400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

[jr429]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

This is retarded... Pulse motor with gel batteries? Please...

[Starving Steve]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

"110 MPG on E-85 fuel"?????????????

This is what happens when you let pot-smokers study automotive engineering.

I recall a solar-powered car around 1970 that crossed the Mojave Desert. It was about the weight of a bicycle, but it did cross the Mojave. However, just pedalling a simple bicycle across the Mojave would have made more sense, at least from the standpoint of real-world feasability, and economics.

And who could forget the ethanol scam here in North America? --- Yes, the ethanol from corn that cost the same as gasoline but was supposed to be better than gasoline?

When you smoke pot, everything--- even the most hair-brained schemes--- make sense.:rolleyes:

Real world experiences: A Toyota Echo, 5-speed manual transmission, with just one person in it (me) driven 65MPH (about 105 KPH) in warm and dry and calm weather on a flat freeway (I-5) with windows rolled-up, delivers about 42 MPG (U.S. gallon). The same Toyota Echo, again with just one person inside, but driven on hills, driven at 50KPH (31 MPH) in Sooke and Victoria in rainy, cool weather delivers barely 28 MPG (U.S. gallon), especially for the first 10 or 15 minutes after cold-starting the car.

I only deal in reality--- not in faith, and not in scams. As for ethanol, it works in bitter cold weather to keep gas-lines from freezing, but otherwise it is a sad joke as an efficient motor fuel. (Every idea from the eco-frauds is a sad joke.)

[cakins]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

"110 MPG on E-85 fuel"?????????????

I don't give a crap about your irrational skepticism if the guy can drive the car from Toledo to Vegas on 20 gallons of E85, and then explain the details of how the car works.

[Chris Coles]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

[quote=Starving Steve;138944]"110 MPG on E-85 fuel"?????????????/quote]

Top Gear, (BBC leading motoring program), two years ago showed that a Citroen C1, small four seater family car running at a steady 50 MPH on the M25 London Ring Road fuelled on either diesel or ordinary lead less petrol would do +95 mpg diesel, or +100 mpg on petrol.

Steve, you are too used to living in a gas guzzler world where fuel consumption is irrelevant.

[GRG55]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

I don't give a crap about your irrational skepticism if the guy can drive the car from Toledo to Vegas on 20 gallons of E85, and then explain the details of how the car works.

[quote=Chris Coles;138967]

"110 MPG on E-85 fuel"?????????????/quote]

Top Gear, (BBC leading motoring program), two years ago showed that a Citroen C1, small four seater family car running at a steady 50 MPH on the M25 London Ring Road fuelled on either diesel or ordinary lead less petrol would do +95 mpg diesel, or +100 mpg on petrol.

Steve, you are too used to living in a gas guzzler world where fuel consumption is irrelevant.

What Steve doesn't seem to recognize is that an automobile engine is required to put out a widely varying range of output depending on whether the vehicle is accelerating, decelerating, or travelling at low or high speed. This is quite different from an aircraft engine, for example, which must operate at relatively constant high output level for long periods of time - one of the reasons most automotive engine conversions for aircraft use don't work very well.

What electric-reciprocating engine hybrids and variable displacement engines do is take advantage of this variation in output requirements to change the propulsion type or mode to better suit the immediate situation. General Motors Cadillac Division produced a variable displacement engine called the 4-6-8 in the 1981 model year - at the very end of the last "oil crisis". It didn't work too well and I think they discontinued it the following year.

There's a huge potential fuel conservation opportunity that doesn't require major new technologies, hybrids, batteries or substitute fuels. Just changing driving habits to recognize the output demand variations, reducing rolling resistance by keeping tires properly inflated, and keeping the air filter clean can make a measurable difference in fuel consumption. Do it across the nation and I'll bet OPEC will notice the delta...;)

[we_are_toast]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

[quote=GRG55;138968]

There's a huge potential fuel conservation opportunity that doesn't require major new technologies, hybrids, batteries or substitute fuels. Just changing driving habits to recognize the output demand variations, reducing rolling resistance by keeping tires properly inflated, and keeping the air filter clean can make a measurable difference in fuel consumption. Do it across the nation and I'll bet OPEC will notice the delta...;)

I used to have an hour commute to my job with a little over 1/2 on the interstate. To relieve some of the boredom, I'd do everything I could to see what was the best gas mileage I could get with my 2003 saturn. The best I got was 49mpg and I averaged 43 mpg. This was a stock vehicle with nothing special, going 80mph on the interstate, and simply driving with gas mileage in mind. I can only imagine the improvement we'd get if engineers really put gas mileage as a priority.

