Guest Post By Willis Eschenbach
Bizarrely, and unlike almost every other industrialized country, the US has fuel efficiency standards for cars. Each corporation (Ford, Chevy, etc.) has to meet certain fuel economy standards called the CAFE standards.
Let me start by saying that I think that this is governmental over-reach. In virtually every other part of life we let the market decide the required efficiency. We don’t have required efficiencies for gas-fired power plants. More efficient plants occur as a result of the market. We also don’t have required efficiencies for cell phones. If they burn through the batteries, they don’t sell. The market has always handled efficiency quite … well … efficiently.
So I object to ANY automotive fuel standards as both totally un-necessary, and worse, market distorting.
Here’s one important way it distorts the market. “Fuel Economy” is measured in a very curious way. Work efficiencies are usually measured per pound or per kilogram moved. Efficiency would relate to how much energy it takes to move say a hundred kilograms a distance of 10 metres horizontally. If you can move the same weight at the same speed using less energy, you have a more efficient setup.
But that’s not how the CAFE standards work. They’re measured in miles per gallon (or kilometres per liter, with 1 mpg ≈ .4 km/l), with no consideration of how much weight is being moved. This means that if you put the same identical engine in both a heavier car and a lighter car that are otherwise identical, they get assigned different “economy” numbers. But in fact, the efficiency of the engine, the drive train, the rolling resistance, and the aerodynamics is the same in both cases.
Now, this may or may not be the right way to measure fuel “economy”, but it has an odd side-effect. Here’s why. There are a variety of ways to increase the true efficiency of a vehicle. You can increase the efficiency of the engine. You can reduce the rolling resistance of the tires. You can improve the aerodynamic qualities of the vehicle. All of these increase the true efficiency, in that it takes less energy to move the same amount of weight the same distance at the same speed.
But under the CAFE rules, if you merely make your car lighter, you can claim it’s more “economical”. They’ve done a clever switch of “economy” for “efficiency” … bad bureaucrats, no cookies.
Now, making car bodies lighter is generally cheaper than making car engines and drive trains more efficient. So as a result, most of the gains in meeting the CAFE standards have come from making vehicles lighter.
Unfortunately, there is an ugly truth about cars. Less car weight in crashes means more injury and more deaths. Here’s the cold equation—the less steel that gets bent in a crash, the more flesh and bone that gets bent in a crash. The National Academy of Sciences wrote about this as far back as 2002. They said the CAFE standards were killing about 2,000 people per year.
So we have totally distorted the auto marketplace into trading human blood and misery for fuel economy … not a good plan on my planet.
I got to thinking about this again because the President is proposing a re-examination of Comrade Obama’s insane attempt to increase fuel efficiency by imperial fiat. Before he left office, then-President Obama put in new CAFE standards mandating a ludicrous corporate average fuel efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon (23 km/l) !!!. I cracked up laughing when he first made his Royal And Really Important Official Proclamation Regarding Economy. That charming fellow truly thought that he could just pick a number no matter how high, and magically the cars would get that much more efficient.
President Obama obviously didn’t understand that the one reliable rule about increasing efficiency is that every percent gained comes harder and costs more than the previous percent gained. The first ten percent gained is easy, the next ten percent is harder, and after a while it takes piles of money and effort to gain even one more percentage point.
Case in point? The CAFE standards. Care to guess how much the US nationwide light vehicle fuel “economy” has increased over the last quarter century?
An increase of a whopping two miles per gallon. Less than half a kilometer per liter.
Truly. All that grief, all that money wasted, for a sorry two pathetic miles per gallon increase. Here’s the data:
Be still my beating heart, the excitement of the real-world economy increase is getting to me …
You can see how well the CAFE standards actually work. From 1990 to 2014, almost a quarter century, the CAFE standards were well above the actual efficiency. During that time the efficiency should have been rising … but they didn’t budge one bit. Well, that’s not quite true … the MPG inched upwards. But then, given the general increase in all machinery over time, we’d expect that even if CAFE standards did not exist.
