Why are there no new cars in the top 10

[zpiloto]

Looking over the top ten there are no cars after 99. Is it because they are still under warrenty or are older cars easier to tweak?

TOP 10
Pontiac 98
Honda 92
Ford 99
Honda 93
Metro 93
Saturn 99
Honda 91
Metro 94
Mero 94
Honda 94
16th Saturn 2002

Over EPA
Ford 99
Saturn 99
Honda 91
Plymouth 90
Honda 93
Honda 93
Honda 93
Honda 92
Pontiac 98
Honda 92
Toyota 92
19th Honda 2005

Total cars in Garage (these numbers are from the search engine on the site(which I suck at) so not 100% accurate)
Metro
11
Honda
65
Saturn
3
Yaris
15
Ford
10

[bzipitidoo]

At least, that's what I've read. US safety requirements were made more stringent in 2000 or 2001, and the easiest way to meet them was add more metal around the passenger compartment. I have also read that if you wish to license something like a Ford Ka in the US, you'd have to add metal rods to the B pillar and perhaps beef up a few other spots.

If you did a top ten list of US cars from lightest to heaviest, I bet you'd see the same sort of thing. Nothing 2000 or newer would be in the top 10.

[Ryland]

If you look at engine size, horse power rating, horse power to weight ratio, and options that are now standard, you will notice all of those going up as cars get newer, new cars are designed to get high reveiws from people who spend 30 minutes in a car, push all the buttens, stomp on the gas pedal a few times, then go off to a cubical to write a review that is ment to sell said car, if it's not bigger, faster, has more cup holders, and cushy seats, it gets a bad reveiw.

[BluEyes]

Originally Posted by Ryland

If you look at engine size, horse power rating, horse power to weight ratio, and options that are now standard, you will notice all of those going up as cars get newer, new cars are designed to get high reveiws from people who spend 30 minutes in a car, push all the buttens, stomp on the gas pedal a few times, then go off to a cubical to write a review that is ment to sell said car, if it's not bigger, faster, has more cup holders, and cushy seats, it gets a bad reveiw.

I want a Lotus Elise personally. Closest thing to my ideal car but maybe a touch heavy. I believe the radio is still optional.

[MakDiesel]

Originally Posted by BluEyes

I want a Lotus Elise personally. Closest thing to my ideal car but maybe a touch heavy. I believe the radio is still optional.

Word. Equal in weight to my Si but twice the power and crazy lateral G's. Closest thing to a street legal track car w/ none of the "luxuries" that add x-hundred lbs to every bloated piece being made today. MAk

[rh77]

I'm just guessing that 2 factors are at play here:

First being the size of the average vehicle has increased significantly over the last 15 years.

Look at the same name 15 years ago (Accord, Camry, even Maxima and Taurus since they were first introduced).

Secondly, the advent of OBD-II has made it increasingly difficult to fool the computer into more efficient conditions or to meet those conditions physically. The ECU holds the key to so many variables of FE vs. Emissions and driveability that it's probably harder to tweak and to really get access to.

Fuel maps and the oxygen sensor's role in the whole mix is more complicated. Now, with throttle-by-wire and even more electronic gadgetry on cars this decade have made it a challenge to diagnose what they demand for superior FE.

RH77

[MetroMPG]

Ryland's on the money. It's not the computers, or the weight, or the safety equipment. It's only because the auto companies don't believe ordinary, efficient cars will sell in North America, so they've stopped trying. (Or they do believe it, but they don't want to sell them.)

The "new" small cars we have here - which are admittedly bigger and safer than their 10 year old predecessors - are available in other markets with more efficient drivetrains. Yaris & Fit spring to mind.

Repeat after me: you do not want an efficient small car. You do not want an efficient small car. You do not want an efficient small car...

[Mike T]

Don't I count? Or did my car get disqualified because it is diesel? I was briefly #3....and my car is a 2005 model.

[Silveredwings]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Repeat after me: you do not want an efficient small car. You do not want an efficient small car. You do not want an efficient small car...

I do not want an efficient small car... I do not want an efficient small car... I do not want an efficient small car...

...hey what am I saying? Stop it. Those are jedi mind tricks.

[Brock]

Same here if diesels were in the top 10 I would be in there all the time with our 2003 TDI wagon.