[KGW]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

Classic "Road Warrior Style!

No, my problem is that I intensely dislike other people trying to tell me what my problem is. Let me guess, do you work for government, or aspire to do so?

I don't "need" a car that's just small enough to carry four people. I need a car that can also do so safely. In a world with plenty of fast-moving cars and trucks on the road, in the event of an accident, mass wins. It's as simple as that.

[Starving Steve]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

I once got 56 MPG (U.S. gallon) over a long distance (from Swift Current, Saskatchewan to Regina, SK) in a small 4-cylinder car: I drove with a steady 70MPH tail wind, not to mention that the elevation drops slightly from Swift Current to Regina.

I was the only person in the car, and I drove 65-70MPH, non-stop. Real world: 56MPG on dry pavement, windows rolled-up, mild weather, with a 70MPH steady tail-wind.

I only deal in reality. Real world, if you are getting 35 to 40 MPG (U.S. gallon) in a small 4-cyl. car, manual transmission, without air conditioning, gasoline fuel, you are doing very well. Forty-two MPG is the top fuel efficiency for a Toyota Echo..... And those are the facts of life.

Load your car up with groceries, wives, kids, pets, sand, chains, tires, extra fuel, a snow-shovel, tools, bottles, coins, drinks, ethanol for the gas-line, a sleeping bag or two, blankets, flares, and other assorted mass, and then your gas-mileage drops-off accordingly. Real world, in a 4-cyl. car is more like 25 to 30MPG, and in bitter-cold Canadian weather, far lower than that--- like maybe 15MPG.

I only deal in reality.

[GRG55]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

[quote=we_are_toast;138988]

I used to have an hour commute to my job with a little over 1/2 on the interstate. To relieve some of the boredom, I'd do everything I could to see what was the best gas mileage I could get with my 2003 saturn. The best I got was 49mpg and I averaged 43 mpg. This was a stock vehicle with nothing special, going 80mph on the interstate, and simply driving with gas mileage in mind. I can only imagine the improvement we'd get if engineers really put gas mileage as a priority.

It's not the bloody engineers. It's the customers. There's enough automotive marketing history to demonstrate conclusively that the market for highly efficient cars that are no "fun" to drive is pretty limited. Even VW spends considerable amounts of effort, some of it at the expense of pure fuel economy, to ensure the performance of its smallest cars [Polo and Golf] is able to keep attracting the young buyers that are such an important part of its demographic spectrum for those platforms. Unfortunately some of the best of this breed aren't available in North America because emissions regulations preclude the importation of some of the higher-efficiency technology-packed small turbocharged diesel engines available in Europe. If you drive one overseas it'll forever change your mind about "economy" cars. [a particular disappointment is that Daimler decided to replace the original little diesel engine in its Smart car with a gasoline equivalent when the car was introduced to the US market. Prior to that the Smart cars sold in Canada were equipped with the same diesel engine used in Europe. Daimler decided that the Canadian market wasn't large enough to keep doing that, so the new ones sold here are also gasoline powered. The older diesel cars are now much sought after in the used market up here.]

The late Roger Smith became famous shortly after he became CEO of General Motors in 1981 for stating that he "really liked the feel of economy" after taking a test drive at GM's proving grounds in the soon to be introduced J-platform car [Chevy Cavalier and Pontiac J2000 were the retail brand names]. The cars were dogs, miserable to drive, and contributed to further permanent erosion of GM's market share as buyers kept defecting to the sprightlier Corollas and Accords made by GMs Japanese rivals. The only reason the J-car lasted longer than the Edsel is because it got stuffed into rental fleets across the continent.

[mooncliff]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

This is a scam on so many levels...