Me, I support the Gordian Knot solution to this lunacy—get rid of the fershlugginer CAFE standards completely, root and branch. Those standards are the reason that Volkswagon had to cheat on their pollution controls. Like other manufacturers, they could make a relatively clean-air car, or they could make a high “fuel economy” car … but not both.
And this is the ultimate irony. The CAFE standards were supposed to reduce pollution, but they couldn’t even do that. Instead they drove manufacturers to make the air dirtier just so they could meet the CAFE requirements.
Other countries were smart enough to never create such cockamamie standards in the first place. But having made the foolish mistake, at least we should correct it as soon as possible.
My best to everyone, you’re all invited to come over to my blog and see what the latest madness might be …
w.
PLEASE: When you comment, QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS THAT YOU ARE REFERRING TO, so that we can all understand what you are talking about.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
All things being equal a larger vehicle is likely to be safer in a crash than a smaller vehicle. But in Europe improvements in car safety design have significantly improved crash survival. With a strict regime to ensure vehicles are actually roadworthy (eg: annual MOT test in UK), the optimal solution may be to improve the stock of vehicles being used not not simply use larger vehicles.
The inevitable consequence of “bigger is better” is a race towards heavier, larger, less economic vehicles, making road safety an economic issue – only those with the money can afford to run a new large vehicle, those with less can only run an old large vehicle lacking current safety features..
However given that cars have no purpose save to transport their freight – people and goods – the real level of vehicle efficiency is woeful. 2500kg of SUV to move (say) 80kg of homo sapien + 20kg of shopping is an efficiency of 4% before factoring in the fuel efficiency.
Irrespective of views on climate change, peak oil etc etc, it is clear that many cities are becoming increasingly unpleasant polluted places to live, and cars are a major contributor to the problem. So a tax regime which encourages reduced emissions should be welcomed.
No, the government should not try to “fix” with taxes the monster it created with transportation regulations and taxpayer funding to begin with. The government in the US treated railroads like they were a transport monopoly for decades after they had undermined their business (and were certainly no longer even close to being any monopoly) by building up and effectively granting massive subsidies to every competitor, including automobiles, buses and trucking (highways), airlines (airports, air traffic control systems, R&D (from the military mostly), and marketing (the FAA is, among other things, charged with PROMOTING air travel – why in hell does the government need to ‘promote” a mode of transport?!), and waterways (through Army Corps of Engineers, dredging, etc.).
Let the government “invest” in high speed intercity rail and high speed local rail and a nationwide “autotrain” type service to reduce the “need” for people to use cars for as many things/miles, if they are really interested in reducing emissions, not punish us for doing what they basically required us to do by their meddling in the first place.
Weight is mostly an issue with urban cycle due to braking which converts kinetic energy to heat. Aerodynamic drag is the main energy expenditure on highway cycle..this drag has gone way down over the past 40 years.
Engines have gotten MUCH better. Direct injection gasoline is just as efficient as diesel based on energy content ( gasoline has slightly less energy per gallon compared to diesel). Since diesel is now more expensive, that is a wash. Smoky Yunick predicted this..too bad he didn’t see it.
The weight issue vanishes with regenerative braking which is why hybrid drive systems have great urban cycle economy, often rivaling highway.
Interestingly, the size of the engine, has a lot to do with efficiency. If I took a standard Ford Focus with a 160HP 2.2 liter engine and plunked in a 1.1 liter 75 hp engine, It would almost double mileage. It forces people to drive slower, and not accelerate as fast.
The secret to the 100mpg car, is to get one that runs acceptably on a 40hp engine.
No, that isn’t right. Engine efficiency is limited by construction. Theoretical maximum is by Carnot which is limited by temperature. Which in the Otto Cycle is mechanically set by compression ratio and material limits.
Sure, a smaller engine will slightly improve mileage but only because the Otto Cycle is variable compression due to manifold vacuum at all but wide open throttle. Engines are most efficient at the highest manifold pressure because there is where combustion temperature is highest…Sadi Carnot says so.