Although on this note the VW diesels keep getting bigger and more powerful engines. So anything newer then the 03's get lower and lower mpg, but more power.

Another thing cutting back on the mpg's is the emissions. There are a few mods on the diesels that can increase mpgs but also increase emissions. I wonder how true that might be with gassers as well?

[MetroMPG]

Well, I assumed the question was directed at the top 10 gasser list. Because the newer hybrid cars are doing OK too.

It's true that controlling NOX cramps FE potential (in gas engines, anyway - can't speak for the diesels.)

[rh77]

Honestly, I do want an efficient small car aside from the one I have -- but honestly, I'm cool with what I've got. I've resolved to drive the Integra until it basically dies or becomes too costly to repair. From a financial standpoint -- no car payment is nice, and the potential is there for some high percentage FE over EPA.

I'm sure many of us are there -- we have the potential with what we drive -- it's just getting there (or finding the time to work/experiment to reach additional FE potential).

Hopefully the MY '08-'09 will produce some smaller, low emitting and high FE vehicles. It may be tempting to get something then -- but I don't know if I'd buy new for myself lately. There's too much loss of equity. Diesels really have my interest lately (specifically the Accord iCTDi).

RH77

[Mike T]

OK, so against diesels it's not a fair fight? I say it would be, look at the Suzuki crew getting 70+ MPG! Whatever....

[zpiloto]

Originally Posted by Mike T

OK, so against diesels it's not a fair fight? I say it would be, look at the Suzuki crew getting 70+ MPG! Whatever....

"Sigh" I didn't include hybrids or diesel because their are only 7 on the list, opposed to over 100 gassers, and most all of them are new so it hard to compare how they rate to older vechiles of the same type. Just trying to compare apple to apples. Guess it just a subconscious bias towards the gassers. Sorry if I hurt anyones pride.

[skewbe]

Originally Posted by Mike T

OK, so against diesels it's not a fair fight? I say it would be, look at the Suzuki crew getting 70+ MPG! Whatever....

Diesel has 11% more energy per gallon. I think Diesel MPG numbers would need to be adjusted downward accordingly. You still have the advantage of very high compression ratios which I won't begrudge you.

[Mike T]

Maybe someone needs to found DieselSavers.org

[MetroMPG]

"energysavers.org"! (So I can report the ForkenSwift's future "MPG".)

[James]

Maybe it's because most of us are penny pinchers, and dont buy new cars.

[red91sit]

This is probobly why, average fuel econmy of new vehices (purchased)* in the U.S. has steadily declined over the years since the early 80's. There are a few cars getting improved gas mileage, like hybrids, but the average americans new car is getting worse gas mileage every year.


* accidently put built, should have been purchased.

[brick]

My '02 Accord was in the top ten for % above EPA for a brief, fleeting moment. I felt good about that moment . But then you guys kicked my butt! At least the Prius is doing OK so I can't complain.

I agree with the theory that it's because the automakers just aren't trying anymore. They think that hybrids should be the only really efficient cars because otherwise you would have to "make sacrifices." That and they don't want to start introducing cars that would compete with the hybrids. Can you imagine if Honda had brought the 1.3L iDSI Fit w/ CVT to the US? It would easily match the Civic Hybrid on fuel economy for 60-75% of the cost. As much as I'm loving the Prius, the Fit might have won me over on economics alone.

[Ryland]

what baffles me is that automakers are spending money on making cars less efficent so they can sell them in the US market, the Fit is a good example, it's been in production for a number of years all over the world, but it had to be re-designed for the US market, giving it a lower gas mileage number, this was at an added cost, parts had to be re-enginered, equipment had to be retooled, electronics had to be changed, the vehicle that was being sold to the rest of the world was good enough for them, why wasn't it good enough for us? what would happen if a car like the Smart Car got 60mpg like it does in the rest of the world, insted of the projected 40mpg for the US market??

[MetroMPG]

Yet another example of FE creeping the wrong way: my understanding is the redesigned xB and xA replacements (xD?) both get worse fuel economy than the cars they replace.

I think we need to remember we're about as far away from the mainstream as we can get. What we think is wrong with these small cars, isn't what the average person thinks.

