Actually, there is one place near me where good acceleration would be useful. There’s a stop sign at the end of an on-ramp to one of the interstates which leads into the city. A quarter of a mile after the on-ramp, the interstate goes into a tunnel. It’s three lanes wide at the end of the on-ramp, but the third lane, the one you get into turns into an exit-only lane between the end of the on-ramp and the tunnel. To give you an idea, it works something like this:
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Tunnel
Now, technically speaking, a lot of acceleration isn’t strictly necessary – I used to get on at that on-ramp while driving a three-cylinder Geo Metro which did 0 to 60 eventually. However, a decent amount would have helped a lot. As it was, to paraphrase Babylon 5, I’d wait for the biggest gap I was going to get and “push the accelerator and pray real hard!”
The Geo, by the way, would do 75 mph quite happily and get well over 30 mpg while doing so. It felt easiest to drive at 70 mph, actually, even if it did take a while to get there. I figure if a Geo Metro can do 75 mph, anything can.
I had a Chevy Sprint and a Sprint Metro. Same car. They were actually quite peppy and had acceptable accelleration. It seemed to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. I drove from L.A. to Park City a couple of times, with the speedometer pegged at 90. It didn’t complain at all and was very comfortable to drive at that speed. Still, 70 mph was my normal speed. The one complaint I had about the Sprints was that they would not handle hills well. If my speed dropped below 70 mph on the 14 by Vasques Rocks, it would drop inexorably to 55 mph.
When dad’s Sprint was new it actually achieved 60 mpg quite often. My mileage was usually around 50 mph, though after 100,000 miles it dropped to 40 mpg.
Because our opposition parties are inept and voters, especially from ex mining towns, like where I come from, aren’t ever going to vote for any party other than Labour.
I could quite easily claim that the UK elections are fixed, especially in favour of the big two parties. The system we use in this country to elect a government is atrocious.
That sounds a lot like the on-ramp at Squirrel Hill right before you go through the Squirrel Hill Tunnel outbound on the parkway East.
It’s a hell of a place to pull out of, especially if traffic is moving at a good clip on the parkway when you try to merge and get into the tunnel.
FTR: I drive a 2000 Chevy Cavalier four-banger 2.2. I get about 35-37 mpg highway and around 30 mpg daily. Just filled the tank this morning. $2.499/gallon, $23.39 for 9.358 gallons of gas. The needle was just under 1/2. Two years ago that got me nearly a full tank of gas when the needle was on 1/8. Three years ago when I bought the car, that would’ve filled the tank if I had rolled into the station on fumes.
I have a 16 mile commute, each way, to work, so I’m burning a little over a gallon a day. I’d move closer to work, but it’d double my rent and I’d save nothing on gas. Public transportation? Not available in the south-of-Pittsburgh area where I live.
That’s the one. My commute also takes about a gallon of gas. Bus fare to work is about double the price and double the time. Also, the nearest bus stop is 10 minutes walk away up and down hill, and, with an injured knee, that simply hasn’t been practical this summer. For that matter, standing up to fill the tank myself wasn’t practical for several weeks, so I was paying for full serve if I couldn’t ask friends to fill the tank for me.
Ah the mass transit system of Pittsburgh. When I had to rely on PAT to get from Shadyside to Oakland (straight down Fifth Ave. from S. Highland to Bigelow) the three mile trip, by bus during morning rush (first class, 9 am) took about a half hour. It was only affordable for me to take the bus because Pitt had a transportation fee added to tuition which financial aid helped to pay for and it served as a low-cost bus pass.
I remember trips from Shadyside to the Monroeville Mall taking more than an hour by bus, which takes about 30 minutes in moderate traffic in a car.
It’s a nightmare no matter which way you look at it. Pay the dollars for the car, or pay in time for the bus.
You need a good mechanic, Doors. My kid’s 1995 Cavalier with the old pushrod 2.2 motor that predates the Ecotec gets 30+ on the highway.
My old Pontiac 6000, no lightweight, with a 2.5 pushrod engine got 26 in town. Never used it on the road in that it was a “spare” car, but I think it would have topped 30 on a long trip.
Even my 2002 Aztek with luggage, camping stuff, the ferret’s cage and stuff (wonderful travel companions, ferrets) got 29.3 on one leg of my vacation and averaged 25.5 the whole trip.
You don’t need low power to get good gas mileage any more. We have a Saab 92-X that has a 2.0L turbocharged engine that makes 227 HP, and rockets the thing to 60 in 5.8 seconds. It gets 26 mpg on the highway.
Now imagine a smaller version of that engine, making maybe 130HP, coupled with an additional 100HP worth of electric motors in the wheels. Now you’ve got a hybrid that can still do 0-60 in under 6 seconds, but when you’re not flooring it you’re getting 45-50 mpg. Add in a bigger battery and a charging plug, and now maybe you’re getting 70mpg in average driving.