Direct injected gasoline engines use much higher mechanical compression ratios as preignition cannot happen. These engines still use a spark for ignition but have isobaric heat addition, just like a diesel. And all use low pressure turbo-supercharger .
Wildly optimistic or delusional, take your pick. It forces people to drive with their foot to the floor, not drive slower.
A lot of other countries tax cars, and base annual registration fees on the displacement of the engine. That is why in Europe you see so many micro cars and even compacts with ridiculously small engines. A VW Jetta with a 1.2 liter engine, as an example. Of course that caused the European manufacturers to figure out how to get as much horsepower out of an engine as possible, just so the cars could exist on the autobahn, pollution, or reliability be damned.
Don’t forget CAFE fines.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20160716/OEM11/307189981/industry-blindsided-as-cafe-fines-jump
Willis,
Only just read this article so sorry for the lateness of this comment.
Using the the deaths per billion km data from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
For those countries supplying data the safest places to drive are in mainly in Northern Europe, namely and in descending order of safety Sweden, UK, Eire, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Netherlands, Iceland, Finland, Germany, Australia Israel.
The USA comes in at 17th with just over twice the rate of Sweden.
The story is similar for deaths per vehicle USA 30th, and population USA 58th (10x the rate in Sweden 2nd) Micronesia being in number 1 position.
So although larger vehicles may be safer and in the USA the percentage of large vehicles is far greater than Northern Europe it would appear that the chances of being killed in a crash involving one or more large vehicles are much greater than the chances of being killed in a crash involving a collision between two NCAP tested smaller European cars or crashing an NCAP tested smaller car into a wall or tree.
Sandy In Limousin:
You provide the same link to make the same point as TimTheToolMan made above.
I copy to you what I said to him.
Richard
Yes the data is adjusted, but is there any suggestion that in general the death rate in RTAs is not less in North Europe than North America by whatever method (by mileage, population, vehicle numbers) is used to measure it?
Or is it that there are fewer accidents by whatever measure in North Europe than North America and the death rate per accident is the same?
Sandy In Limousin:
I suspect your claims are right but I don’t know if they are or not.
And I don’t know the answers to your questions posed to me. Do you?
I only know that, as I said,
Richard
We can’t on the one hand, claim that the use of fossil fuels shouldn’t be denied to the third world because that will keep them in poverty while at the same time we waste these precious resources on 2 ton SUVs and pickup trucks. Regardless of where you stand on CO2 emissions, there’s something immoral about using a loaded F150 to go to the local C-Store to pick up a loaf of bread. We in the West consume an inordinate amount of fossil fuels to support our lifestyles.
Quit guilt tripping. Our technology transfers plus foreign aid counts for something.
I didn’t force poverty on the third world, their government did just that. Case in point is Bobby Mugabe.
One constant with leftists. They want to control the choices other people make.
The writers MarkW bot need to amend and update it because it has become tediously predictable.
One constant with the MarkW bot. It asserts that any post it does not like is from a “leftist” then makes an unwarranted assertion about “leftists” that has no basis in reality.
Richard
Mine is 3 tons, I’ll have you know.
Likewise, using a vast oil infrastructure to post frivolous comments on a decadent Western blog is also immoral, to the person who has to carry clay jugs of water from the local stream every day.
If people don’t like their lot in life, they should act to change it, not wait around for someone else to change it for them. Odds are they’ll get something else they don’t like. I don’t feel immoral for using something I worked to buy.
There are other factors as well which at least partly negate the supposed benefit of the CAFE standards. To meet crash testing with less structure designers are resorting to aluminum, press hardened steel and other more exotic alloys for structural members. I cars using press hardened steel for example each structural part is heated to 900C (martensitic range) then formed and quenched in the press to get the strength needed in a thinner lightweight part. Aluminum is also obviously more energy intense than mild steel. Multiple studies have shown that electric cars need to operate up to 50,000 miles before they recoup the extra energy needed to make them as light as possible.
there will always be unintended consequences. The original CAFE standards did not include trucks or vehicles on truck chassis. This led to the invention of the SUV. Station wagons died out and SUVs took their place (families still wanted station wagons but had to buy an SUV in order to get the size car they needed for kids and gear). The net result was more gas guzzling SUVs instead of gas guzzling station wagons.