The proof of that is our first question about any small car is: "what's its fuel economy?", whereas everyone else is crying "is that thing SAFE???"

[Ryland]

As I said, the people who design them read the reveiws in magazines of their own products, and it's all about what someone who gets paid way to much money thinks of a car that they only spend half an hour in.

[Mike T]

The new gasoline smart (model 451) which will be sold in the US has a NEDC fuel consumption rating of 50 US MPG, about 60 on the highway....

The 451 diesel, which we will NOT get either in Canada or the USA, is rated at 69 US MPG in the NEDC test.

[MetroMPG]

:O Why no diesel in Canada? They already know we'll buy them??

[Lug_Nut]

Originally Posted by skewbe

Diesel has 11% more energy per gallon. I think Diesel MPG numbers would need to be adjusted downward accordingly. You still have the advantage of very high compression ratios which I won't begrudge you.

It's 11.3%, but who's counting? There are 128,500 BTU per gallon of diesel and 115,500 in unleaded gasoline. B100 biodiesel has 117,090 BTU per gallon, or only 1.3% more energy per gallon than gasoline.

CO2 emissions are also interesting. Each 115,500 BTU of gasoline energy used adds 10,874 grams of fossil CO2 to the atmosphere. 115,500 BTU of diesel adds 10,963 grams. Each 115,500 BTU of B100 adds 2,746.
For the same energy output as a gallon of gasoline, B100 adds 1/4 the fossil CO2 to the atmosphere.

[Brock]

And that doesn't even start to account for one of the largest consumer of grid power in the US, drum roll, you guessed it petroleum refineries. It takes a LOT of power to convert crude in to gasoline and diesel.

I think Darell once said it took more power to just make a gallon of gas then it takes to use that same power to move his RAV4 25 miles...

[Mike T]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

:O Why no diesel in Canada? They already know we'll buy them??

We only got the smart fortwo cdi by a fluke.

the fluke was: Mercedes-Benz Canada was trying to certify the gasoline engine model, but the EU-spec fuel vapour recovery system was not good enough, so they would have had to redesign the entire fuel tank and charcoal canister etc....for the estimated sales of 1000 cars per year they were projecting in Canada, it wasn't worth it (actual average annual sales are more like 3500).

So they switched to certifying the diesel, because it needed no such system.

Once the smart cars are sold in both Canada AND the USA, we will get the crumbs that fall off the US table. If smart USA does not bring in a cdi diesel, we won't get one either.

The other issue is that the model 451 diesel has an open-loop particle filter, and its EU-4 emission standards are not as strict as 2007 CDN and US standards. So if the US (and we) ever do get another smart fortwo diesel, it will have Mercedes' BlueTec smission control system in it.

[cfg83]

Brock -

Originally Posted by Brock

And that doesn't even start to account for one of the largest consumer of grid power in the US, drum roll, you guessed it petroleum refineries. It takes a LOT of power to convert crude in to gasoline and diesel.

I think Darell once said it took more power to just make a gallon of gas then it takes to use that same power to move his RAV4 25 miles...

Oh jeez, is it really that dysfunctional? I am inclined to believe that but I want to read the article.

And that doesn't included the military cost of maintaining access to the crude, right?

CarloSW2

Addendum : This thread made me google the following :

"rocky mountain institute gas refinery"

Which led me to here :

http://www.rmi.org/images/other/Ener...rogenMyths.pdf

The thrust of this article is an argument in favor of fuel cells, but it touches on fuel conversion efficiences.

YF(uel)MV

Taken From :
Twenty Hydrogen Myths
#E03-05
AMORY B. LOVINS, CEO, ROCKY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE
20 June 2003, corrected and updated 17 February 2005

