Why Cars Sold in North America Don't Get 50 MPG
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Washington DC April 7, 2008; The AIADA newsletter published this recap of a Newsweek story.
Wouldn't it be great if you could drive a car that gets 50 miles per gallon? Well, you might, some day soon.
"If you want better fuel economy, it's just a question of when auto companies want to do it and when consumers decide they want to buy it," says Don Hillebrand, a former Chrysler engineer who is now director of transportation research for Argonne National Labs.
"Auto companies can deliver it within a year." But, according to Newsweek, the reality is that you won't see a car on a showroom floor in America with 50 mpg on the window sticker for at least three years and maybe longer.
"We're close enough to spit at that now," says Bill Reinert, Toyota's national manager of advanced technologies. "It's not an incredible stretch, but it's an incredible stretch to do it on a mass-market basis."
Here's the problem that most dealers are very familiar with: to get to 50mpg in the near future, consumers would have to trade off cost, drive quality, or safety. That's because the quickest way to make a car more fuel-efficient is to make it smaller, lighter, and equip it with some high-tech propulsion system.
Newsweek Reader Comments to this article:
Posted By: getzel @ 04/06/2008 10:21:03 PM
Comment: War ends We win: when we pass a law that makes the minimum price of gasoline at the pumps: $1.75/gallon.
The ethanol investors do not build ethanol distilleries because monopoly OPEC would lower the price of crude/gasoline to rust out the billion dollar/million barrel a day ethanol stills.
Brazil is energy independent: ethanol; All their cars come built running on ethanol; The gas station fills the tanks with ethanol, no gasoline.
Archer Daniel Midland made millions in the USA selling $1.00 gallon ethanol in the 1990s;
That trumps any canard/invalid objection to ethanol. Use Cellulose ethanol, not corn ethanol.
Cellulose Ethanol energy independence in the USA, will balance the trade deficit, create full employment, bring down the price of fuel, break the monopoly on the pricing of fuel, balance the USA government budget, create less pollution, make the USA energy independent, and end the war because we will stop funding the bad guys everyday at the gas pumps.
With all the cars running on ethanol; the price of oil will collapse and the radical Moslem hordes will no longer have the funds we used to give them from gasoline sales to finance the war against us.
I built a distillery and converted my GM car to 160 proof ethanol by 1982; and tried 25 years to get the USA off of gasoline. Unless the strategy I am outlining is adopted, the war that is coming, regardless of who is elected, will make Vietnam look like a cake walk.
Sharia people are at war with The West because Sharia people believe Islam can not survive against: a free market economy with free speech to criticize Islam.
International law, has defined a set of war rule parameters that guarantee no war can be won by good guys and that guarantee nice long lasting wars with lots of weapons sales.
Generals: Patton. Eisenhower, Marshall , Sherman et al would all be war criminals under international law and Europe would be under Hitler; the American civil war would not be over if fought under the current rules; which, intentionally or unintentionally, are designed for a hundred year terror war.
Cut off terrorist infested countries/areas: no phones, no lights, no motorcars not a single luxury. No food, no water, no ships/airplanes in and out, no trucks cross their borders; nothing till they give up the terrorism. Better the terrorist should die right there than have a war where the world is terrorized for 100 years.
The leadership that sponsors these terrorist suicide murders are the Heads of state in Tehran, Riyadh, and Damascus.
Intelligence analyst: Getzel
Posted By: keffken @ 04/05/2008 1:26:53 PM
Comment: My wife and I bought a VW Jetta diesel wagon with 5sd manual trans in 2003 it has achived 53MPG once and usally averages mid 40s, and, it has loged 165,000 miles. Iv'e been on the freeway between Flagstaff and Phoenix at 93 MPH just to keep up with trafic with no reservations. I have Ford deisel F-350, two Corvettes and a Harley and I'm not put off by the Jetta at all. When it is replaced it will be a VW diesel as well.
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