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I found an interesting article today about how some car manufacturers are going to start to soup up their hybrids, enabling them to achieve even better gas mileage.
For those of you who don’t know how hybrids work, here is an excerpt from an article posted on About.com:
“Hybrid cars work by seamlessly integrating a gas engine, an electric motor and a high-powered battery. The battery provides power for the electric motor and is recharged by recapturing energy that would normally be lost when decelerating or coasting. This recapturing of energy is called regenerative braking. If needed, power from the gas engine can be diverted to recharge the battery as well. Because of these charging strategies, hybrid cars never need to be plugged in.”
The most interesting thing I found when reading the 100 mpg car article is that some hybrid owners are already getting close to 100 mpg thanks to some “slight” modifications they have made on their own. Essentially, what they have done is add extra batteries to their hybrid vehicle, thus using even less gasoline.
Unfortunately though, these modifications will not only void your hybrid’s warranty, but will also cost you between $3,000 and $12,000. Seems like it would take a very long time to recoup that money in what you would save on your car’s gas.
So, what does this all mean? It means that more and more hybrids are likely to hit the road and, in the future, they will probably be getting even better gas mileage than what they are currently getting.
It also means that in the meantime, the only way you’re going to get better gas mileage is by making slight adjustments to your driving habits. And wouldn’t you know it, I’ve come up with my list of the top 5 ways you can easily increase your gas mileage:
- Watch your speed
- Properly inflate your tires
- Reduce the amount of time your vehicle sits and idles
- Accelerate slowly
- Get rid of extra weight
Getting better gas mileage isn’t hard if you’re willing to make slight changes to your driving habits!
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Great.
Why is it that Seat and VW have had 100mpg cars available in Europe for 20 years, but in the USA 100mpg is revered as some sort of arcane and almost-but-maybe-not possible thing?
Because north american cars have to be built to hold up to north american winters, and the smaller engines used in europe would litterally self destruct if you tried to start one in -40 degree C weather
how often does it drop to -40 in the united states?
Because people in the US won’t drive cars that are so small you can put them in the back of the average American’s pick-up. The hybrid thing is great if you don’t mind the fact that you can buy 100,000 miles of driving on gas @ $3/gal & 30mpg for the $10,000 more they average in cost. Oh, and when you load them up to take your fiends out to the beach, with all your stuff, you will likely get just 35 mpg.
Enough in the northern areas. Wanna check in your shorts? Come see us in Feb.
The US doesn’t have a 100 MPG car because, as Ben indicated, the auto makers have decided that the cars would be so small they won’t sell. Plus the emissions standards are stricter in specific ways that effectively restrict the practical fuel economy of cars in the US.
Because europeans aren’t as fat as americans. Obviously. Think about it people.
Quick response to the emissions standards remark: Both the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius achive emissions that are a fraction of a normal passenger car AND can average great mpg. I have a Prius, and it’s EPA rating puts it at around 10% of the emissions of a standard car (lots of tech, design and thinking went into this) and my mileage is around 50.
The whole big car, lots of power way of thinking seems to get a never-ending boost from the advertizing of the auto makers themselves.
Oh well – it would be neat to convert my car to 100 mpg, but the one post is right – at $10k , it doesn’t make sense. Though maybe by the time the warranty on the electric part of the car expires, it might be more affordable.
Claiming 100 mpg is false if you are running a dual fuel car (gas and electricity from the power company) and you reduce your use of gas and increase your use of electricity. Think about this: if the car were totally electrice, how many miles would you travel per gallon of gas consumed? If you are not using gas, you have division by zero and are getting infinite mpg. Yes!
Truth requires a comparison of the total cost per mile before and after the mods.
And you will all carry on driving huge cars until Al Gore and his penguin army liberalise you to death. Not one US citizen would survive 10 seconds driving in Italy, and they have small cars that are economical. Go figure.
Will cars ever bring happiness? I think this comic strip answers that question.
http://www.laughitoff.info/archive.php?Comic=LuxuryCar
We dont have 100 MPG gallon cars simply because we can afford not to right now– once our gas gets up to 5 / gallon and we are living on top of eachother in a apartments so expensive that we can’t afford to buy gas they way we do no, then we wil opt for the bigger cars that show more individuality rather than a death trap.
In Texas, there ae LOTS of very large trucks on the road– when you see a small hybrid or tiny eco friendly car, the first thing you think is “My truck would kill that car if we got into an accident”. I would never put my family in one of those simply due to the risk of getting into an accident with the large vehicles that crowd the rest of it.
obadiah wrote
“Because north american cars have to be built to hold up to north american winters, and the smaller engines used in europe would litterally self destruct if you tried to start one in -40 degree C weather.”
Do you have any idea how cold it gets in Norway, Sweden, Finland, or Russia? The “smaller” engines used in Europe work just fine in Scandinavia and Russia. Engine displacement is irrelevant.
Sorry, Seat and VW have not had 100 mpg cars for twenty years…don’t be stupid. Also, it gets to -40 in my neck of the woods every winter, but our little cars have no problems. Oh, and we have lots of Smart cars driving around here, too…talk about small…no problems in winter. The thing is, here in Sweden, you don’t see hundreds of SUVs on the road with just one person in them running to pick up a Coke at the 7-11. It is a mindset, folks…now change yours.
I am an American who happily drives my 4-cylinder Honda, and I love it. I owned a Ford pickup for a while. I owned a gas guzzling 67 Ford Mustang. I’ve driven an Explorer and a Dodge Carivan. All those sucked down gas. They were also horrible quality. My Honda is great on Fuel. I drove from Nashville Tenn. to Lexington Kentucky on 3/4 a tank. Not too shabby.
Our problem is that our culture reveres the Hummer H2’s of the world. We don’t care about 12 MPG as long as we have social status. I think our mentality is foolish, and the lemmings of this nation are fully to blame for the rise in price at the pump.
Gasoline is obsolete. We should already have alternative energy in place, but the big oil companies won’t let that happen. They have lobbiests blocking positive legislation. They buy out small companies that work on alternatives, and they buy patents on new ideas that could some day put them out of business.
What do we do? Sit back and take it. I guess oil is a great lubricant for that sort of thing too…
Write your representatives and senators people. If enough people shout, they have to start listening! Big oil is killing our country, all for a stack of nickles in their pocket today, with no regard for tomorrow.
//Rant over
Diesel electric hybrids would raise efficiency by around 30% over gasoline/petrol.
I drive a full sized Ford pickup truck that gets 16 mpg.
I’m happy with that. I can afford the gas. No problem.
I’m not a Euro-Weenie socialist who needs to drive a politically correct clown car.
Oh, and I also own a twin-engined Beech Baron airplane that gets about two miles a gallon. But I guess the Euro-Weenies, impoverished from socialism, can’t afford those, let alone the fuel, so we’ll leave it at that.
obadiah,
What weather map are you looking at? It can get to below zero often in Europe–have you ever been to Germany, Italy, Norway, or Denmark? It doesn’t get too cold in most of the US states except AK and the northern ones–try living in Canada for awhile–that is the same longitude as most European countries.