This time around, the US gov’t did include trucks. Ergo the Ford F-150 with aluminum boxes. What will happen will be shops specializing in retrofitting old trucks (if the idiotic CAFE standards are kept). Keep your 2016 F-150 running by replacing everything but the gas cap as time goes on (I’m assuming that other truck manufacturers will follow suit).
Finally, there is a very interesting video showing the results of a 1959 Chevy Impala crashing head-on into a 2009 Chevy Impala. Bottom line: driver of the ’59 Impala would have been killed, driver of the ’09 would have walked away from the crash
Seat belts, if fastened, play a significant role in passenger safety, plus, of course, airbags. Both features are missing on the ’59 Impala. Comparing that vehicle to a 2009 model is a bit misleading.
“Interesting” in what respect? The result is hardly unexpected….
The energy it takes to move a vehicle along the road is dominated by two parameters: aerodynamic drag and tire rolling resistance. Drag varies with the square of speed, so a great improvement would be to reduce the speed. This is easily achievable with a simple federal law, but voters would quickly eliminate the causes of such an alternative – the politicians who demanded it. Tire rolling resistance is about 1% of the weight of the vehicle being moved. This is mostly independent of the size of the vehicle and most other typical driving conditions. It simply takes an average rolling resistance force of one percent of the vehicle weight to get from A to B and back, no matter what else you might do.
The 1% value for rolling resistance has remained quite constant over the years. It’s because tires must do more than roll the vehicle along, they must also provide cornering and braking forces. (You can get great stopping distances by putting double sided sticky tape on the tires, but it kills your fuel economy.) Federal regulations include braking and cornering as well as fuel economy, so there is no simple law that can “fix” them all, regardless of what the voters might think about it.
The absurd 54 mpg CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) requirement by 2025 involves vehicles which are all already on the drawing boards. Thus the only known technology to meet it is to reduce size and weight, Oh, and then also give away a few million electric vehicles, in order to average in vehicles with zero “fuel” consumption.
They found coal fire electric plants were only 33% efficient. They wanted to pass a bill requiring that they increase the efficiency. They really don’t consider science or common sense.
I hear that the local legislature wants to pass a bill that will modify the law of gravity.
I think we should outlaw bills passed by dimwits, especially those who think reality can be overruled by government fiat.
I drive my Dodge 1500 with hemi, 4 wheel drive, air, quad cab whenever possible. It is fun, safe, large, and I can afford it. When in overdrive I get 21.5 mpg on highway. No going back to a small vehicle again. Love pumping out CO2 into the atmosphere for trees to munch on.
CAFE regulations are also responsible for the Chevy Cobalt ignition switch fiasco. US car builders cannot make a profit on the smallest cars, for which customers will not pay as much but want all the features of larger cars. Hence, GM engineers stayed with an ignition switch which could turn the motor off if keychain was too heavy, to avoid adding a few cents to direct cost, making the vehicle even less profitable. Killed quite a few people…
related, epa tier 4 and diesel engines. locomotives large enough to (for freight) run split cooling systems to avoid urea treatments (newer passenger locomotives use urea) but many OTR/smaller trucks cannot so have to use urea.
and tier 5 due in 2019….
emd went over a year not building any new locomotives as they had to design a new 4 stroke engine to work in their locomotives.
