211–220 of 336 posts
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I did some tests on a long drive last week, for the Smart Forfour I had this was the fuel consumption. It was all along flat, straight parts of the highway. Reports were based upon the cars own fuel efficiency monitor. - 135 km/h 7.8l/100km (30 mpg) - 125 km/h 6.5l/100km (36 mpg) - 115 km/h 5.4l/100km (43 mpg) I never realised speed made such a difference! (Mpg is US gallons)
That's - 84.0 mph - 77.5 mph - 71.5 mph For us in the states.
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The source of the data is actually www.spritmonitor.de, which is a self-reporting mileage tracking site (like www.fuelly.com). With ~501k vehicles tracked and 8.885B kilometers tracked, the site represents ~17k kilometers per car of user-reported mileage information. Is this the best, or a reliable source, of information to start the reckoning/witch hunt to come? I'm not sure.
I thought the same. In my anecdotal experience, drivers tend to get much lower than the manufacturer mileage because they optimize for things other than fuel economy (e.g., speed). My dad taught me lots of tips on conserving fuel and thankfully I've exceeded the sticker numbers on every car I've owned.
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Just stay off the brakes as much as possible. No big secret really.
Unless your car has regenerative breaks, in which case you should randomly and unpredictably break to generate free energy. edit: downvoters are once again proving that HN doesn't get jokes.
Have you tried being funnier?
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You're also assuming that execs necessarily knew about everything. There's a reasonable chance that the execs set the targets and feed it to the middle managers who pass it along to teams. Somewhere along the line I imagine there are those who are terrified of missing those targets and perhaps losing their jobs and resort to bending the rules a bit to hit their goals. And there's a very good chance that these people…
The execs get all the credit when it goes right, they should get all the blame when it goes wrong. Lock a couple of these people up, and suddenly they'll start caring a lot more about the legality of what their underlings are doing...
You can't just investigate, the nature of large power structures is that some underling will take the fall.
Breaking the rules for economic advantage should be met with new rules to force economic disadvantage. Put a 2% tax on total revenue for the next X years, possibly with the addition of a fee based on perceived past benefit. Honest players in the market will reap the lower cost of doing business, and better business practices will prevail.
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Are you in an area with much hilly terrain? That'll definitely increase fuel consumption significantly.
Actually, it depends. Modern cars do better in rolling hills than on perfectly flat land, since they can cut fuel entirely on the downhill, and the climbs don't require that much extra fuel over just maintaining speed. Now, mountains are another story, of course. Some good stuff in this SE question: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6220/can-a-car-ge...
There are scenarios where it's true, but there are a lot of factors involved (drag, power/efficiency curves of the engine, etc..., net-negative displacement, etc...)
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Does it matter however when it is systematic? This is going to sound backwards, but consider this: People buy cars based in part on MpG, however MpG is within itself an abstract thing (i.e. you don't actually get X miles per gallon, never did, never will too many other factors to include). So if everyone removes 4% from an abstract number, the entire market has shifted down, but the relative difference between two mo…
I can think of three reasons that it matters: - We base regulations and taxes on absolute MpG, so overstating efficiency weakens the regulations and allows automakers to cheat on taxes. - It misleads consumers about the cost to operate the vehicle. - It is an issue when comparing efficiency of new cars to older cars produced before the systemic cheating.
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I can think of three reasons that it matters: - We base regulations and taxes on absolute MpG, so overstating efficiency weakens the regulations and allows automakers to cheat on taxes. - It misleads consumers about the cost to operate the vehicle. - It is an issue when comparing efficiency of new cars to older cars produced before the systemic cheating.
In the US the EPA confirms the MPG ratings for 10%-15% of vehicles and has prescribed (edit: prescribed vs proscribed) testing regimes for each of the estimates. The issue isn't with manufacturers lying so much as the test schedule laid out by the EPA just doesn't reflect how people drive.
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Actually, it depends. Modern cars do better in rolling hills than on perfectly flat land, since they can cut fuel entirely on the downhill, and the climbs don't require that much extra fuel over just maintaining speed. Now, mountains are another story, of course. Some good stuff in this SE question: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6220/can-a-car-ge...
> Modern cars do better in rolling hills than on perfectly flat land, since they can cut fuel entirely on the downhill This is physically impossible. Even if the car was perfectly efficient at overcoming the force of gravity on the uphill portions (which it is not), you cannot do better than flat terrain (unless by hilly you mean 'net downhill').
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Actually, it depends. Modern cars do better in rolling hills than on perfectly flat land, since they can cut fuel entirely on the downhill, and the climbs don't require that much extra fuel over just maintaining speed. Now, mountains are another story, of course. Some good stuff in this SE question: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6220/can-a-car-ge...
I suggest you enroll in a physics course, this is physically impossible for the average case of net-zero displacement at a near-constant speed (i.e. roundtrips). There are scenarios where it's true, but there are a lot of factors involved (drag, power/efficiency curves of the engine, etc..., net-negative displacement, etc...)