Do You Know Why?
2 The owner doesn't support my candidate.
3 FR won't "upgrade" to "Like" buttons and blinky crap.
4 Someone else will donate.
5 My friend was zotted.
6 I lost my job and have no income.
In avowed socialist countries, the central planners are generally mathematicians and the like. Ours are lawyers.
2003...bought used
It will also add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of healthcare to account for the dead and dying in the event of an accident.
Good!
That will teach us!
What I don't know...
Trust me. If there was a way to make a tractor trailer get 20% better mileage it would have been done now. You can make cars smaller and lighter but you can’t on a long haul truck....
Well I guess you can do it to a truck to but its going to cost a lot more than the cost of the truck. There will be more of them to handle the lighter loads. It’s counter productive so they will be all over it. However Mexican trucks and drivers will be exempt.
From the existing standard of about 30 mpg to 55 mpg. Over a 12000 miles per year (high estimate) that is a savings of about 180 gallons of fuel. At $4 per gallon that works out to an annual savings of $720. That makes the break even on $2,000 ... 2 years and 9 months.
If we use more normal numbers of 10,000 miles and $3.50 per gallon, then the savings is 150 gallons per year, $525 or 3 years 10 months break even.
I buy used, I haven’t been able to afford a new car since a 1970 Chevy Malibu I bought.
A new car now averages about $20,000 dollars I can buy one hell of a lot of gas for $20,000 dollars,even at todays prices.
What can be done engineering-wise to significantly increase fuel economy? Several things would reduce the cost of cars: small diesel engines, small engines of any type, lighter, smaller cars with less creature comfort items.
Who remembers the Suzuki Samuri disaster here in America. They got a reputation for rolling over and ultimately were either rejected by buyers or made illegal. The rest of the story of the Samuri is that it was originally built for 3rd world countries and had a 26 horsepower engine. Then it was introduced to America with, among other thing a much larger, heavier engine which made it more tippy.
I’ll bet 26 horsepower engines would double our fuel economy. Why? Because our large engines spend most of their time at power levels way lower than their capacity and not near their point of greatest efficiency. Ever wonder why commercial trucks have such poor acceleration? Because their power trains are designed to run most of the time near their peak efficiency.
2004, bought a 2002 Silverado extended cab 4x4 dually with the 8.1l Vortec engine and the Allison transmission, fully loaded and I paid $31,000 for it, had low low miles.
I actually met the previous owner and he loved it but it did have terrible gas mileage. Ever since I have never gone past 2000 miles on an oil change, 1500 in the winter, I use Rotella T 5-40 full synthetic, in the winter I mix a quart of Amsoil 5-20 and a shot of Marvel Mystery lube, for the Alaska winter cold temps.
I am on the third windshield, third set of tires, replaced all the headlights, fog lights and even a pair of Hella passing lights with HID units, every other light except for some sealed units are now LED, has cadillac outside auto tint mirrors and instrument cluster, and a lot of other little extras from the sound system to stainless hood protectors.
Best truck I have ever owned. Its still a gas hog but I just don’t jump on the throttle much, it actually hardly ever gets past 2500 rpm what with 496 cubic inches and 360 hp. Body won’t rust, first GM truck I have ever owned that will not rust. Its a keeper.
Please freepmail me if you wish to be added or dropped from the mitten ping.
CAFE standards (which, apparently, are set with zero input from automotive engineers) are going to continue to price cars out of reach for the average American family, but what difference does it really make to automakers? We'll just keep bailing them out.
How the hell do they come up with these numbers?
500 for a 94 last year. Hell, I see no problem with better mpg. Car prices go up and up, regardless of mpg regs. They always go up, even before the term mpg raised its ugly head.
Ping
What? How can that be? It isn’t magic?