Why 60 MPG Can Be as Standard as Catalytic Converters, Airbags, and Seatbelts

[wtmusic]

Above, Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca, in a 1971 meeting with Richard Nixon and John Erlichman, claimed air bags and emissions requirements would harm the US economy.

"One of the first cars I drove was my dad’s Buick Regal. I was only 14, but my older brothers let me sit behind the wheel. After college, I moved to DC and was happy to have an old VW Rabbit to wedge into tight parking spaces. I have fond memories of both those cars—they brought me a taste of freedom—but they can’t hold a candle to today’s models. Neither the Regal nor the Rabbit had the antilock brakes, power steering, or fuel injection that has since become standard.

The auto industry has pioneered remarkable innovations in the past three decades. Nearly every new car on the road is wired with a computer more powerful than the ones that sent astronauts to the moon—a development my dad couldn’t have imagined when he bought that Buick Regal.

And yet, now that the Obama administration is considering raising clean car standards to 60 miles per gallon, automakers claim they don’t have the ingenuity to do it."

http://theenergycollective.com/peterlehner/58039/why-60-mpg-can-be-standard-catalytic-converters-airbags-and-seatbelts?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

[FreakinDJ]

1. They can do it - they just can't sell it

[unblock]

6. they CAN sell it -- IF it's a requirement.

it's the competition against big hulking 12mpg gas-guzzlers that scares many people away from the fuel-sippers.

but once fuel efficient cars are the norm, people won't mind being in a smaller, lighter car.

they just don't want to be in the dinky car while there are hummers out there to get into accidents with.



so it makes sense for auto execs not to be turning their lines exclusively to 60+mpg cars unilaterally while their competitors continue to sell gas guzzlers. but it does NOT make nearly as much sense for them to oppose a federal requirement to make all their competitors do the same.

[laconicsax]

2. Fuel efficiency is different than specific features.

Gasoline engines have a maximum theoretical efficiency of 70-75%. That value is based simply on the ratio of air temperature to the temperature at which fuel burns.

The following things reduce the efficiency of an engine.
-Adding moving parts.
-Adding features to reduce pollution and noise.
-Adding a big hunk of metal (read: car)
-Adding other things for the engine to run (water pumps, A/C, etc.)

When you're done making an actual vehicle for the engine to power, you're left with an extremely inefficient engine.

The solution isn't setting a 60 MPG standard. It's moving away from gasoline engines entirely.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

8. Key point

Internal combustion motors have to deal with thermodynamics and physics. People are also ignoring the fuel used to generate the power when they plug in.

We can and should move to cleaner and higher efficiency personal transportation, but we need to keep expectations inline with what current science and more importantly engineering can provide.

[laconicsax]

9. Just to say...

Everything has to deal with physics. :hi:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

11. I wish more people understood that...

[lfairban]

3. It is worse than that!

Yet many car companies say the standards will be too costly. Others insist they don’t have the technological ability to reach the goal. Former GM Vice Chair Bob Lutz even dismissed a more modest standard of 42 miles per gallon as “totally ridiculous.” He claimed, “Nobody knows how to do a full-line fleet with the equivalent of 42 miles per gallon. That’s aintgonnahappen.com.”

Why does our Prius get 42 mpg? Because it is 6 years old and the batteries are getting worn out.

They could do this standard in three years!

[wtmusic]

5. Another idiotic quote from Lutz

who gained notoriety from claiming "hybrid cars make no sense" in 2004, a few years before GM began spending 3/4 $billion to build one.

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Rabbit had CIS fuel injection in 76.

What the hell would it need power steering for?

[madokie]

7. I remember in '68 when the government told the auto companies to stop the fumes from

the hot oil in the crankcase from being vented into the atmosphere and the mechanics were using phrases like they're making the cars eat their own shit when actually there is a little bit of energy to be gained from the oil vapors as they burn. I remember when a few years later the government told the auto companies that from this point on all new vehicles have to have bumpers that can withstand a 5 mph crash into another auto or solid object or whatever and the car companies railed and cried, throwing hissy fits and stuck the bumpers out 6 to 8 inches from the bodies and continued to build them that way until the Japanese showed them that you could indeed build a car without the bumpers sticking out like sore thumbs and now they are building them that the bumpers are just part of the body for all intents and purposes without any of that hideousness they started with. I remember when the CAFE standards were imposed and the car companies said no way can we do that and bitched and moaned until they were allowed to not have to include the pickups. I remember how the auto companies then started promoting and selling three pickups to ever two cars. I remember all this and yet the auto companies were able to do as they were mandated too but they had to be dragged kicking and scratching the whole way. One of the reason we don't have EV's today is because the auto companies have all this time, money, technology and equipment invested in building our autos with internal combustion engines and they don't want to lose the money they've invested in developing those to the point they have gotten to today. We'll get EV's but the car companies are going to do it bitching and moaning the whole way but eventually the demand will be so great that they'll have no other choice but to start building them. The way is not the problem its the will that gets in their way same with this new mandate of 60 mpg will be.

[AtheistCrusader]

10. +1

[Nihil]

13. Just for a change ...

... I totally agree with everything you said there!
:hi:

[madokie]

14. I knew there had to be some love for me in there somewhere :-)

:hug:

[Nihil]

16. It's hidden at times ...

... but there's still something there :-)
:hug:

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. Took 20 years for airbags to catch on

Implementing those with Bakelite, 74 series TTL and Wire Wrap might have proven interesting had it been compelled. As I recall in 71 emissions standards were already requiring EGR, Non-Quench (open) combustion chamber heads. And with model year 74 the "smog" motor was complete with Lower compression, Two-way Bed Catalytic Converter with required mechanical Air-Pump. Some cars became lighter while others just added cubic inches.

60MPG isn't the problem. Question is will you all accept the unintended consequences? It will either cost you more dollars for the high tech vehicle systems to do it. Or we take away some of the current crash capability/energy absorption capability, ride quality, space etc. Since the 60+MPG Honda Insight was pulled off the market and redesigned both here and in Japan. I am not so sure people are willing to make such a trade.

[JohnWxy]

15. Chevey Cruise - 50 mpg capable according to tester ..link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x296372

[happyslug]

17. One economist found that all of the CAFE since the 1970, is the same as a 25 cents Gas Tax

http://are194ha.ucdavis.edu/class/cid_392/are194_thesis-examples_uscafe.pdf

Thus the better option would be a $1 a gallon Gasoline Tax,that would force people to want 60 mpg cars, and pay the extra for it.