First of all, this guy has been claiming this for years in various forms and has never been willing to "prove it" with a gas-in gas-out trip with a major journalist despite multiple requests. I rechecked today and still can't find one.

He didn't even get into the XPrize.... http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/teams. He did however get tons and tons of press on his way to Las Vegas!

The few people that have attempted to understand this have parsed his words carefully and determined that he's probably intentionally misinterpreting the meaning of the term MPGe to mean "only petroleum products" and thus excluding the ethanol input. Even without that he doesn't claim to get 110 miles per gallon with normal "city driving" or even normal "highway driving." If one doesn't read his website carefully you do get the impression that he's gotten 110 MPGe under city conditions from some areas and 110MPGe under 400HP circumstances under others. But careful reading will see these are SEPARATE claims. In other words, the car is capable of city driving, and capable of utilizing 400HP to go from 0-60 in 3 seconds, and capable under optimal conditions of getting 110MPGe. But not at the same time. In his CNN interview, he verbally only claimed to get 110 MPGe when "driving down the highway under optimal conditions." My personal guess is that means on a severe downhill!

This makes sense... this is a heavy old Mustang with an 8 cylinder engine. These are 8 guys in a garage with no transformative technology save for "better tolerances." There's no braking energy reclaim, no electric assist, no new unique type of engine... there's nothing here except smoke and mirrors.

The Second scam here is that using ethanol actually creates more smog than using regular gas, and the EPA's own attorneys had to admit that fact in front of the justices presiding over the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995 (API v. EPA).

Thirdly, of the 7 independent studies on Ethanol efficiency 6 found the fuel itself to be energy negative and 1 found it to be energy netural. This means that it takes MORE energy to make a gallon of Ethanol than you get from it. At best this could be claimed to be a transport medium, NOT a source of energy. Please note that I use the term "independent" studies. There are a number of studies backed by the ethanol industry that give different results, but on closer inspection one can see they exclude major energy inputs like fertilizer, harvesting costs, or catalyst agents.

There is a reason that despite extensive government subsidies the Ethanol industry is going bankrupt. And this doesn't touch on the increased cost of food we would see if it was utilized as a "fuel source."

CNG is a realistic alternative for cars even in the shorter term. Nuclear is realistic for electric energy and for electric vehicles, but will take a decade even if we get on a crash course. Sadly, "Clean Coal" is a myth despite it being mentioned in the inaugural. Maybe someday it could be realized... but nobody is doing it today, not even in the lab.

I love the theory of Ethanol... but the science doesn't back it up.

I have rarely seen improvements doubling efficiency in one step, but it does happen.

Japan Rail trains replacing the 20 year old models actually consume half the power. But this is rare. If you can get even 5% or 10% improvement, engineers are ecstatic. Scroll compressors in air conditioners are pretty efficient now and use only about 3 cents per hour at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, but that took 20 years of incremental improvements.

There are also questions of service life.
Fluorescent lights may be about 4 times as efficient as incandescents, but they lose about 20% of their brightness in the first few months.

If they can do this for many vehicles and have a reasonable service life, this may begin to make a dent... but then there is Jevon's Paradox in which if you halve the cost, people just use double the amount, so there is no net conservation.

I want to see thousands of engines in actual test use with performance data over several years. Why make it yourself if you could patent and license the specs, or if the specs aren't patentable, why wouldn't conventional manufacturers just tweak the specs themselves?

It is possible, but seems too good to be true for mass production.

[GRG55]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

This is a scam on so many levels...

...The few people that have attempted to understand this have parsed his words carefully and determined that he's probably intentionally misinterpreting the meaning of the term MPGe to mean "only petroleum products" and...

Not to worry. GM has the same problem

DETROIT, Aug. 11, 2009
GM: Volt Will Get 230 MPG in City...

[MulaMan]

Re: 400hp, 500ft/lbs...and 110+ MPG?!

Volkswagen “1-liter” car 0.3L diesel, 8.5 horsepower= 265 mpg on a trip from Wolfsburg to Hamburg

http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/gw/vw1litre.htm

although not much room for that Sunday trip to Retard-Mart and the 10lb bag of cheese puffs plus 12 pack of nachos....

...in other words America's FAT problem is connected to America's SUV problem.