Filed under: Plants/Manufacturing , Videos , Autoline on Autoblog As the relative price of gasoline drops, people are not motivated to buy small, fuel efficient cars. All the top executives in the auto industry tell me that oil supplies will only get tighter this decade. They predict that fuel prices will do nothing but go up. And they say customers will be clamoring for small, fuel-efficient cars
View post:
Opinion: What if it turns out there’s plenty of oil? [w/video]
Filed under: Etc. Back in 2008, soaring gas prices sent car buyers in search of efficient four-cylinder vehicles and, as the numbers show, sales of V6 and V8 engines dropped from 63.9 percent to 57.1 percent when gas prices spiked. Though elevated fuel costs may have triggered the increased demand for four-cylinder power a few years ago, the numbers show that the four-banger’s rise to dominance continues.
Go here to see the original:
Four-cylinder engines power 65.4% of cars built in 2010
Filed under: Government/Legal It’s a classic dichotomy – automakers need to build both the kinds of cars consumer want to buy and also the kinds of cars the policymakers tell them they have to build. And oftentimes, these two segments don’t exactly meet in the middle. Such is seemingly the case in California, where the Global Warming Solutions Act will soon force automakers that wish to remain in business in the state to drastically lower carbon emissions while also producing significant numbers of zero emissions vehicles.
Excerpt from:
Report: Automakers struggle to find balance between CA policymakers and state’s buyers
Filed under: Coupe , Hybrid , Sedan , Hatchback Top Ten EPA-rated Fuel Sippers (1984 to present) – Click above for image gallery Fuel efficiency has increased dramatically in the last decade , or at least that’s what we’ve been told. So it might come as a surprise to find out that six of the Top Ten EPA-rated Fuel Sippers from 1984 to present were built prior to 2000. Don’t believe it? We didn’t either, but this info comes straight from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website , the authoritative source on this fuel efficiency stuff.
More here:
EPA reveals top 10 most fuel-efficient cars since 1984, original Honda Insight takes top honors
2020 Toyota Venza as realized by Lotus – Click above for high-res image gallery When General Motors got to work seriously changing the Chevrolet Volt from blocky concept to sleek production model , company engineers discovered that by improving the aerodynamics by 80 counts, the car netted a six mile per gallon improvement in its highway fuel economy rating (note: a “count” is a thousandth of a point of a Cd number, so reducing a Cd of 0.150 by 50 counts would give you a Cd of 0.100). On the flipside, taking out 400 pounds of stuff only improved the car’s highway mpg by one mile a gallon, though that’s largely because of the Newtonian “an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force” hubbub. The lesson for the Volt? Aerodynamics beats weight reduction as a way to increase efficiency .
Continue reading here:
Lotus imagines the Toyota Venza, circa 2020 and minus 400 lbs
Filed under: Hybrid , Sedan , Videos , Chevrolet , GM , Electric Chevy Volt track testing – Click above to watch the video after the break Fuel efficient cars are slow, right? Just ask Jeremy Clarkson, who famously pitted a Toyota Prius against a BMW M3 around a test track to prove that the hybrid isn’t very efficient when pushed to its limit. While it’s true that hybrids and diesels have a reputation for being more than a bit poky in the name of saving a few gallons of gas, each generation seems to improve in that regard, and GM is hoping that the upcoming Chevy Volt will abolish that preconceived notion altogether. Witness this video for proof, where, as GM puts it, the Volt ‘burns rubber without burning gas.’ Here we see the car’s chief engineer Andrew Farah wring the electric car around a series of orange cones making up a test track at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Go here to see the original:
VIDEO: Chevy Volt squeals tires around the track