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Automotive News & Views How The 35 mpg Law By 2020 Will Affect The Cars We Will Drive
480 messages, Last post on May 13, 2008 at 2:04 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: kdhspyder (Apr 03, 2008 8:36 am) I beg to differ on that. One poster here was past the 36k mile warranty and had an $11k bill for the hybrid system in a Prius. I cannot find anything that tells what besides the battery in the CARB states is warranted past 10 years. Maybe you have a list of items that mandated warranty covers. Not every one is a brute for punishment to drive a Prius 225,000 miles in 7 years. For me 100k miles in 25 years would be too many miles in that thing. And at our current rate we may break 100k miles after about 21 years in the Lexus. It just passed smog with better than many newer cars emissions. I would sell it but why? It still rides, handles and out accelerates many new cars being sold. There is a lot more to being environmentally sound than getting 48 MPG. Throwing cars away after 7 years is a big environmental problem.
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It's true that people COULD achieve the old EPA numbers. All they have to do is accelerate no quicker than 3 mph per second, never hit any stop-and-go traffic, never exceed 55 mph, and never use the air conditioner. These days, those guys are known as hyper-milers. They obsess about exceeding EPA mpg figures, and they do so by a good margin. Some of them post pictures of 60-70 mpg figures on their odometer.
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Replying to: 1stpik (Apr 03, 2008 3:08 pm) I once got 56.4 mpg on a run from El Paso to Phoenix on I-10 averaging about 68 MPH for the 447 mile trip. |
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I once got 150 mpg driving from the grocery store to my parents' house (downhill). Another time, I got 62 mpg driving from Dallas to the Oklahoma border (strong tail wind). But my average over 20,000 miles is 47 mpg, barely above the current EPA estimate for the car. And that's only due to tame driving habits, living in a relatively flat area of the country, and an area that doesn't get extremely cold winters. . |
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Replying to: 1stpik (Apr 03, 2008 3:08 pm) My 2000 Intrepid is EPA rated at 20/29 with 1985-2007 numbers, and 18/27 with the dumbed-down numbers. And 20/29 is about what I got. A few times I've broken 30 on the highway. Now a couple months ago, it got a low of about 16.7 mpg, but that was purely local driving, done by my relatively leadfooted roommated who was borrowing it at the time, in the winter, and using that less efficient winter blend gas. Oh, and the car was in dire need of a tuneup....had about 90K miles on the spark plugs. Just because they say you can go 100K miles between tuneups doesn't always mean you *should*  The last time I took that car on a long trip was in 2005. We went down to Florida in late May/early June. Mostly highway driving, but speeds averaging 70-80 mph, coupled with some long traffic jams, three people and several hundred pounds of luggage on board, and the a/c on max the whole time. Average mpg was 27.5, and the car had about 105,000 miles on it at the time. So even in that situation, which wasn't pure highway, as we drove around a lot locally in Florida, I still managed to break the EPA's dumbed-down estimate. Oddly, the car I had that broke the EPA highway number by the widest margin was an old '89 Gran Fury copcar I had. It was rated 13/15, and with the dumbed-down numbers is an appalling 11/14! You can thank the 3-speed automatic with no overdrive, 4-bbl carb, and relatively quick 2.94:1 gearing, plus heavy duty fuel-sucking components for that low number. However, I was able to break into the low 20's on highway runs. My guess here is that because of the quicker axle ratio, it didn't have to downshift as often as the standard civilian 2.26:1 would have. And I guess the 4-bbl can actually be pretty fuel efficient if you keep your foot out of it...which I didn't always do! Now, around town, that car was a pig. 11-13, and it required premium fuel. As for those hypermiler claims, I don't know how much more intelligent the trip computers are these days, but I had an '88 LeBaron with one. You could actually fake it out into giving you a higher reading if you took your foot off the gas at just the right time. And if you did that often enough, it would make the running average a lot more optimistic. Instead of just dividing how far you drove by how much gas you used, it seemed to just take the average of all the instantaneous readings that it took. The longer you went without resetting it, the more accurate it would get, but it was still possible to trick it. Hopefully the electronics are smarter these days.
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Replying to: 1stpik (Apr 03, 2008 3:08 pm) I don't do any of the things you mentioned, and I ALWAYS hit the EPA highway number. The ONLY thing I do is follow the speed limit. That's usually 65 on the freeways, some 70 out of town, and about 40, sometimes 35, on the local streets here in the burbs. But if you're averaging 47 mpg, you must have one of the hybrids, huh? I'm not sure from your tone if you're disappointed with that figure, but considering what's available out there, it's not too shabby. Here's the most disappointing aspect of what IS available: using the 2007 numbers rather than the 2008 "chimp" numbers (good one andre!  ), ask yourself how many models of car were sold that made a city figure of 30 or more. Maybe 5% of all car models sold, and NO trucks/SUVs/crossovers IIRC. That's what is pathetic. That's what I am hoping, despite gagrice's pessimism ( ) we will see change drastically in the next decade.
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"...you're averaging 47 mpg...not sure from your tone if you're disappointed with that figure..." I'm not disappointed. I'm not ecstatic, either. I'm merely satisfied that I'm getting exactly what I paid for. The Civic Hybrid has saved me $1,300 in gasoline costs in less than a year, and it paid me $2,100 cash back (federal tax credit). For a brief period last summer, after the break-in period, I was getting 50-52 mpg regularly. I had visions of achieving a long-term average of 50+. Then winter came. The cold weather dropped mpg to the mid 40s, no matter how wimpy I drove. So the 50 mpg mark remains the province of hyper-milers. BTW, 49/51 was the OLD EPA estimate for the Civic Hybrid. The best part about owning a hybrid is that it immunizes me from rising fuel prices. It's almost like a little time machine; it takes me back to the 1990s, when I neve gave a thought to the price of gasoline. .
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 03, 2008 2:27 pm) The hybrid warranty includes the battery, MG1, MG2, the inverter and converter. The 60 / 60000 Powertrain warranty is the same as yours the engine and transaxel. The 36 / 36000 Basic warranty is the same as yours also. The electronics and all the controllers are covered by this warranty. |
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Replying to: 1stpik (Apr 03, 2008 4:47 pm) From Pre-Katrina days when I was buying 1200 gal a year at about $2 per gallon for my I4 Camry now I'm buying 750 gal a year at about $3 per gallon. At $4 I will be spending more than I was back in 2004. |
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Automotive News & Views How The 35 mpg Law By 2020 Will Affect The Cars We Will Drive