Willis,
Some remark on:
Less car weight in crashes means more injury and more deaths
Having had a car (Citroën 2CV) of about 560 kg empty weight, the above is true and false: only the weight difference between the cars in frontal collisions plays a role. It doesn’t make any difference when the car crashes against a wall, bridge, rock or tree (or a heavy truck): in all cases the “braking distance”, or how much steel is bend at the speed you drive at the moment of the collision is all what counts. That is even more for a 560 kg 2CV as for a 3000 kg Hummer, which has little ply zone…
Of course, as lighter cars are more dangerous at frontal collissions with heavier cars, everybody wants to drive in the heavier one. But that is of no help if everybody drives heavier cars, no matter how heavy. The possibility to get killed is less for a frontal collission between two 2CV’s as between two tanks, as these have no ply zone at all…
What tremendously helps is driving slower: the braking distance to avoid a possible accident increases with the second power of the driving speed. If you drive 100 km/h and need an emergency stop, you are stopped completely where a car starting braking at 120 km/h from the same point still drives at 70 km/h. By far more than deadly enough, even with all the airbags etc…
Ah yes, the Deux Cheveaux, also known as the “Rolling Garbage Can…”
Studies show that even when the collision is between cars of similar size, those driving in heavier cars fare better.
I would think the same advantage to the heavier car also applies when the heavier car hits the lighter car broadside, or in the rear. Or for that matter if the lighter car runs into the heavier car in such scenarios. If you’re in the lighter vehicle, physics works against you in “car vs. car” collisions.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think driving skills are the most important thing keeping vehicle occupants from getting killed, but only the smallest and lightest vehicles are going to get enough “mpg rating” to elevate the “average” for the “fleet” to the ludicrous levels demanded, and those (relative to heavier vehicles) do put the occupants of such vehicles into more danger in car vs. car collisions.
Even at ‘zero’ speed will be car accidents. Some pedestrians are that stupid (and texting!) that they run into a plainly visible parked car. Nonetheless: safety belts properly fastened and airbags count for considerable decrease of fatalities, not just slower speed.
I forgot texting jaywalkers….
The point is that if everybody drives in heavier cars, there is simply no advantage of the weight anymore and anyway no advantage in case you hit a truck or a solid obstacle…
There is no reason for driving heavier cars (if you don’t need the HP for transporting loads), as the same number of fatal accidents and injuries will happen if everybody drives in lighter cars as if everybody drives heavy cars… As good as the (much larger) speed differences on European highways give more (fatal) accidents than in the US, where about everybody maintains more or less the same speed of driving: the maximum allowed…
Thus from out of the view of fuel economics, forcing everybody into lighter cars is not more fatal than let everybody decide. There is BTW a much simpler solution than forcing fuel economy (or CO2 emission standards as they propose in Europe): double or triple the price of gasoline (as they have done in Europe), you will see how the average car shrinks over time…
But that is political suicide for anybody who pushes that kind of “solutions” through Congress…
“Ferdinand Engelbeen March 20, 2017 at 3:38 pm
As good as the (much larger) speed differences on European highways give more (fatal) accidents than in the US,..”
This is wrong. Many many examples of hundreds of vehicles, of all types, on the same carriage way crashing with everyone walking away or at worst minor injuries. All the vehicles are travelling in the same direction separated by a median barrier.
Just to play devil’s advocate: A car is to move people, regardless of the weight of the vehicle. What this suggests is that people should be riding motor scooters most of the time and not cars if they want to save the planet.
Dicaprio on a scooter driving up to the Oscars?
He’d certainly look capricious.
As a motorcyclist I’ve been getting 55mpg or better since the mid ’90’s. The same bike that get’s 55mpg on the street gets about 8mpg on track days. What you drive an how can make a big difference.
But don’t let that stop you from driving the Maibatsu Monstrosity.
If the automobile industry actually followed what people asked for, the US wouldn’t have had to bail out GM and Chrysler. The problem with the auto industry is they set Madison Avenue on a rampage, pushing the sales of vehicles that were exempted by the rules – trucks and SUVs – and the ads pushed them like the whole world wanted them. There were many people that would have liked fuel efficient cars instead, but somehow these dropped off the market. The industry did, once upon a time, produce small cars and pickup trucks because people wanted them. Then they switched to selling what they wanted to sell, and people were left with only used cars to allow them to buy smaller more efficient vehicles. And then came the cash for Klunker program, and the smaller, more efficient cars were turned in for cash.
