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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

#441

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #353
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are in fact, two types of regulation: "Safety and Soundness" and "economic." You're just creating terms that only mean "good regulation" and "bad regulation" and arguing that all we need is to have the good regulation but not the bad regulation. The business of separating the one from the other is the whole issue. > Yes some business and markets may go under because of safety and soundness regulation but this…

> You're just creating terms that only mean "good regulation" and "bad regulation" and arguing that all we need is to have the good regulation but not the bad regulation. The business of separating the one from the other is the whole issue. For starters I didn't create those terms. The second issue I have is your statement is completely unqualified, that the problem is separating them. Please qualify how they are the…

The category "economic regulation" is just a different name for government corruption. It can't be distinguished from safety regulations because they're overlapping rather than independent.

Protectionist taxi licensing regulations nominally exist for safety reasons and might in fact do both things at the same time. The "safety regulations" around nuclear power plants were specifically designed to make them not economically viable, by a baptists and bootleggers coalition of anti-nuclear weapons activists and fossil energy companies.

The distinction doesn't provide a useful filter, it's just a restatement of the fact that cronyism is bad.

> For one you assume it's a problem. It may or may not be. Your solutions are at best a false dilemma and are limiting choice when there could be and are a multitude of other options. If there's a point you're trying to make with your example it has gone well over my head.

Suppose hypothetically that under-aged drinking is a problem. That there are a multitude of other options to solve it is the entire point. The different choices have different economic consequences, so whoever is writing the legislation gets to decide who they want to kill and who they want to save.

A pure example of "bad" economic regulation would be completely naked. There would just be a law that says that only GM can sell cars. But that never really happens. Instead it gets dressed up in some ostensibly legitimate justification.

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

#442

Post by dnissley »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #430
chiph wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not any more. A 2017 Camry (family car) with the V6 is 6.1 seconds. http://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/toyota-0-60-mph-ti...

> with the V6 Are lots of people actually driving V6 Camrys? When I look at normal sedans the V6 engine is always a significant cost increase and completely destroys the car's MPG

Googling around I see rumor of a 10-15% take rate on the camry v6.

Toyota sold about 430k camrys in the US last year, so that would mean about 43k - 65k. Which is 3-4 times the number of EVs sold that year.

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

#443

Post by mikeash »

stupidhn wrote: post #439
mikeash wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is not just that the Tesla performs better, but that it does so despite a similar 0-60 time. The price difference has nothing to do with that.

> The price difference has nothing to do with that. Price has nothing to do with performance? 0-60 time is 0-60 time, regardless of how it feels. "Performance" can be measured. Maybe I'm still missing your point.

The person I replied to described pretty much the same experience with an EV that costs about the same as the ATS. My overall point is that EVs tend to perform better for normal driving tasks despite having similar 0-60 time because you don't often do 0-60 runs in normal driving tasks. The ATS may well match my S85 in 0-60 time, but there's no way it matches the 0-30 time, which is far more common in normal driving.

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

#444

Post by dmix »

This part was interesting, fuel injection has been optimized to the point of modeling the way the fluid vaporizes so it perfectly mists out, making sure to never hit the walls of the pistons:

> It’s also put to use in the Camaro V6, the middle-of-the pack, Goldilocks choice that makes 335 horsepower. This machine highlights one of the most critical things in engine evolution: direct fuel injection. Carburetors that mixed fuel with air disappeared from assembly lines long ago.

> But it was only in the 21st century that engineers perfected the practice of shooting a mist of gasoline directly into the cylinder. Less fuel is wasted and the engine is more powerful because it stays cooler. (The gas actually evaporates before it explodes, cooling the cylinder in the same way that sweat cools the skin of an athlete.)

> “Today, we can model it, we can visualize it, and we can make sure the fuel ends up in the air, not on the cylinder wall,” said Prabjot Nanua, director of Detroit-based GM’s advanced engine and racing engineering.

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

#445

Post by justin66 »

rsync wrote: post #96
trjordan wrote: post #20

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…

"To me, the last 15 years have been car manufacturers figuring out that with the right kind of engineering, you can get rid of turbo lag, and if you don't have lag or reliability problems, turbos make everything better. Smaller, faster, more fuel-efficient. My dad's sedan has a twin turbo these days. It gets 35 mpg." I think this is a mistaken interpretation of what is going on. What I believe is happening is that ev…

> But never forget, kids: there is no replacement for displacement.

