331–340 of 528 posts
The last 3 cars I owned here in Germany had the following real life consumption: 45 mpg (bought 2002) 35 mpg (bought 2013) 42mpg (bought 2017)
I have a 2016 Ford Mustang GT/CS and consistently get 23-24 MPG with mostly highway/freeway driving. It's unreal that a 5.0L V8 with 435HP (stock) gets that good gas mileage. The materials and fit & finish is better all around too. We are truly living in the middle of another "golden age" of automobiles. Watch out though - here come the EVs :)
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.
Which is why I said 'and their ilk', generally meaning people who want favor the market to make decisions instead of the government. We do have a political party in power who's promise is to remove regulations, __especially__ those involving common resources (including this very one on cars!), so it's not irrelevant point. I agree with you that labels create sides, but the reality is those that want labels (e.g. each…
>generally meaning people who want favor the market to make decisions instead of the government
People who favor no regulation aren't against all regulation. You see the difference, right?
>Regulations (and the abolishment of) is one that the right seems to want to claim
Show me where everyone on "the right" wants regulations gone. It's about as relevant of claiming that everyone on "the left" wants to throw the federal government deep into debt for a bunch of unfunded social programs because of Bernie's proposals.
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.
The Libertarian parties in the US are not representative of many libertarians.
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.
I would like to point out this is due to confusion by almost all peoples who haven't formally studied the economics of regulation. There are in fact, two types of regulation: "Safety and Soundness" and "economic." Economic regulation is almost always a bad thing and results in gross market inefficiencies like barriers to entry, cronyism, and destroys any hope of a functioning capitalist system. Think trucking regulat…
You need to justify that, otherwise it's pointless claptrap. The far left advocates for lots of government-provided services, which means markets without competition. I'm not aware of economic theories that strongly back the idea that no competition is best for social utility.
> and economics is in fact a science.
Well there are large portions of economics that are bunk. If you have a field that has multiple "schools of thought", then it's not really scientific because it means there aren't experiments to reproduce. If it's not reproducible, it's not science.
So most 'economics' studies that compare things like government structures, entitlements, etc are about as useful as trash. There are so many confounding variables that can't be controlled for that it's really easy to ignore all of the ones that disagree with the author's premise.
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When health costs are socialised - and insurance is a way of socialising costs - it does become a collective action problem, because the negligence of the few increases the costs of the many.
That is applicable to alcohol, unhealthy foods, lack of exercise, improper sleep, smoking, etc. Should we ban all those too?
My first car crush was in high school: the 2002 Subaru WRX. It would be fine to get some souped-up monster, and high-end BMWs are always fast, but when I first saw those silly little bug eyes and the trademark blue color? God did I want one. It was weird to figure out that it only came with a 2 liter engine. Apparently turbos help a lot. It was even weirder when the 2005 STI came out with the same engine ... and a bi…
No. Mazdas SkyActiv-G do the exact opposite, because, as Mazda states it: "When you add forced induction the combustion becomes harder to control, resulting in lower efficiency". Car companies collectively research EVs and high compression Atkinson style engines, because the real world efficiency are significantly better.
But for driveability, a fast responding turbo makes sense, but a larger NA engine is better. Neither is good for efficiency. My EcoBoost Fiesta, driving 80kmph (50mph), gets around 4.0L/100km (around 59mpg), but 130kmph (80mph), is around 6.5L/100km (36mpg). This is expected due to how drag works, but the kicker is city driving. It's worse, and I can drive a Mazda 6, a significantly bigger car, with a bigger engine, in the same city, same driving, more efficiently.
My first car crush was in high school: the 2002 Subaru WRX. It would be fine to get some souped-up monster, and high-end BMWs are always fast, but when I first saw those silly little bug eyes and the trademark blue color? God did I want one. It was weird to figure out that it only came with a 2 liter engine. Apparently turbos help a lot. It was even weirder when the 2005 STI came out with the same engine ... and a bi…
In F1 they now have waste heat recovery systems, as I understand it (please, F1 engineers, correct me if I'm wrong) in the form of mechanically decoupled turbine and compressor wheels on the turbo. The (exhaust) turbine generates electricity which it can feed either to the battery or to the compressor wheel motor (acting like a regular turbo in the latter case). In this configuration, you can also electrically spool…
They have an electical motor on the same shaft that will either harvest or keep the turbo spinning. This beautiful arrangement means that they design the turbo to extract as much energy as posible, and control it with the motor, rather than rely exclusively on the wastegate. This as you state, means that they can recoupe quite a bit of extra energy. I would not be surprised if we see non turbo charged engines, with an exhaust energy recovery system for hybrid engines.
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 a leap in technology, analogous to the jump from carburetors to electronic fuel injection.
Specifically, there's been a huge advancement in turbochargers in the last ten years. Advances like water cooling, ceramic bearings, and ceramic wheels. Turbos are far more efficient, durable, and well behaved than they were just ten year ago.
The massive advancements in turbochargers coupled with dual variable valve timing and direct injection means we can get huge amounts of efficiency and power out of the tiniest of motors.
Customers want power and fuel efficiency, the government mandating it did little to enhance that. There's plenty of loopholes for auto makers to skew their mileage numbers and make regulations basically useless. The driver behind faster and more efficient engines was customer demand and the technology to make it possible.
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.
I used to be in the auto industry and it probably has nothing to do with regulations. It's a leap in technology, analogous to the jump from carburetors to electronic fuel injection. Specifically, there's been a huge advancement in turbochargers in the last ten years. Advances like water cooling, ceramic bearings, and ceramic wheels. Turbos are far more efficient, durable, and well behaved than they were just ten year…