The auto industry is an artificial market now. It is controlled by the industry, not the consumer, and produces what it wants, not what the consumer would necessarily choose if they were given a choice. Not every one wants a muscle car, SUV, or pickup, but if you decide to buy a small car, it will still be closer to a muscle car in performance than an efficient means of transportation.
I well recall the Honda Civics that advertised 55mpg, and I had a Ford Escort that delivered 33mpg over the first 130,000 miles of its life – until I moved to an area that had environmentally blended fuel to reduce pollution. Can’t say that dropping the car from 33mpg to 27mpg reduced pollution, but that’s what they tell me. That was a 1984, and it is hard to find a car that gets that good a mileage today – the 33mpg, that is. And at the time I bought that Escort, Honda had the CRX, I believe, and if memory serves correctly, one of the car magazines took it on an “economy run” to see how good it could get. I believe it was advertised at 80mpg, and using every trick in the book to drive as fuel efficiently as they could, they got 100+ on one leg of their trip, racking up something like 90+ overall.
Cars CAN be fuel efficient, and they don’t need to be computerized to be that way. But if you want “hot dog” performance, you can’t get fuel efficiency. Trouble is, there is more money to be made in a big pickup than there is in a small, fuel efficient car, and that was the road the industry chose. Greed drives everything, so we have to drive what greed wants us to. Oh yes, and you don’t reduce “pollution” by burning twice as much “blended” fuel as you used to. No matter how you want to cut it, 2 gallons will always pollute more than 1 gallon, although the “pollution” might be different.
I had a 1984 Honda CRX, it was the first car I bought brand new. It was fun to drive, if a bit under powered for a small car, and for a 2-seater it had a spacious interior. I don’t remember the mileage numbers, but it seemed be able to run endlessly on a sniff of gas. 🙂
“PaulH March 20, 2017 at 4:27 pm”
I worked at the Honda plant in Swindon, UK, in 1994/1995. They made engines onsite, an amazing sight. Almost no human input to building the engine. The Rover/Honda partnership failed about that time, Rover supplied Honda panels and Honda supplied Rover engines/gearboxes etc. Honda rejected ~80% of the panels so they built their own CNC pressing plant. I did not see it go into full production, but testing was impressive.
At that time I was looking after the plants computer networks and systems, all IBM and on 4mb token ring. I had to fix a PS/2 that was used to drive a machine that tested/measured bearing shells, the PSU failed and was replaced and it was in kanji. So, after remembering the keystrokes to go through the setup utility, it started to run. I then got the operator to go through his paces with the machine to make sure it was OK. He used to boot the PS/2 from diskette, one for each set of bearings being tested/measured. He used to power off the PS/2, swap diskette, swap bearings, and power on the PS/2 again, and let the test run. He used to do that for each bearing type and each cycle of testing. I showed him a solution to that. Swap disk, swap bearings then press CTRL-ALT-DEL…he was awestruck!
“Tom O March 20, 2017 at 1:49 pm
Cars CAN be fuel efficient, and they don’t need to be computerized to be that way.”
Yes they do. The advent of electronic fuel injection made that a no-brainer. Even the ME 109 had mechanical fuel injection, and although it was not for fuel economy, it was for performance, esp in rolls where the the Merlin in the Spitfire, with gravity fed carburettors, would splutter, the ME 109 would still run!
Patrick MJD:
You wrongly assert
Your assertions are wrong, very wrong! Clearly, you have not heard of Miss Shillings Orifice that was the standard drinking toast of RAF fighter pilots in the years before invention of the pressurised carburettor.
Richard
Crikey! Why has that gone to moderation? Could it be because of reference to Miss Shilling?
OK! I will try this. Search for Spitfire orifice.
Richard
Actually he’s right Richard, the flooding of the carb. was the reason for Tilly’s modification, retrofitted on the Merlin. We knew about the advantages of fuel injection for a very long time but the control was the difficulty, the mechanical systems were very complex, the advent of digital systems changed everything.
Phil.:
A sensible discussion would be a consideration of what modern electronic fuel injection achieves for fuel efficiency that mechanical fuel injection cannot and why.