Said no one who has ever compared this generation's Porsche Cayman/Boxster to the previous generation.

trjordan's right, the engineering of the small-displacement turbocharged motors has become completely amazing. You could scale up (ooooh... put AWD in too, for some reason!) but the cars are already overpowered.

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

#446

Post by oneshot908 »

chiph wrote: post #412
r00fus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bolt EV 0-60mph is rated at 6.5s. That's amazingly fast.

Not any more. A 2017 Camry (family car) with the V6 is 6.1 seconds. http://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/toyota-0-60-mph-ti...

Some perspective: a beautiful 1964 V8 Mustang goes from 0-60 in 7.8 seconds. I'd say both these cars are pretty fast and that you're nitpicking.

http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/1964/829160/ford_musta...

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

#447

Post by grandalf »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #330
grandalf wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 safe…

Great points, thanks.

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

#448

Post by dragontamer »

adrianN wrote: post #365
bagels wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I doubt that there are many drivers who can outperform a modern automatic transmission.

I disagree. As eeks points out, fully automatic transmissions are kind of awful at making decisions.

I have a case when I was driving into work this morning. I got stuck behind a funeral procession going 35 MPH on a 65 MPH interstate highway (Uggghhhhh)

I look to my left-mirror, and I see a spot I can feasibly make, I just gotta time it right to get "into" the flow of traffic. So what do I do?

I drop to 2nd gear (The Gear ratios on the Ford Focus are kinda "weak"). My engine roars but its cool, because my engine's top-Torque is in the 4000RPM to 6000RPM band. When the "spot" opens up, I floor the acceleration pedal and get in just fine.

----------

A fully automatic vehicle wouldn't "know" that I wanted to "prepare" for the sudden acceleration. It only knows after you push the pedal.

A manual driver however, can tell the car to "prepare" for acceleration, so that when you push the accelerator you are 100% ready to go.

-------------

Semi-automatic vehicles (including some "sport" CVT engines I've test-driven) would work. The important bit is to be able to change gears way ahead of time BEFORE you push the accelerator.

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

#449

Post by mywittyname »

oppositelock wrote: post #435

These new engine technologies are really cool if you enjoy driving performance cars, and it's amazing how it's possible to comply with EPA requirements while delivering so much power, but all these systems add a lot of complexity. Direct fuel injection, turbos and fancy transmissions are the min technologies which make these powerful efficient cars possible, but they're all impossibly complex to service! DFI leads to…

Cars are far more reliable than every before. The median age of cars on the road has been steadily creeping up for years.

Turbocharging does not make an engine less reliable: every big rig on the road is turbocharged and designed to go hundreds of thousands of miles while seeing engine loads unheard of for passenger cars..

I'm not sure why people have the perception a 10 speed auto is less reliable than a 4 speed auto. Planetary automatics, by design, add gears exponentially. Almost all 5+ speed automatic uses a Lepelletier gearset, which is basically a traditional four-speed with another planetary gearset in front of it. It's not that different from how big-rigs turn a four-speed manual into a 12-speed, or a 6-speed into an 18.

Fact is, as gear ratios grow in autos, they get more robust. ZF builds 8-speed automatics capable of 1000ft.lbs of torque which is way more than the gold standard of four-speeds (the GM 4L60e) could handle in it's highest output applications (380ft.lbs).

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

#450

Post by gambiting »

wiredfool wrote: post #360
galdosdi wrote: post #355

Past a certain point (like, not being able to maintain highway speed limit up a modest grade), I am not sure this extra horsepower is such a good thing. The thing I really notice when driving lower usable power-to-weight vehicles like a heavy truck or an unpowered bicycle or a car with a dying clutch or is this: they force you to think further ahead, work harder at predicting the possible movements of all other road…

It is much more fun driving a lower powered car at the limit than an overpowered on at 25%. (source -- owner of 1990 miata. 120hp, 2000lbs. Steer the front with the wheel, the back with the throttle.)

Yep. I think I made a slight mistake in buying my last car as I wanted to prioritize power, so I got an AMG with 381bhp - and yeah, the car is a monster, it does 0-60 in 4 seconds, but I very quickly found out that when going on some twisting mountain roads it's just too much power to really have fun - you get out on a straight, and are instantly doing 80mph+, on a 60mph-limit road, so you just end up cruising until the next turn which is neither interesting nor fun.

In a lower powered car, on a sufficiently technical road it's hard to stay at the speed limit, so you end up working the car and having loads of fun(like I am sure you do in your Miata). In a super powerful car that part is gone, and the drive becomes slightly less enjoyable because of it.

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