That’s the beauty of hybrids vs all-electric. You can make all kinds of vehicles. Mitsubishi was thinking of making a hybrid Eclipse sports car with a 270HP gas engine and another 130HP in electric power, giving the car 400HP for all-out acceleration, and in normal driving it behaves like a regular hybrid and gets 35-40 mpg.
And if gas gets really expensive, you could simply go for economy and get over 100mpg average with a plug-in hybrid, and double or triple that in commuter driving. With that kind of efficiency you can afford very expensive fuel, meaning we can burn ethanol, processed shale oil, whatever. And since you don’t need much, you might even be able to make it yourself. If all you need is a couple of gallons a month, you could distill your own at home the way people brew beer.
I don’t think there’s one single solution for replacing oil. There will be many.
I don’t think opposition to nuclear power will be much of an issue; the concern here in Ontario is thatthe provincial government has idiotically placed a price ceiling of 5.9 cents per kWh on something that’s now running twice that to produce. Or more. People here really don’t understand what energy actually costs.
In the interests of fairness, it’s worth noting that very few cars actually need to produce more than 25-40 horsepower to cruise at 60mph. That’s why you get good mileage at highway speeds - and you get even better mileage if you can drive uninterrupted at say 35mph.
Nonetheless, you can’t get around this fact - maximum horsepower consumes maximum fuel for any given car - no matter what. Obviously, a vehicle with greater horsepower consumes more fuel at Wide Open Throttle than a Honda Civic, say, but at cruise speeds most people are surprised to learn how little horsepower their vehicle requires to punch that hole in the air at 60mph.
The great breakthrough this past 20 years has been vehicle aerodynamics, rolling resistance, and stuff like sequential fuel injection, mass air flow metering, and wide band oxygen sensors etc etc. Still, if you’ve got a heavy sonofabitch vehicle and if you want that thing to accelerate with any degree of sprightliness, you is gonna use lotsa fuel baby - every time.
The national speed limit over here is 70mph by law but de facto is pretty much 85mph these days, and my Vauxhall Vectra 1.8 estate has loads left in reserve at anything like that speed. My Astra 1.8 would get near an indicated 130mph. As to acceleration, I haven’t timed it, but you need to remember that our roads are crowded and often poorly laid out. We adjust our driving manners to compensate - most of the time. You could do likewise. It depends if you view single-figure mpg from a typical family vehicle as a reasonable return for brisk acceleration.
Cool. Considering that’s counting in piddly little US gallons, cooler still. I sort’ve imagine it barely spends its working life above tickover, of course.
The 'rents and I just came back from a trip to, yep, Canada. I still don’t really know what a liter is but I figured we were paying about $4.50 a US gallon. Fortunately, the car got about 34 mpg on highways, useful in upper Maine but NSM in Halifax (where, BTW, we ditched the car and walked everywhere).
Midtown Manhattan is only twelve miles from me, so I guess theoretically I could bike there. Let’s see–from the Yonkers border through the South Bronx, across one of the railway bridges, all the way through western Harlem, and then among the most crowded streets in America–no problem! I’m sure the criminals, muggers, taxicabs, pro bike messengers, 1920s-style Harlem River bridges, trucks, and homeless encampments by the shores will pose no problem!
Clearly? You mean you linked to a site showing a political party winning the election based on a platform of repealing petrol taxes, which would refute my claim? Oh wait, you didn’t. The link was completely irrelevent! Sorry, my mistake.
According to the chart at www.torontogasprices.com, gas in Halifax is around USD 3.44 per US gallon. (This chart is quite interesting: it defaults to Toronto only for the past month, but you can select different North American locations and time periods and compare the prices in US dollars per US gallon and Canadian cents per litre. I wish they’d add a ‘correct for inflation’ feature.)
Here in Toronto, I’m paying $41.25 a week for a “GTA pass” which gives unlimited access to Toronto’s transit system plus those of the surrounding suburban cities. (I live in the city and work in the 'burbs (in the city of Mississauga).) The pass does NOT give access to the interregional bus and train system which connects the city and the 'burbs to outlying areas though: that’s extra.
Cash fare for Toronto is $2.50; for the city of Mississauga, $2.25. Thus if I was to to go to work and pay full fare, I’d pay $4.75 one way. For 10 trips to work and back, that’s already more expensive than the bus pass.
There is a major reorganization of bus routes coming up after the Labour Day weekend: new routes and buses are being added. I understand that York Region Transit (in York Region on the north side of Toronto) has added 16% in ridership over the past year, for example. I guess the sprawl and congestion are getting too much for people. Next week they are introducing an express prepaid bus service between major points–no fare collection onboard–with station stops almost like a subway.
