Ford crushes half-price hybrid hoax Ford has stepped forward to debunk a hoax email suggesting the motor firm was selling new models of a hybrid car at half price in response to the global financial crisis. The bogus emails, ostensibly from a Ford sales manager in Michigan, claim 500 Ford Fusion Hybrid cars are on offer at the bargain price of $15,500, instead …
You mean, eco-friendly as in "powered by coal stations through gigantic lengths of copper wires and huge, heavy metal-and acid-rich batteries, with an overall energy efficiency in the low single digit percentage range"?
The fact that _you_ don't burn the fossil fuel doesn't make it clean pals.
Flame on!
(also, fiery death by massive global warming in the next couple of minutes, as the attention whores keep predicting... fear not, they'll be predicting a new ice age in a couple years, right around the time when the earthworm flu wipe the planet clean... these paranoia things are cyclic)
Why is it that my 2004 Ford Focus Estate (Diesel) will do me 65mpg (Thats 54.1 miles per US gallon) on a 150 mile parental visit cruise and yet this vehicle can only do 35 on highways?
Also why is it that in europe cars do better mileage cruising at 50 miles per hour and in the states they do worse?
I know diesel is more efficient than petrol but im pretty sure the european petrol ford focus cars can do better mileage than this "efficient" american hybrid.
Can someone explain to me wtf is going on?
"I know diesel is more efficient than petrol"
A common mis-conception. Diesel is a much denser fuel than petrol, so the higher calorific value means more energy available per litre. It also means much more carbon per litre, hence the traditional presence of far more soot in Diesel exhaust, whereas Petrol contains relatively more hydrogen, hence the greater condensation.
When crusing at ~70mph, the hybrid will be in full on petrol mode. The battery (if it's anything like a Prius) is only really of benefit in slow city driving.
So effectively, out of town, a hybrid stops being a hybrid and becomes just like any other petrol driven motor.
There are several reasons why US vehicles are less efficient.
- Their gallon is smaller than ours (as you pointed out)
- Diesel delivers about 30% more mpg than petrol
- But Diesel cars of our type aren't generally permitted over there (they require extensive exhaust after-treatment). This all adds to cost, and diesel engines cost more than petrol. Low sulphur diesel is quite new over there as well, and they lack the refinery capacity to handle the 50% diesel car mix we have in Europe. Also diesel over there costs a lot more than petrol, cancelling out the mpg saving.
- Their cars on average are bigger and heavier than ours. This significantly hits fuel economy. Compare the same engine in two European models (e.g. a focus and a mondeo) and you'll see the effect this has.
- As you point out, they have automatics, which waste fuel. This is nowhere near as bad as it used to be. In theory, an auto could be more efficient than a manual (e.g. auto-shift manual)
- The US gov test cycle involves harder acceleration than the Euro one, and this adds about a 10% hit.
I think we've missed out a few obvious points here:
Americans love big engines thus why they have V6 and V8's in alot more of their cars, but they are inefficient. The bbc and ABC's world-news this week showed a manufacturer "making V6 engines that have V8 power". Wow! Here, we have 4 cylinder engines that are more efficient and sometimes more powerful than their V6's. I remember renting a 2 litre mustang - what a joke that was! The last two 2 litre cars ive owned pee'd all over the speed and economy of that piece of crap.
Cue Top gear where Clarkson raced a dodge viper (maybe another American 'super' car?) plus others like porche 911 turbo and the smaller engined, naturally aspirated TVR won in a drag race... its all about engineering.
Plus, theres no incentive (until now) to produce efficient cars, as there is here in Europe.
We have STRICT European driven standards on emissions, and great engineers.
Americans have CHEAP fuel with low or zero duty, Bush never signed up to Kyoto, so why make an efficient engine?
Im not even sure they have 'compulsory' catalytic converters nationwide, which we have for what, almost 20 years?
Obama is finally putting that right. parts of it at least.
But not being as strict as we are, and aiming for low targets as they currently have, will only give them partial success and reward.