Patrick MJD is wrong to claim his example shows cars (i.e. engines) “need to be computerised” to be fuel efficient. He admits the ME109 had mechanical fuel injection but did not cut-out in a dive. And I refer you to the link I provided but you may not have seen because it went into moderation for some time: as I said, Tilly’s orifice was a stop-gap until pressurised carburetors became available.
Electronic fuel injection is not relevant in the example cited as evidence by Patrick MJD so his example CANNOT show what he claims.
In other words, you are also wrong when you claim “he’s right” because he is wrong in every possible way.
Richard
“richardscourtney March 21, 2017 at 4:00 am”
Richard, I have built, tuned and raced cars with engines I have built by hand (Early 80’s) including blueprinting (I will leave you to Google that), porting and balancing. I have built and tuned normally aspirated engines, specifically, Rover V8’s with Stomberg/Zenith/SU carburettors…balanced by ear using a simple rubber tube. It’s is so much easier with EFI and an ECU. It is one reason why a Subaru Impreza 22B with a 2.2ltr engine, turbo charged, with appropriate crank, cams, pistons and TUNING via the ECU, can develop over 400BHP!
Ever hear a “Spit” flyover and rollover and spit and crackle? I use to live near Bigging Hill, the annual airshow was a treat, even the Vulcans the pilot of one which, in 1972, busted my ears on take off!
BTW, I used to work at Honda in Swindon, the original site of the Spitfire factory. A part of the original runway is still in use today to test Honda’s.
richardscourtney March 21, 2017 at 4:00 am
Phil.:
A sensible discussion would be a consideration of what modern electronic fuel injection achieves for fuel efficiency that mechanical fuel injection cannot and why.
Having worked on Direct Injection Stratified Charge (DISC) engines for ~20 years I can categorically say that the control achievable with electronic fuel injection is crucial. The Ford PROCO engine was a forerunner of this type of engine but couldn’t be put into production because the mechanical fuel injection system wasn’t capable of the necessary control over the range of operation. The advent of electronic control changed the situation completely and the approach is widely used in vehicles now. DISC engines allow lean combustion at partial load conditions also because injection takes place just before ignition ‘knock’ is avoided so higher compression ratios can be used comparable with Diesels giving higher thermodynamic efficiency. Multiple fuel injection pulses per cycle are often used with pulses as short as 100𝝁sec are used, no chance with mechanical fuel injection.
Patrick MJD is wrong to claim his example shows cars (i.e. engines) “need to be computerised” to be fuel efficient. He admits the ME109 had mechanical fuel injection but did not cut-out in a dive. And I refer you to the link I provided but you may not have seen because it went into moderation for some time: as I said, Tilly’s orifice was a stop-gap until pressurised carburetors became available.
Electronic fuel injection is not relevant in the example cited as evidence by Patrick MJD so his example CANNOT show what he claims.
He’s correct that the Me109 fuel injection system rendered it immune to the problems that the Merlin’s carburetor had, which Tilly’s modification fixed.
Patrick MJD March 22, 2017 at 2:12 am
Ever hear a “Spit” flyover and rollover and spit and crackle? I use to live near Bigging Hill, the annual airshow was a treat, even the Vulcans the pilot of one which, in 1972, busted my ears on take off!
Yes love that sound, could always recognize a ‘Spit’ when I heard it. Regarding the ‘V bombers’, I was once conducting some experiments at an underground lab on a RAF base when suddenly there was a very loud roaring noise from above. It turned out that the V-bombers (loaded!) were dispersed around the base and had to warm up their engines every few hours for readiness, that was a Vulcan as I recall.
“But if you want “hot dog” performance, you can’t get fuel efficiency.”
I suppose “fuel efficiency” means different things to different people, but you mention 33 mpg, later 27 mpg, in your Escort an infer you thought it was fairly efficient.
I own a 1989 Porsche 944S2 that gets 28 mpg on the highway and is considered by many (including myself) to also provide “hot dog” performance. It doesn’t get that kind of mileage on the track, but its fuel economy relative to other cars of its era was striking enough to cause IMSA to change its rules, requiring 944S2 drivers to partially fill their fuel cells with ping pong balls to reduce the car’s advantage during the Firestone Firehawk series of road races held in the early 90’s.