Myth #3. Making hydrogen uses more energy than it yields, so it’s prohibitively inefficient. Any conversion from one form of energy to another consumes more useful energy than it yields. If it could do the opposite, creating energy out of nothing, you could create a perpetual-motion machine violating the laws of physics. Conversion losses are unavoidable; the issue is whether they’re worth incurring. If they were intolerable as a matter of principle, as Myth #3 implies, then we’d have to stop making gasoline from crude oil (~73–91% efficient from wellhead to retail pump42) and electricity from fossil fuel (~29–35% efficient from coal at the power plant to retail meter). Such conversion losses are thus not specific to producing hydrogen. Hydrogen production is typically about 7243 to 8544 percent efficient in natural-gas reformers or ~70–75% efficient in electrolyzers;45 the rest is heat that may also be reusable. (These efficiency figures are all reduced by 15% because of the way hydrogen’s energy content is normally measured.46) So why incur these losses to make hydrogen? Because hydrogen’s greater end-use efficiency can more than offset the conversion losses, much as an electric heat pump or air conditioner can offset fuel-to-electricity conversion losses by using one unit of electricity to concentrate and deliver several units of heat. That is, conversion losses and costs are tolerable if the resulting form of energy is more efficiently or conveniently usable than the original form, hence justified by its greater economic value. Making hydrogen can readily achieve this goal.

Crude oil can be more efficiently converted into delivered gasoline than can natural gas into delivered hydrogen.12 But that’s a red herring: the difference is far more than offset by the hydrogen’s 2–3-fold higher efficiency in running a fuel-cell car than gasoline’s in running an engine driven car. Using Japanese round numbers from Toyota, 88% of oil at the wellhead ends up as gasoline in your tank, and then 16% of that gasoline energy reaches the wheels of your typical modern car, so the well-to-wheels efficiency is 14%. A gasoline-fueled hybrid-electric car like the 2002 Toyota Prius nearly doubles the gasoline-to-wheels efficiency from 16% to 30% and the overall well-to-wheels efficiency from 14% to 26%. But locally reforming natural gas can deliver 70% of the gas’s wellhead energy into the car’s compressed-hydrogen tank. That “meager” conversion efficiency is then more than offset by an advanced fuel-cell drivesystem’s superior 60% efficiency in converting that hydrogen energy into traction, for an overall well-to wheels efficiency of 42%. That’s three times higher than the normal gasoline-engine car’s, or 1.5 times higher than the gasoline-hybrid-electric car’s.47 This helps explain why most automakers see today’s gasoline-hybrid cars as a stepping-stone to their ultimate goal — direct-hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

In competitive electricity markets, it may even make good economic sense to use hydrogen as an electricity storage medium. True, the overall round-trip efficiency of using electricity to split water, making hydrogen, storing it, and then converting it back into electricity in a fuel cell is relatively low at about 45% (after 25% electrolyzer losses and 40% fuel-cell losses) plus any byproduct heat recaptured from both units for space-conditioning or water heating. But this can still be worthwhile because it uses power from an efficient baseload plant (perhaps even a combinedcycle plant converting 50–60% of its fuel to electricity) to displace a very inefficient peaking
power plant (a simple-cycle gas turbine or engine-generator, often only 15–20% efficient).

This peak-shaving value is reflected in the marketplace. When the cost of peak power for the top 50–150 hours a year is $600–900/MWh, typically 30–40 times the cost of baseload power (~$20/MWh), the economics of storage become quite interesting. Distributed generation provides not only energy and peak capacity, but also ancillary services and deferral of grid upgrades. Hydrogen storage can also save power-plant fuel by permitting more flexible operation of the utility system with fuller utilization of intermittent sources like wind. Once all the distributed benefits are accounted for, using hydrogen for peak storage may be worthwhile, particularly in cities with transmission constraints (such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Long Island). Such applications may be able to justify capital costs upwards of $4,000/kW. Another attractive use of large-scale hydrogen storage would be in places like New Zealand or Brazil, whose hydroelectric systems have too little storage (12 weeks in NZ) to provide resilience against drought — but whose snowmelt or rainy seasons provide cheap surplus hydropower that could be stored as hydrogen, even in old gas-fields.

Many people assume that fuel makes more electricity if burned in an efficient power plant than if converted into hydrogen and then used in a fuel cell. This is not necessarily true. For example, using gasified biomass in a high-temperature molten-carbonate fuel cell, which needs no reformer, looks economically promising, even though reforming the biomass into hydrogen would be only about 60–65% efficient — worse than for reforming natural gas.48

[skewbe]

Originally Posted by Lug_Nut

It's 11.3%, but who's counting?

Hey Lug, kudos certainly for doing the diesel conversion. Are you going to convert the EPA average numbers on your Camel to diesel too?