As several others have pointed out, that’s not really a breakthrough. While it may not be the norm, there’s at least one car out there that has hit the million mile mark: Million Mile Honda
the EPA fuel economy test conditions changed for 2008MY+. They’re harsher and everyones numbers went down. if you go to fueleconomy.gov and look up older models e.g. the Geo Metro which was originally stickered at 50 mpg+ the ratings hav been estimated downward to 40/45 mpg under the new test.
you can also add into the equation the fact that your Festiva would not be legal for sale in 2012 as it does not meet various legal requirements including emissions, and safety. Add in the extra weight that these requirements bring to the party and a 2012 Festiva would not be getting 50 MPG.
There are also lots of cars on the market that currently exceed 35 MPG. Hyundai has several that are 40 MPG for example.
I think one of the biggest differences is the amount of safety equipment required on today’s cars. Of course all that safety equipment adds weight. On top of that options like air conditioning, power windows, etc. are almost assumed now except on the lowest price cars. I would guess your Festiva didn’t even have power steering.
Another factor is the acceleration your Festiva was capable of would probably not be considered acceptable for a car manufactured today. All that being said I agree with you, it does seem odd that Festivas and Geo metros from 20 years ago could get 50mpg real world and very few of todays cars can come close.
Doing a quick google search I came across this message board thread where people are claiming they get beter than 50 mpg in their Hyundais.
Steven Segal made reference to the 100mpg carb in his 1994 masterpiece On Deadly Ground.
That wasn’t “in” the movie, that was an epilogue tacked on to the end of the film.
Well, yeah. But “increase fuel economy” has been a critically important need during those two decades, just like safety. You’d think “modest improvement” would be possible.
Sure, but it’s still true that I see TV ads brag about 35 mpg and even sometimes lower numbers like 25-27 mpg. That strikes me as equivalent to bragging about getting a “C” in a class.
Word. If you really gunned it and dropped it into first gear, its acceleration could approach “feeble,” but you had to be trying. When I replaced it with a Saturn, I peeled out a few times before I got used to the Saturn’s [del]average[/del] much higher acceleration.
the explosion of the SUV segment during that time period says otherwise. Sure, for some people fuel economy is an important factor, but for the US market at large, I doubt it.
the other thing is that engines are more efficient, but a lot of the improvements have gone towards increasing power output. My first car had a 2.2 liter 4-cylinder that had all of 84 hp and got me about 30 mpg. Now you’d be hard pressed to find a 2.2 liter four that didn’t have almost twice that power output, and still gets about 30 mpg in what is likely a significantly heavier car.
So yes, there have been massive advancements made in the last 20 years, but market demands have directed the results of those advancements towards things that didn’t result in perceived gains in fuel economy. If people were willing to go back to 11-13 second 0-60 times like we had in the 1980s, we’d all be driving cars with 1.2 liter engines and getting better fuel economy than in the '80s.
those things are always stated as compared to other vehicles in their segment. Saying there’s been no improvement in fuel economy by comparing a 50 mpg Festiva from 20 years ago to a 27 mpg large three-row crossover made today is not useful.
Especially when (as I’ve already stated) the EPA’s test procedure changed in 2008 (cite: http://fueleconomy.gov/feg/ratings2008.shtml ) which dropped mpg numbers across the board.
I currently own a 1976 GMC 1/2 ton pickup. It and all of my previous pickups get 10MPG. empty, full, uphill, flat doesn’t matter 10.
My daughter has a 2006 F-150 1/2 T pickup. She gets about 19 on the road, and the newer pickups get even better.
So having a pickup get 20MPG is one hell of accomplishment even though 20 is no where near the 50 that a Prius gets. But then again you can’t haul 1,000 lbs of cargo in a Prius.
In support of this is the sad fact that Ford is ceasing production of the Ranger (it’s small pickup) and is putting all it’s eggs in the “F” series trucks basket.
This article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-23/ford-sees-bigger-profits-exiting-small-pickups-gm-embraces-cars.html
snippet:
Ford could stay in the small truck race but it looks like they don’t want to invest the money for a complete re-engineering that the Ranger would need.
But this does show how far the manufacturers have come in improving fuel economy of these vehicles. BTW, my son has a 2003 Toyota 4Runner with well over 100k miles. It is a heavy, body on frame vehicle with a V8 engine. It gets 19-20 mpg.
