thermodynamics, science, and why I hate conspiracy theorists.

[Calvin19 0]

http://www.realfarmacy.com/volkswagens-new-300-mpg-car-not-allowed-in-america/

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Volkswagen’s New 300 MPG Car, Not Allowed In America

Thermodynamics are not magic. Don't swallow too much conspiritonium. If you learn about this, and comparative cars, and why they are not widespread you will understand. It's a complex situation, this article and the hundreds like it are sensationalistic fallacious click-bait. If you only 'follow the money', or only follow the science, you are left with a polarized image.


It's not just the car, or the Mh370 loss, or anything viral these days, it's leaked into everything.

We need more people who can identify the science from the media. Wow... that sounds familiar and I check myself there, but, that is my though for the night.

"careful you don't step in the bullshit"...

-SPACE-

[winsor 236]

Calvin19

http://www.realfarmacy.com/volkswagens-new-300-mpg-car-not-allowed-in-america/

Quote

Volkswagen’s New 300 MPG Car, Not Allowed In America

Thermodynamics are not magic. Don't swallow too much conspiritonium. If you learn about this, and comparative cars, and why they are not widespread you will understand. It's a complex situation, this article and the hundreds like it are sensationalistic fallacious click-bait. If you only 'follow the money', or only follow the science, you are left with a polarized image.


It's not just the car, or the Mh370 loss, or anything viral these days, it's leaked into everything.

We need more people who can identify the science from the media. Wow... that sounds familiar and I check myself there, but, that is my though for the night.

"careful you don't step in the bullshit"...

There was a story of a magic carburetor where mileage was so good that you had to be careful not to use any other efficiency-improvement devices for fear that you would exceed 100%, causing the tank overflow and become a fire hazard.

A Major Oil Company, realizing that this invention would put them out of business, bought the patent rights and made sure that our cars only got 14 mpg.

A perusal of patent literature shows no sign of any such device, but the story made the rounds anyway.

Texaco did, in fact, develop the CVCC engine, but at $0.24/gal, the increased cost of the engine would not be amortized over the average life of a U.S. car at the time.

Not so in Japan. Honda bought the rights and used the design quite successfully in a small 4-cylinder engine for many years.

It got something short of 300 mpg, but what the hell.


BSBD,

Winsor

[kelpdiver 2]

"Years ago I had calculated that it should be possible to get a small car to exceed 100 mpg by putting parallel direct to cylinder water injectors side by side with the fuel injectors, and using the exhaust manifold to preheat the water so it would enter the cylinders as dry steam, thus providing added expansion (which drives the engine) while allowing the combustion process to proceed without reducing its efficiency."

I love this shit.

[Calvin19 0]

The thing is that this car IS extremely efficient, the 300mpg claim is not entirely inaccurate, but people are claiming that the twchnolgy is suppressed, and it could be "added" to existing cars for everyone to get this kind of efficiency. FALSE. This car is an engineering marvel, but no magic was used to make this happen. If you completely compromise safety features and make any car out of high density carbon fiber and drastic weight changing mods and a tiny hybrid engine you can improve the efficiency to this point.

-SPACE-

[sfzombie13 324]

the thing i hate about today's fuel economy in cars is the claims that above 30 mpg, it is called an achievement. i remember back in the '80's getting above 40 mpg regularly, and i also bought a car new in '88 that got over 50, in town. it was small and had a 3 cylinder suzuki engine, it was a chevy sprint. thing is, they could probably go back to that today if they would just focus on mileage and not so much on speed and power. with the improvement in the technology, they could easily achieve close to 60 on a regular basis without sacrificing safety. and without hybrids.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[Calvin19 0]

sfzombie13

they could easily achieve close to 60 on a regular basis without sacrificing safety. and without hybrids.

Obviously you are not claiming there is a 'conspiracy' to limit the market, but what sacrifices would the consumer be willing to make?
"Speed and power", safety, acceleration, useful load capacities, etc.

A significant portion of safety and multi-car crash survivability is the mass of the car you are in compared to the other car.

-SPACE-

[jakee 1,489]

kelpdiver

"Years ago I had calculated that it should be possible to get a small car to exceed 100 mpg by putting parallel direct to cylinder water injectors side by side with the fuel injectors, and using the exhaust manifold to preheat the water so it would enter the cylinders as dry steam, thus providing added expansion (which drives the engine) while allowing the combustion process to proceed without reducing its efficiency."

I love this shit.

Water injection can be used to boost the power of an IC engine because the expansion ratio of water to steam is so great. I don't see how injecting it into the cylinder as steam would help though, I don't know whether it helps fuel efficiency and I don't know if it's feasible without drastically reducing engine life -but I'm not an engineer

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[jakee 1,489]

Quote

i also bought a car new in '88 that got over 50, in town. it was small and had a 3 cylinder suzuki engine, it was a chevy sprint. thing is, they could probably go back to that today if they would just focus on mileage and not so much on speed and power. with the improvement in the technology, they could easily achieve close to 60 on a regular basis without sacrificing safety.

Yeah, but there's safety, there's performance and there's mod-cons. Power steering, electric windows, air con... the list of things you expect to come with a small car these days is far more complex than it used to be. In 1974 a VW Golf Mk1 weighed as little as 790kg. In 2008 the lightest variant of the MK 6 weighed 1229kg.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[billvon 2,989]

>with the improvement in the technology, they could easily achieve close to 60 on
>a regular basis without sacrificing safety.

