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America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

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

#301

Post by MrRadar »

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…

Looking at the Wikipedia article for the Peugeot 106 most of the engines that were offered in the 1995 model year only put out around 100 HP. Since you had a "cheapest" rental Dart I'm assuming it had the base engine which is rated at 160 HP of power, around 60% more powerful. Comparing the curb weights, the 2015 Dart is also around 70% heavier than the 1995 106 which is expected since the Dart is a segment larger than the 106 and it would have all the safety and "infotainment" technologies developed in those 20 years. The increased power of the Dart makes up for the increased weight, and at US fuel prices it still probably costs less to fill up for the average US driver than your 106 would in Europe even though it's more efficient.

For comparison, I own a 2012 Chevrolet Sonic (known as the Aveo overseas) with the 1.4 L turbo engine (rated 138 HP). I have a mostly-highway commute and my lifetime average MPG(-US) is 38.0. On a long road trip I take once per year I have gotten over 50 MPG (measured by dividing the fuel I consumed on the trip by the distance I traveled) despite the vehicle only being rated at 38 MPG highway by the EPA. You can easily exceed the EPA highway rating on most cars if you accelerate gently and don't drive too much faster than 70 MPH.

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

#302

Post by zanny »

moron4hire wrote: post #295
zanny wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm more interested in the last attempt at a gasoline car startup that actually worked. Ford and GM absorbed a bunch of different auto makers like Cadillac and Lincoln, but most of those were founded pre-1950.

My point is that there is something to it if, on one hand, the industry stagnates without forced improvement through regulation like CAFE while at the same time nobody can enter the market disruptively. Since the stagnation period indicates that trying to brush it off as legitimate competition is wrong, it implies there is market collusion or some other force impeding disruption of a noncompetitive market.

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

#303

Post by MR4D »

Pxtl wrote: post #292
bpodgursky wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

To put an even finer point on that, big L Libertarians would like to see the governments (federal & state) stop subsidizing insurance for people who build or live in flood plains and tidal regions.

So you could argue both sides of that, although I get your drift.

Reason I mention that is they believe the market should be the master, and currently, the government won't let the market work in this particular area.

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

#304

Post by fenomas »

highd wrote: post #253
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.

It's unproductive to discuss political labels. It's sufficient to say this is a case where regulation was helpful - as are most cases involving protecting common resources. Issues are independent from each other. Continuing to discuss each point as it fits into the frameworks of the popular ideologies only serves to polarize when productive change requires unification.

This is a huge meta-issue that I wish people would watch out for.

When one says "Libertarians are wrong about X", and someone answers (as several did here) that Libertarians don't necessarily believe X, you're not arguing about X but about the definition of the word "Libertarian". But all too often that argument can then continue indefinitely, with both parties thinking they're arguing about X, even though they may not actually disagree about anything except definitions of terms.

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

#305

Post by asteli »

merraksh wrote: post #200
mtm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe in a 4cyl 2-stroke! In 4-stroke engines, a cylinder will fire once every other rev.

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

#306

Post by bagels »

dcwca wrote: post #232
jdhn wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I can totally see how that would be true. You build muscle memory and positive associations around the operation of the machine. But you've gotta see too how it's akin to turning a rotary phone dial.

In some ways, yes, but excluding dual clutch transmissions, manual transmissions really do have a performance advantage while rotary phones did not have any advantage over touch tone other than, maybe at one point, cost.

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

#307

Post by sien »

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.

Doesn't it strike you as dubious?

As in there is some way people are cooking the books. Hello VW!

That the moment the government says 'though shalt be more fuel efficient' the numbers go up. Is that the mix of cars they offer for sale rather than by the numbers with real fuel economy?

The US is a fair sized share of the global car market but it's not even 25% any more I think. It would be interesting to look at fleet efficiency in other countries.

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

#308

Post by saosebastiao »

Pxtl wrote: post #292
bpodgursky wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

You should see the things the Libertarian party fights about internally...they aren't anywhere near as unified as you claim.

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

#309

Post by bagels »

refurb wrote: post #207
valuearb wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops! It was 100 million miles, not 1 million miles, my mistake.

That makes more sense. So your chance of dying in an auto accident is 0.7% over your lifetime. It's probably less than that since I'm sure the average fatality per accident is >1.

Average fatalities per fatal accident maybe.

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

#310

Post by highd »

fenomas wrote: post #304
highd wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unproductive to discuss political labels. It's sufficient to say this is a case where regulation was helpful - as are most cases involving protecting common resources. Issues are independent from each other. Continuing to discuss each point as it fits into the frameworks of the popular ideologies only serves to polarize when productive change requires unification.

This is a huge meta-issue that I wish people would watch out for. When one says "Libertarians are wrong about X", and someone answers (as several did here) that Libertarians don't necessarily believe X, you're not arguing about X but about the definition of the word "Libertarian". But all too often that argument can then continue indefinitely, with both parties thinking they're arguing about X, even though they may n…

Exactly. Not to mention the inevitable "No true Scotsman!".

This is the fundamental root of the degradation of political discourse over the past few decades, IMO. Conversations without labels I've found almost inevitably result in previously opposed party members finding common ground and shared paths to improvements.

Policy discussion should revolve around 2 questions, IMO:

1) What should the world be like?

2) What could be done to make the world like we want?

People will often find that different aspects of those two questions cut across party-line ideologies in surprising ways.

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