I think I remember my Chevy G20 conversion van getting like 15MPG, and that’s probably comparable to a pickup truck, if not heavier. It was a 1991, I believe. Of course I could be totally misremembering the mpg. The number 15 stands out in my head, though.
They are, and they did, meet the 2012 T6 Ranger. They just aren’t going to sell it in North America. Most likely since the continued evolution of the model and growth in size and payload capacity has completely blurred the line between it and the F-150.
My 2004 Ranger with the 4.0 V6 while rated 17 mpg combined has a lifetime average for me just shy of 19 mpg (this with the lowest available axle ratio). 20 to 21 on the freeway is the norm and it is not unheard of for me to get 23 in favorable conditions. I am very sad that they are not continuing the model.
Gotta bring in some history here. Just after the War (WWII, that is, you know - the real one) the Standard oil Refinery in Wood River, Illinois, sponsered an annual race called the Mileage Marathon, with the winner being the car with the best mileage around a closed course. Now these were the Fords, Chevys, and so forth that existed at that time.
IIRC, they regularly topped out at something close to 80 mpg. Of course, these were highly modified cars, bald tires at very high pressures, all excess weight striped out, and so on. Also, IIRC, the standard driving technique was to accelerate to forty or so mph, and the coast in neutral as far as possible until accelerating again. Definitely not the sort of car or of driving that would have any acceptance by the public.
Of course, this is well over a half century ago, and my memory may be a bit faded.
I’ve searched on Google, but haven’t been able to find any reference. Evidently these races were not an earthshaking event.
Tangential, but I vaguely recall something about the gov’t lowering safety standards for American-built SUVs in order to give American companies a competitive edge against importers. Am I misremembering?
If true, that would essentially mean SUVs were partially subsidized, which might have skewed their popularity significantly versus if they had carried higher (unsubsidized) price tags.
My Google-fu evidently kicked in just now, and this is one of the sites that came up covering the Wood River Mileage Marathon. I was sort of correct (kind of), except:
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It was the Shell Oil Company that sponsored these, not Standard Oil.
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The races started in 1939, were stopped for the War, and then started up again.
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The mileages were a lot more than I remembered - however, I left Wood River in the late Fifties, and wasn’t around when the best mileages were achived. Evidently in 1973 a 1959 Opel achieved 376.59 mpg. Gotta think about how this meshes with the various laws of thermodynamics.
Here is one of the web sites covering this event. Very interesting if you want to find out more about this sort of thing.
I religiously record the gas mileage on my 1985 Dodge conversion van with the old slant six. It was 14.45 miles per gallon, and like Rick says, empty, full, uphill, flat, doesn’t matter.
I mentioned it to my mechanic once and he said, “Sounds pretty good, considering you’re driving a truck with a half-ton of furniture in it.”
Sorry, I lack any knowledge of mechanics, let alone car engineering, so I don’t get it. Why, anyway, would breaking down water into H2 and O2 increase his milleage? What would he do with the oxygen and hydrogen?
If I’m guessing right, he thought he could spend energy to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen, which he would then burn, to get water and energy back.
It ‘works’ if you ignore the obvious flaw that you never get as much energy back as you put in to begin with.
(My interpretation hinges on the assumption the person wasn’t simply insane and did not believe something more along the lines of “H2 and O2 are pleasing to Zalgo! Zalgo makes me go faster!”)
The basic idea, and why it doesn’t work, is covered in the column Una linked to up-thread: Can you really get better gas mileage using your car’s engine to make “Brown’s gas?” September 12, 2008 The column essentially expands on Derleth’s two-sentence explanation.
They were still doing it in 2007. Last I saw the record was over 7000mpg (here it is). They key is not only super light, but low speed and low acceleration. You can get close to 50mpg in almost any small car if you learn to drive right (Check out the “sport” of hypermiling). Just little things like making an effort to accelerate slowly and keeping below 65 on the freeway change my efficiency by about 10%.
He thought (Incorrectly) that a car’s alternator put out its maximum rated output all the time (it doesn’t, something anyone with 15 minutes of electrical instruction would know)
If his cockamamie idea had been correct he could use the excess power from the alternator to break water into H2 and O2.
If you were to induce extra free fuel into the system (The H2) you would increase your fuel mileage as you would need less gasoline to get the same amount of work out of the engine.
In addition people that believe this crap also tend to believe that something magical happens in the cylinder and you wind up with more additional energy output than the can be accounted for by the amount of fuels used.