Paris, as she gets 100 miles to he gallon from me, always
DHD
Its still ridiculous how cheap it would be to run an efficient modern european PETROL car in the states.
And for Daniel: I really wouldn't call 1.2 times smaller "considerably smaller". It is pretty easy to divide the uk mpg by 1.2 to get us mpg, which if you actually read my message you might have noticed I had done :P
DarkHorseDre, different cars for different markets. Americans tend to drive further distances so they'll not want to be couped up in a tiny automobile for the longer period of time. It's easy to pay a premium for a tiny car then turn around and say it has higher performance. Of course it would, the key thing to remember is ideally it is a buyers market, anyone can buy the car they choose. It has nothing to do with being strict, call it a luxury if you like but we don't have narrow streets and not so many twists and turns, hills, don't have a need to make a dozen more clones of smaller cars we can import if we wanted them.
It's not hard to claim a more efficient 4 cyclinder engine, but it loses perspective. In the States they aren't trying to tweak them for performance because it's the low-end, money saving option, plus on average the cars are larger and heavier so of course they'll get worse fuel economy. Instead of tweaking a 4 cylinder for a smaller car, they'll tweak a 6 cylinder for a larger car when people are willing to pay for high performance.
All else being equal to get the same performance from the 4 cylinder you're running higher compression ratios or RPMs, either of which will wear out the engine faster. The reason that on average, larger engines are used, is because on average, the cars are heavier and larger. Low end torque can be an important engine feature while still retaining engine lifespan.
The States also have strict standards on emissions and have not only required catalytic converters on all automobiles, many states require e-checks, emissions tests that ensure the vehicle's emission control system is working properly rather than modified or in need of repair. It is hard to understand an attempt at contrasting US and European cars without knowing US cars have catalytic converters.
Obama is destroying the auto industry, both in the governmental proposals for bailout terms where they take socialist control of the industry, and insistence that automakers bare an even larger expense for extreme fuel economy as well as implementing a shift to electric vehicles which the infrastructure and the average working class consumer income cannot support.
It is true that the low price of gas in the US has a large effect, but it is not superiority to be stuck with high gas prices and have to scramble for a way to deal with it. Even so, in the US one of the most popular cars now is a Toyota Corolla which has fairly good gas mileage. Ultimately the US citizens believe in freedom of choice. If they want larger less efficient cars that are engineered to cost less than they otherwise would, they are entitled to choose them. Could it be a little bit of jealousy when people from another land think they should settle for higher gas prices and smaller cars?
Lastly, who really cares about performance? Who really needs to drive with the gas pedal to the floor? If they aren't flooring it, they had reserve performance still that they didn't need. High performance tiny engines avoid the issue of progress. It is not progress to stuff a person into as small a metal container as possible.
Paris, because she realizes it's not just the destination that counts, it's how you get there.
Not so cheap Oscar, because they travel greater distances, would need to drive TWO cars instead of one due to limited capacity in one car (including buying or maintaining another as well as insurance), meaning a bigger garage or more parking fees, and of course there's the other issue people living in Europe don't seem to understand.
Like it or not, traffic accidents are a part of life. When 2/3rds of the automobiles around you are SUVs, full sized pickup trucks and minivans, it's just not safe to drive a tiny car that would get squashed like a bug in an impact with one of these full framed heavy large vehicles.
Further, you cannot see around them in a tiny vehicle as you sit too low and when driving in the center of your lane more of your peripheral vision is blocked by them being wider. In some driving situations you really need to at least sit high enough that you can see around the tapering passenger compartment instead of the wider body of the vehicle. Plus, in smaller cars you're less likely to be seen.
Now let's talk about what happens in an impact. Small car ends up UNDER the SUV in many cases because the SUV suspension doesn't cause it to dip as much under braking, and the tapered nose and rear of many modern small cars causes the SUV to run up on top. Accidents aren't cheap.
On the other hand if you wanted to drive something in a sane sized car, the US already has those including a demand driven supply of European cars of all appropriate sizes.
The thing I can't understand is why it is important to have the efficiency with such a significant detraction. If you really want to be efficient why are you using electricity commenting on the internet?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