I submit that it isn’t impossible to have both. I don’t know if you could do that with the more recent Porsches, but another person made an earlier comment on this thread about the 918 having an EPA estimated fuel economy of 22 mpg, which is quite a bit better than my 2000 Dodge Durango and my Durango can neither accelerate 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds or hit a top speed of 200 mph. I suppose everything comes at a price 😉
“Royal And Really Important Official Proclamation Regarding Economy”
RARIOPRE?
Doesn’t really roll of the tongue. 😉
Patrick MJD:
Your assertion is wrong but my series of attempts to link to the amusing story of why have all gone into moderation.
Try Googling ‘Spitfire orifice’ and you may find it.
Richard
There were many improvements to the Merlin engine over time, including supercharging. The Merlin was also fitted to the Mustang P51 because the Allison engine was not powerful enough, but the airframe was rugged, had bigger guns, could carry more ammunition and had fuel tanks enough to extend range well beyond the Spitfire to support bomber flights in to Germany, and back.
Thanks to an engineering master, you can get a “rebuilt” Merlin engine. I forget the chaps name, but he is a real engineering master.
If heavier cars is so much safer than lighter car, why do USA have so much more deaths per car than Europe?
Anyone who have been around in Europe and USA know that American cars are on average bigger than European cars.
However, the statistics show that USA has 7.1 road fatalities per billion-vehicle kilometer, and UK has only 3.6.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Although it is a bit safer to drive a heavier car, the problem is that that gain is more than outweighed by the extra damage the heavier car can cause on other objects.
/Jan
Because Americans are taught how to get a license. Europeans are taught how to drive.
Jan Kjetil Andersen:
You are the third person to refer to that wiki link. I again quote the comment I made in reply to TimTheToolMan and to Sandy in Limousin.
Richard
Richard,
Those adjustments are made for countries without good death registration data. Neither USA nor any EU countries come in that category.
See table E4 in: http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2015/Explanatory_notes_GSRRS2015.pdf?ua=1
/Jan
This web page explains that CAFE didn’t say this exactly:
http://driving.ca/auto-news/news/motor-mouth-lies-damn-lies-and-fuel-economy-figures
Nevertheless, the bottom line remains, they were dreaming. “magic” is the word. About as likely as a car that runs on water.
What I see, when driving down the road, is mostly one person per vehicle. Or a few thousand pounds of machine to move a couple hundred pounds of driver. If fuel usage were most important, we would have tiny cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and rickshaws. But it’s not; we already have what we want.
I can’t imagine why VW cheated, but it wasn’t because of CAFE. Their TDI diesel was both clean and gave great fuel economy. Their problem was the EPA regulations which squeezed them on NOx emisions. The EPA regulations have been tightening up, and if they tighten up much more, only electric cars will be allowed. VW could have use the AdBlue technique, but didn’t. Bad move.
I looked at that link. It doesn’t say anything about CAFE. That article only talks about possible fixes for VW diesels already on the road. IF there will a fix for them that would make them meet the EPA emissions regulations, it says that mileage will decrease, no surprise there. It even gives numbers. However, at this point it does not look like there will be a fix, even if it has not been officially ruled out.
Those cars could be grandfathered into the previous level of the EPA emission standards. The cars sold under those rules presumably meet those older standards and nobody is complaining. Not going to happen. Since the problem is combustion at high temperatures with nitrogen in the air along with the oxygen, there isn’t really any way to fix this except by adding another catalytic converter (like AdBlue), and that is much easier to do when designing the car. The high-tech gasoline engines being developed will have the same problem, and the next level of EPA rules will be even harder to meet.
And this is the the fallacy:
Yes, to accelerate the heavy VW Audi comes its high-performance machine into the limit range with high exhaust gas values.
Yes, however, the less sophisticated engine of the lighter Chevvi comes just as close to the limit with the same exhaust gas values - and will probably remain longer in this range.