations price out new entries into the industry, but what was the last successful gasoline car startup in the US that survived? I remember Delorean, launched 75 and bankrupt in 82. Doesn't seem like an industry that is disruption friendly, especially when Chrysler seems to be on deaths door. I'm surprised they float every year. The only real disruption is coming from parallel industries in Tesla, and the volume of Tesla sales is a blip on Fords and GMs revenue.

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

#294

Post by irixusr »

mikeash wrote: post #97
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…

There are a ton of Priuses on American roads, which I think are a bit larger, will easily meet or exceed those fuel efficiency numbers, and do it all while burning gasoline instead of diesel. (Diesel is more energy dense, so it's easier to get better MPG numbers with it. Diesel is also more expensive in the US, so it's not cost effective unless the efficiency gain is significant.) It's not all that hard to find effic…

Good points, but diesel's higher MPG doesn't have to do with the difference in energy density but in cycle efficiency.

The Diesel cycle is, all things equal, inherently less efficient than the Otto cycle. Hoever, since it allows much higher compression ratio it's efficiency ends up being very high (20 vs. 30 traditionally) [see Faires]

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

#295

Post by moron4hire »

zanny wrote: post #293
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.

Obviously compelling improvement will result in... improvement. That, or manufacturers couldn't adapt with regulations and would have to drop out of the market. The US auto industry is mature and wealthy enough to be able to handle the burden. However, in a general case, market forces should theoretically be pressuring the manufacturers to improve in that 10 year standstill. The real question is why they didn't compe…

Delorean had an issue with its founder being a raging cokehead, using company funds to smuggle drugs into the country, so that's probably not the best example to lay at the feet of regulation.

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

#296

Post by irixusr »

GlennS wrote: post #168
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…

I've just come from a trip around the US national parks, and noticed something similar. I rented the cheapest, smaller car that I could, which was a 2015 Dodge Dart which would probably be about mid-range in the UK. It claimed 30 miles / gallon for optimal driving. Converting, that's 36 miles / UK gallon. I don't actually own a car at the moment, but for a few years I owned a 1995 Peugeot 106 which normally got just…

Well you can't compare the two unless you mention the fuel type.

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

#297

Post by m_mueller »

bpodgursky wrote: post #283
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.

(most) libertarians are perfectly happy to structure a market to internalize the externalities of pollution, since it's not practical to privatize air O2 and CO2. A different, possibly more market-oriented, solution would have been a carbon tax on emissions instead of mandated efficiency standards. I think it would have gotten us to a similar place. But there's not anything inherently anti-market in saying "you canno…

Does anyone here know how accurately current sensor technology could map O2 output on a satellite? I.e. could we get down to, say, 10 meter precision?

Here's what I was thinking: Take the current approach with the Carbon certificate and decentralise it using blockchain technology (e.g. Ethereum) hooked up to (to be made) publicly available sensor data on O2, as well as a public data on land ownership; Give every patch of land globally a wallet address. Make an App and API for the payment process, based on liters of gasoline / oil bought / electricity used for a certain area / KM of flight taken (convert to Mols of CO2 assuming a perfect flame). Distribute the payments evenly among O2 wallet addresses. For unclaimed land and international waters, make a fund that can be distributed among national governments, e.g. by how much unclaimed land and coastline they have.

At first the payments are completely optional, made by users that want to become carbon neutral. However, businesses and governments can choose to use this system to easily implement mandatory carbon neutrality without the need to trust a third party. Blockchain powered Dapps allow just this - having code running on a network that everyone can audit, but no-one can change.

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

#298

Post by reportingsjr »

YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 wrote: post #212
eanzenberg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>changing oil every 3,000 miles What? I mean, what? Whatever you want, I guess.

Multiple people where I work change the oil in their cars at this rate. I explained that you can go further with more modern oils, especially synthetic, to no avail. I think you'd be surprised at how much people spend on car maintenance.

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

#299

Post by nindalf »

grandalf wrote: post #247
ajross wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spend a lot of words there describing what libertarians don't do and defending them from what I'm guessing you'd call a straw man. So... am I right that you, as a presumptive libertarian, support the fuel efficiency regulations passed in the 70's and 90's, as witnessed by the evidence in the linked article? If someone expert told you that similar regulation passed today would have a similar effect, would you supp…

> am I right that you... support the fuel efficiency regulations passed in the 70's and 90's No I would prefer a carbon tax charged per vehicle based on miles driven per year and the pollution emitted from the vehicle. > If someone expert told you that similar regulation passed today would have a similar effect, would you support it? What effect did it have? Do you think automakers would have continued to use 1960s e…

Sounds great but it's a regressive tax when you consider that it disincentivizes people actually using their cars. Once they've bought their new, fuel efficient car you want them to drive around and create economic value. This tax will ensure that less value is created.

Your "far better" proposal is potentially worse.

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

#300

Post by benchaney »

ajross wrote: post #270
grandalf wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> am I right that you... support the fuel efficiency regulations passed in the 70's and 90's No I would prefer a carbon tax charged per vehicle based on miles driven per year and the pollution emitted from the vehicle. > If someone expert told you that similar regulation passed today would have a similar effect, would you support it? What effect did it have? Do you think automakers would have continued to use 1960s e…

> What effect did it have? I genuinely don't understand how a technical person can look at the graph in the linked article and ask that question. This is just willful disbelief..

Perhaps the technical person in question understands the difference between correlation and causation.
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