Brit inventor Dyson challenges EU ruling on his hoover's energy efficiency ratings

Re: Am I the only one...

I'd say it was like measuring your car's power output with the wheels jacked up off the ground.

or a washing machine with nothing put into the drum

energy efficiency of a vacuum cleaner ought to be the energy it uses to pick up a known quantity of material. what price a low energy usage cleaner if you have to vacuum the same bit of carpet twice?

Re: Sort out the car industry mpg figures while you're at it...

Totally agree with you on this one. Apparently my VW Passat Sport 177PS returns 67.3mpg Extra-Urban 60.1mpg combined, and 50.4 urban.

Well I can tell you that I have never seen any more than 55mpg, and that was taken over a relatively short section of scottish highlands A road at about 50mph.

For real world figures consisting of mostly extra-urban driving on A roads, plus a little motorway driving, in the Cambridgeshire fens see:

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/w0067814/passat

I'm not a fast driver either BTW...

Re: Testing in a representative environment

My car pretty much achieves it's official, terrible, MPG numbers.

Re: Testing in a representative environment

Another hand up! Manual says 15.5 mpg but I usually get about 22 mpg.

Isn't that great? Thank you for the G, you Austrian engineers! </sarcasm>

His problem is that his rivals all suck. And cooperation just isn't their bag. Also untrustworthy, less than half of them being upright...

Re: Is it just me

Downvoted? Really? He has pretty much said that the fact that his cleaner is 'bagless' (a design element) should count as a plus in an energy efficiency rating (a measure of how much poweer it uses to do its job). If that isn't asking for the benchmark to be skewed in your favour, I don't know what is.

Re: Is it just me

I'm sure it's precisely the point. However, he may have some justification on his side. After all, the whole point of the swirly-wirly design was to do away with the bags. Because the bags only work at peak efficiency for the first bit of sucking, until you've actually used them. At which point they start to reduce in efficiency and suction.

So his point is that his should be using a relatively stable amount of energy, whereas theirs will become more energy inefficient as they're used. So testing when brand spanking new does give them an advantage - and isn't really a good test of energy efficiency. Or anything really.

He may even have a point on consumables. In something like a fridge, which is turned on 24/7, energy efficiency is obviously key. However, a hoover is only turned on once a week, for a few minutes. So consumables are a much larger proportion of the energy budget. Also if the unit drops in efficiency for a large portion of its lifecycle, it may end up consuming more power, as it has to be turned on for longer to do the same job.

Being no hoover expert, it may be that he's just getting his complaint in first. But his points seem pretty reasonable to me so far.

Re: Is it just me

So, you develop a device, add a few features into it which you feel improve its efficiency in real world usage, then the EU decide to test the devices in a silly way which bypasses your efficiency improvements (ooh I dunno, testing vacuums in a dust-free environment for example). Of course you'd complain!

Just the same was as if they tried to test the efficiency of cars by doing 30 laps flat out around Silverstone, all the hybrid manufacturers would (rightly) complain that it's not a true test of actual real-world usage (unless you're Michael Schumacher and happen to live next to the Nürburgring).

Unless of course you can see a single real-world aspect to firing up a vacuum cleaner in a dust free area?

Re: Dear Dyson

Simple solution: Buy a Henry. You'll change the bags every so often and keep the filter clean, then it'll last you at least 10 years judging by our one!