In 1973, a modified Opel GT got 375+ MPG in Shell Oil tests. As you can see the car's not exactly practical. Still, one would expect that lessons could be learned from this. In 1974, Car and Driver showed it was relatively simple and cheap to improve a Pinto's mileage by 25%.
Way back in 1899, a guy by the name of Ferdinand Porsche invented the hybrid. (IIRC, hybrid trucks were built up until the 1920s.) In the 1980s, Briggs and Stratton as part of a government program built a hybrid prototype and if you were a reader of Mother Earth News at the time (and still to this day), you could get plans telling you how to build your own hybrid.
In the late 1960s, Toyota tested an "idle cutoff switch", which automatically cut the engine when you stopped at a traffic light, and then restarted the engine when you pushed on the gas. This didn't show up on production cars until the Prius. Mercedes just announced they were going to be installing one on non-hybrid cars. I imagine that all they have to do is change some of the software in the engine computer and put in a slightly beefier starter. Fuel savings are estimated at around 9%.
In the 1930s, Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion Car was 19 feet long, seated 11, got 30 MPG, did 130 MPH, while running on a 60 HP Ford V-8. Bad luck prevented the car from going into production.
Remember GM's EV-1 electric car? Yeah, it was a piece of crap, but did you know that GM built a couple of "conventionally powered" prototypes? Interesting performance on them:
The CNG prototype:
The maximum range was 350 to 400 miles, and fuel economy was 60 mpg (in gasoline equivalent) .
The hybrid prototype had better numbers:
A fuel tank capacity of 6.5 gallons (24.6 l) and fuel economy of 60 to 100 mpg (3.9 to 2.4 L/100 km) in hybrid mode, depending on the driving conditions, allowed for a highway range of more than 390 miles (627.6 km).You'd think that if GM had an ounce of sense, they would have brought those variants into production as that would allow them to recoup the development costs since they couldn't get the battery technology right. I wouldn't put much faith in them getting the Volt out any time soon, either.
Now GM has officially announced that, even with a less-aerodynamic body (a Chevy Malibu), a suboptimal drive unit and "rough calibration" it is consistently going more than 40 miles on all-electric power with its current batteries. GM's VP of product development, Bob Lutz has said “I can almost say the battery is the least of our problems.”IIRC, it was going to be the Spring of 2010 they were going to have them on sale. Oops.
In general, this is good news. But there are reasons to remain skeptical. First, the initial announcement of a $30,000 price point has already been raised to $35 and it's been hinted that it could be "closer to 40." Second, there is still nothing extremely firm about their November 2010 release date.
In 2003, Accenture claimed that for $300 billion the US could convert the entire US vehicle to CNG in about a decade.
Under Tolan's pedal-to-the-metal scenario, the country could completely wean itself off imported oil by 2015 by flooding the market with fuel-cell vehicles. Most of the hydrogen needed to power the cars would come from plentiful North American natural gas piped to existing filling stations, then processed into hydrogen. Imagine: In little more than a decade, half the cars on American highways would run on clean-burning hydrogen costing 40 percent less per mile than gasoline. Yes, Tolan agrees, some unusual things would have to happen first: You'd need annual federal subsidies of $10 billion to $20 billion in the early years to make the cars affordable and to scale up production. Oil and gas companies and utilities would have to plow some $280 billion into hydrogen infrastructure in the United States alone. Press Tolan a little and she'll acknowledge that she's calling for a radical transformation that could expose some of the most hidebound industries in the world to daunting technological and commercial risks.
The speed of the transformation Tolan envisions makes Internet time seem glacial. Starting in 2005, automakers would introduce fuel-cell vehicles, ramping sales up sharply to 8 million units by 2009, with the help of at least $10 billion in annual subsidies to help defray the initial cost of about $40,000 per vehicle. (If $10 billion seems steep, Tolan counters that the Apollo space program at its peak ate $17 billion a year.) The ambitious scheme, Tolan calculates, would put about 115 million fuel-cell cars on the road by 2015.Not only would that make us self-sufficient in terms of energy, but if you lived in Utah, you could fill your tank for about $5.
To meet demand for hydrogen, oil companies would have to hustle to install hydrogen pumps at 30,000 filling stations, enough to supply cities conveniently. The handiest source of hydrogen in North America is natural gas--there are huge reserves in Canada and the Gulf of Mexico--and producers could link filling stations to existing pipelines quite readily. Other potential sources include ethanol and hydrogen extracted from water using electricity in areas where power is especially cheap. The result: U.S. oil consumption falls from a projected 28 million barrels a day to 6 million by 2020, eliminating the need for imports. That alone would save the nation about $200 billion a year--not to mention a lot of geopolitical headaches.
Troy Anderson was at the gas pump and couldn't have been happier, filling up at a rate of $5 per tank.Not to worry, however, VW will be bringing a 200 MPG car to the US in 2010.
Anderson was paying 63.8 cents per gallon equivalent for compressed natural gas, making Utah a hot market for vehicles that run on the fuel.
It's the country's cheapest rate for compressed gas, according to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, and far less than the $3.56 national average price for a gallon of gasoline.
"I'm totally celebrating," crowed Anderson, a 44-year-old social worker, who picked up a used Honda Civic GX two months ago. "This is the greatest thing. I can't believe more people aren't talking about it. This is practically free."
The VW 1L is so named because, in theory, it only consumes one liter of fuel per 100 kilometers traveled. For those of us in the US, this translates into about 235 MPG. Definitely far and above anything on the market currently. The concept, developed in 2002, actually got better fuel economy, scoring a sweet .89L/100km in VW testing. It’s likely to use more fuel in real world use, but with that kind of mileage in testing it’s unlikely that anyone would complain about an “unsatisfactory 200 MPG.”A Google search of the term "hypermiling" will turn up all kinds of info on ways people are hacking their cars to get better gas mileage. Some of them aren't practical for everyone, and a few might make the car a little less safe in a crash, but there's still plenty of good ideas. Car makers, like a lot of industries, are fat and lazy and don't want to actually think about how to get better mileage out of their cars.
Steam cars have largely been ignored by the car makers. In the late 1960s, Chevy briefly looked at building steam powered Camaros, but rather than listening to the consultants they brought in for the task, they ignored everything they had to say and built the car "their way." From all accounts, it was absolute junk. They couldn't even manage to get the warm up time as low as the Doble's (and one of the consultants was very familiar with Dobles). I don't know for certain that I'll be able to get dramatically improved mileage with my design, but it's worth a shot. One advantage I'll have over other designs is that I won't be tied to a single fuel source. I'll be able to go with whatever happens to be cheapest (or available) at the moment. Try that with a hybrid.
