Supermileage Car: 3,000+ mpg

[Doug]

Here’s a secret: you don’t really need funky alternative fuels or an electric motor to trim your energy consumption on the road. Sometimes all it takes is a little ingenuity. A team of Canadian engineering students won the annual Supermileage race in Michigan with its 80-lb. carbon-fiber Mark V, which can travel 3,145 miles on a single gallon of gas. That’s thanks to details like a curved underbody, an ultra-fuel-efficient 54-cc engine and a driver who understands why the turtle beat the hare. The catch? You have to drive lying down, and the windows don’t open.

Vehicles are powered by a small four-cycle lawnmower engine, and must complete 6 laps of a 2.4km track (with hills) with a minimum speed of 24km/hr. Fuel efficiency is calculated by measuring the vehicle’s net fuel consumption over the total distance traveled.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

looks like a post-modern coffin. My bet is it is also slow (the reference to the tortoise and the hare "slow and steady wins the race"). Not to say ingenuity isn't a good idea/"the" answer, and we should definitely be backing a whole lot more R&D by ingenius people. But then, we should also be putting incentive/startup money on producing the stuff we already know works (I saw "wave of the future" carbon-fiber body vehicles at Epcot Center in 1988. If energy wasn't being spent keeping the status quo, those would/should have hit the showroom floor before 2000).

[Dardedar]

Hey, they are going to stop lying so much with the EPA mileage estimates:

***
New-car miles-per-gallon estimates will drop next year

Updated 12/11/2006 6:52 PM ET

By James R. Healey, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Fuel economy ratings of cars and trucks will drop significantly starting with 2008 models, some of which will go on sale early next year.

The declines are because the Environmental Protection Agency is using more-realistic conditions to estimate the mileage cars and trucks will get. The vehicles themselves, in most cases, haven't changed, only the formula used to assign fuel economy numbers.

Fuel-saving gasoline electric hybrids will see the biggest drops in the mileage numbers posted on their window stickers — as much as 30% worse in city driving, 20% worse on the highway, the EPA said after issuing new testing procedures.

Averaged over all vehicles of all types, city mileage ratings will drop 12% and highway numbers will fall 8%.

the rest...

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

It's about time they revised the tests. The article says the hybrids are going to take the biggest hits - but reading further you see they don't have to. Don't drive the way the tests did - don't "hard accelerate" and find some way of keeping your car warmer than 20 degrees and hybrid drivers won't see any change. Of course, it's true non-hybrid drivers would see less of a drop if they followed the same rules, but they'll still see a drop. Now maybe (ha!) congress will get around to improving the cafe standards, now we have some real numbers to put on the table.

[LaWood]

About 30 years ago a buddy of mine and a car buff convinced me to install a tachometer on my full sized V8 ford van. I did. Then he showed me how to drive using the tach. I did. My milage went up from 18 mph to 22 in town. On the road it was a bigger milage increase. Fast starts really use fuel, needlessly. Dropping from 60mph to 55-57 or cruisiing just under 2000 rpms paid good dividends. Tachs also indicate when you are not getting the engine performance you should (spark plugs, fuel quality, timing, or fuel adjustments).

If your auto doesn't have a tach and if you drive over 6-8000 miles per year its worth it to install one.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

A friend of my mother's who was a car salesman from the late 1940s on used to win all the gas efficiency challanges at the dealerships he worked. He said the rule is simple - no "jackrabbit" starts and drive your slowest speed in your highest gear that keeps your engine from "lugging". He could get 25 mpg out of a V-8 Mustang!