Indeed they do just that in several vehicles today. They tend to be pricey though.

> and without hybrids.

Hybrid technology is just one way to achieve such mileages (indeed, currently the most effective way.) Hopefully research will find other ways to build safe/powerful/efficient cars cheaply.

[sfzombie13 324]

wrong on the mass protecting anything. have you seen the films of crash test footage with old, huge cars colliding with small cars with better technology and materials? the small cars are winning. and there is not much to really think about, you either get performance or gas mileage, not both. if the auto industry would advertise and push gas mileage, they may actually have a shot at changing perceptions enough to make a difference. there are way too many people who just buy into advertising and buy what they're told.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[Calvin19 0]

sfzombie13

wrong on the mass protecting anything. have you seen the films of crash test footage with old, huge cars colliding with small cars with better technology and materials? the small cars are winning.

???

[citation please]

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/new-crash-tests-demonstrate-the-influence-of-vehicle-size-and-weight-on-safety-in-crashes-results-are-relevant-to-fuel-economy-policies

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/808569.pdf

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and there is not much to really think about, you either get performance or gas mileage, not both. if the auto industry would advertise and push gas mileage, they may actually have a shot at changing perceptions enough to make a difference. there are way too many people who just buy into advertising and buy what they're told.

That smells an awful lot like a conspiracy theory.

[wmw999 2,439]

My 1972 Subaru got 30+ MPG. It weighed a little over 800 kg; had an 1800 cc engine (there are bigger motorcycles now), and could go 85 mph in a tailwind. No A/C (of course), and very skinny doors. When I rear-ended someone in a larger car from a slick spot on the freeway (yeah, it WAS my fault, even if the oil slick contributed), it totaled my car, and didn't damage the car in front at all.

My 2006 Honda Civic gets slightly worse gas mileage (in the city). However, it has an A/C, the same size engine, and weighs 1000 lbs more. I'll bet it's a whole lot better in a crash, although I hope not to test that. And on the freeway, I can get 40 mph pretty easily with only moderately conservative driving.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[billvon 2,989]

>Water injection can be used to boost the power of an IC engine because the
>expansion ratio of water to steam is so great.

The "expansion ratio" doesn't really help increase power. Water injection is a way to use a higher compression engine with lower octane gas, and was used (for example) to get aircraft with very high compression engines off the ground on hot days without using insane octane fuels (which also reduce power.) Without water injection you'd see detonation which (at best) reduces your power output.

However some injection systems use a water/methanol mixture, and in such cases _can_ add power due to the added energy of the methanol.

[sfzombie13 324]

i don't usually provide citations, searching on the internet is too easy. but since you so graciously provided one, allow me to show you a bunch of them to support what i said. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=1950+car+crashing+into+new+car&qpvt=1950+car+crashing+into+new+car&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=D92B1E58E926D5383BE4D92B1E58E926D5383BE4

and the study linked to is generally worthless, due to one statement inside. "decreases in weight, unless offset by safety improvements..." or something like that. not only are newer materials better than the rolled steel of the '50s and '60s, (they use alloys now and carbon fiber, etc.), they are designed in such a way as to implement such things as crumple zones and multiple airbags, which more than make up for the lighter weight. the link i provided was a search of videos, i watched some of them. the older cars were almost always worse off than the newer ones. having said that, if a spider runs into an f150, the spider will lose every time. same thing when cars hit tractor trailers. fact of life, rik that needs to be assumed when driving.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[Calvin19 0]

I thought we were talking about mass vs mass. Obviously a 50 year old car that lacks safety features of newer cars we are talking about will 'lose' in a head on collision. The average age of a car in the US is 11.4 years. Ancient 'land yachts' in accidents are an outlier, and nearly irrelevant in the argument of heavier production cars having the safety advantage.

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

Calvin19

I thought we were talking about mass vs mass. Obviously a 50 year old car that lacks safety features of newer cars we are talking about will 'lose' in a head on collision. The average age of a car in the US is 11.4 years. Ancient 'land yachts' in accidents are an outlier, and nearly irrelevant in the argument of heavier production cars having the safety advantage.

This. Put a '59 Impala against a new Civic, the Civic will be more survivable.

Put that same Civic into a crash with a new Caddy?

Bit different outcome.

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

[Calvin19 0]

You are completely correct, I was on a different page.

Bottom line is; all other parameters being equal; inertia wins.

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

No A/C (of course),

And you drove this in Houston???

We are all engines of karma

[wmw999 2,439]

My heat mojo is strong. I didn't have air conditioned car in Houston from when I started driving in 1974 until about 1986. Not to mention the 2-3 years I spent in un-airconditioned apartments.

Yes, I understand the concept of a budget

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Calvin19 0]

No AC for me anymore. Outback's compressor starting screaming five years ago mid winter, I cut the belt and never looked back. Boulder summers can get hot but I love the window gasket gathering Moab dust all summer long at the open position. But I don't mind it in friends' cars when the inside is 50f.

-SPACE-

[zoobrothertom 5]

wmw999

My heat mojo is strong. I didn't have air conditioned car in Houston from when I started driving in 1974 until about 1986. Not to mention the 2-3 years I spent in un-airconditioned apartments.

Yes, I understand the concept of a budget

Wendy P.

My heat Mojo probably knows yours.

I drove over 8 years in the 90's without AC in Houston as well. Stop and go traffic sucked but as long as you were moving it was tolerable.

I even drank hot coffee just to add to my misery!

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I'm back in the USA!!