What do you consider great gas mileage for cars in the near future?

[graywarrior]

30 miles per gallon is crap in my opinion. All these auto makers are bragging they're designing cars that will have 30-35 mpg. My 94 Toyota gets 37 on the highway. Isn't 50 to 100 miles per gallon what we need OR a different energy source?

[BOSSHOG]

1. A minimum of 50 easily

[BOSSHOG]

2. Duplicate. My apologies

[Lerkfish]

3. yes to both.

since I was able to get 41 mpg in 1982 with my subaru, I do not understand how a modern HYBRID only gets 30 or so.
we do need a different energy source, but we need to either vastly increase solar efficiency or vastly miniaturize electric storage cells or develop a safe hydrogen process.

[bullwinkle428]

13. That depends on which hybrid you're talking about -

I rented a Prius on vacation a couple of years ago, and had no trouble acheiving 50 mpg! No special driving techniques related to "hypermiling" or anything like that...just avoided any lead-footed driving.

[liberal N proud]

4. 60/70 mpg

They can achieve it if they really want to sell cars and stay in business

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Electricity

The age of liquid-fuel powered common transportation must come to an end, soon. There are no known, affordable, clean, and feasible technologies that will allow us to replace petroleum products.

Public transportation should also be better developed. Relying completely on private transport has had too many undesirable side effects to count.

Our scientific efforts should be going into better electricity efficiency and storage; otherwise, all the windmills, solar cells, nuclear reactors and geothermal turbines in the world will be of limited use.

--p!

[Justpat]

6. In 1973, I bought one of the first Honda civics to come into this country.

Way back then, the car got 50 mpg. I could drive the thing all over the place and hardly
ever fill it up. I loved that car. I don't know what happened to the Hondas of recent years.
I suspect that eight years of oil men in the white house have convinced auto makers to
cut back on fuel efficiency standards.

Until we get all the oil men out of government - we will never be competitive in the world
when it comes to cars.

I would like to see 75 mpg and I would like to see the hydrogen fuel cell cars up and running
now instead of a decade from now.

[nancyr]

11. I had one, too.

If they could do it then they should be able to do it now. Now it's like everyone needs a huge gas-guzzler.

[JVS]

16. What happened is that the civic went from weighing 1500 lbs to 2600 lbs.

[HooptieWagon]

18. Weight.

Cars back then were much lighter. Now, they are required to have impact resistant bumpers and door sidebeams, airbags, emissions equipment, plus comfort items the public demands (sound deadening, stereos, AC, cushy heated seats, eight million cup-holders, etc.) A bare bones car like an early Civic or Beetle not only wouldn't be allowed to be sold, but the majority of public wouldn't buy it.

[Old Codger]

28. Comparisons

If you take a look at the new models compared to what was out there back in the 70's and 80's you will find a lot of major differences, bigger, more leg room, more head room, seat more people comfortably, and more power from motor to carry the extra weight. All of these things cut mileage seriously, all of these things are what people wanted in their cars... in 76 I bought a new Chevy pickup, stripped model, I worked construction and needed pickup if I was lucky it got 10 - 12 MPG. I still drive a Chevy pickup but now it has a lot more to it, cd player air conditioning, a slightly smaller engine but a lot more actual power than the 76 had and quite a lot better fuel mileage.. 23 MPG now a lot more comfort to drive, extended cab and all.. I imagine if I had same basic truck as the 76 model it would get even better mileage. The GM truck actually gets better mileage than the comparable Toyota full sized pickup for about the same price.. So(IMHO) you cannot really compare the older models to the newer ones in any of the imports as they have quite a lot more "extras" installed and that is because the customers wanted those "extras" . I have to say that I have not researched this extensively just a few quick looks around. But I wonder if it is even possible to buy a newer model of the Honda or Toyota's that would be as stripped as the older models.. Also it may very well be that a lot of the "extras" such as airbags and other safety considerations are a good part of this...ie Heavier components for crash safety ..

[Marrah_G]

7. I would like to see 60+ within ten years.

And yeah- we can do it. We put a man on the moon- we can make a viable car.

[bunkerbuster1]

8. I suspect we'll need to wean motorists off their accelleration fix

by keeping CAFE static all those years, carmakers were able to supply more powerful engines, to the point where what had been a respectable 0-60 time in my old '88 CRX Si (about 8.5 seconds) became expected out of the cheapest Hyundai.

Put another way, power-to-weight ratios have become pretty amazing if you're just a pure car enthusiast, but rather toxic if you're trying to get Americans to behave responsibly.

conventionally-engined 50 mpg cars aren't any great shakes to engineer; it's just that a lot of Americans are terrified of anything small that will take 12 seconds to get to 60. But that's what we need to become accustomed to as daily drivers.

To answer your question then: 50 mpg is a reasonable average goal.

[gratuitous]

9. The near future? 35 mpg

10 years out? 45 mpg. And that's every production model on every line. I don't buy cars, have owned only two in my entire life. Yet a few months ago, I had some yahoo salesman try to tell me how "great" the mileage was for a car in the mall: 21! On the highway! He finally walked away when I threw up on his shoes.

[tavalon]

14. Must remember that response!

It's very direct.

[graywarrior]

21. Seriously!

It's all that power we need to have with it. A/C, stereo, power this power that.

[Ganja Ninja]

10. 50 to 60 highway and 40 in the city

If it's a hybrid the city mileage should be better than the highway mileage.

[fed_up_mother]

17. I agree.

[Schema Thing]

12. It's far more important to improve the really low numbers than to add

to the high ones.


If you make a 15 mpg vehicle get 22.5 mpg, you've created a 50% improvement. If you make a 30mpg car get 45 mpg, you've once again created a 50% improvement. However, the 22.5 mpg vehicle is saving considerably more fuel and carbon than the 45 mpg vehicle because 50% of 15 mpg equals a much larger quantity of fuel.

That said, I'd like to see the government stop pussyfooting around and get busy making the national fleet average be somewhere around 35 mpg. There is no reason a full size, heavy duty pickup truck can't be getting 25 mpg with diesel and hybrid technology. Also, a lot of us who drive trucks really have to have a truck, but a lot don't as well. I can imagine cheap cooperatives that rent trucks and SUV's attached as incentives to people who buy high mpg vehicles... for those few times when you really need a truck or SUV.

[JVS]

15. I'd be happy with K Car mileage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpJv02Z3SQc

[leftofthedial]

19. 50 mpg minimum

100 mpg for the better ones

[TlalocW]

20. I hear commercials about that all the time - these cars that get a "great" 32 mpg

My 94 Nissan Sentra, which I have driven the hell out of, got that when it was newer, and still gets over 25. If I've got a good wind behind me, it gets back to about 30. This is why the big 3 are failing - they refused to look at current trends that showed we would not just be wanting but needing cars with higher mpgs, alternative fuel sources, etc. and kept pushing their SUVs, etc. because that's where they make the most money, and now while they may be finally making some concession in better fuel economy and stuff, they would rather try and snow us with BS about great gas mileage being in the low 30s.

If there were a way to bail out the auto industry so the bigwigs all suffered but the workers and unions stayed, I would be all for it.

TlalocW

[JVS]

24. In their defense, the new EPA estimates are done by a harder system than they used to be.

A result is that cars that are the same as they were a few years ago are now rated lower.

[surrealAmerican]

26. I know it's not, but it almost seems like they did that ...

... so that we wouldn't be able to make these kind of comparisons. Has anybody recalculated the mileage of older models by the new standards? How do they really stack up?

[JVS]

27. I share your frustration there.

I'll let you know if I find anything

[sofa king]

22. My 50cc scooter gets 80 mpg.

It weighs perhaps 400 pounds with me on it, and that poor little shot-glass sized single cylinder wails like a banshee to drag me and the bike to 31 mph, 15-20 mph up hills. It dumps out many times the emissions of a car just to do that (and yes, I'm unhappy about that, but I am also far too poor to be able to drive--and so too shall a lot of you be soon). But I also have a comparatively high likelihood of dying on that thing, soon, which will result in a reduction of consumption and emissions.

I think a lot of you are being overly optimistic about how much better gasoline fuel economy is going to improve. The theoretical efficiency (which will never be reached) of an Otto-type engine is somewhere between 50 and 60 percent, and after a hundred years of development we've managed to lift the average efficiency of cars up to around 32 percent. It seems unlikely to me that fleet fuel economy will ever double without massive reductions in weight and therefore also safety.

In the meantime, peak oil has come home to roost and from now on the true gains in fuel economy will actually come from millions of Americans finding themselves unable to drive at all, due to expense (or premature death).

The laws of physics and thermodynamics isn't going to change, but behavior will, because it must.

[graywarrior]

23. ON SECOND THOUGHT, WHY CAN'T THEY INVENT AN ADJUSMENT

for the cars we own now to get better mileage. They can clone cows for crissakes!

[mrih]

25. Call me a bit biased, but..

35+ mpg for all SUV type vehicles, and 45+ mpg for all mid size cars.

My wife makes the seats for the Escape Hybrid which gets something like 35mpg. It's about the only line in the plant she works at that always stays busy. Would be nice to see the rest of the departments be just as busy. As of late though... at least for the last couple of weeks... things have slowed even on THAT line.

NOT GOOD !!!

I really hope a plan has been made to reinvent Americas auto industry NOW.