Mines a hemi that's the fuel efficient 5.7 ltr version, for those tree huggers out there forget the trucks and SUV drivers get focused on the real environmental assassins lobby the airlines, the cow farmers, the coal burning power companies, heavy industry, volcanic erruptions and China (you ain't seen nothing yet).

Edit: Not true.

Hummer versus Prius: "Dust to Dust” Report Misleads the Media and Public with Bad Science

Prius versus Hummer Exploding the Myth

No, The Hummer Actually Isn't More Energy Efficient Than A Prius

Will YOKO ONO do!!

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf...20cars_1042076

Absolutely, we should be imposing all kinds of penalties on Indonesia for having so many volcanoes. The Chinese produce way less pollution per capita than most developed nations, plus they're quite small, so they don't need such big cars.

I do like beef, though.

Dammit - so it is a load of tosh then! I was hanging on to that for a good reason to have a 'regular' car Mind you - the way gas prices are going, I might have to think again..

I'm lead to believe that Toyota are loosing alot of money on each Prius they make, but it's great advertising for them.

What I would be interested to know is how much energy/pollution it takes to build a new car as opposed to using an older slightly less efficient one.

Teslas seem to be the way to go, 300 miles on a charge and a fairly rapid recharge time, just need $100k to buy one!

Fuel efficient, Hemi and 5.7L V8 are not words to be used in any other sentance than 'My 5.7L Hemi is not very fuel efficient' Drive a truck if you want (cos we all secretly want to) but for gods sake don't try and portray it as a fuel efficient vehicle!

Thats the first thing I noticed when here, all the sparkys had the macho truck, whereas in UK a little Renault van would suffice! Seemed pointless from the outset to me, they were all transporting snow around in the box and trying to cram all there expensive tools in the pathetic 'alooominom' chest that you need cos you have no security with a pick up.

Not having a go at you mate, as you cannot buy miniature vans here!

Darren

That was one thing that concerned me, but in fact its not nearly as bad as you might think, and the kinds of emissions involved are relatively cleaner and far easier to control at the source, and in the big picture a car uses about 7 times as much energy in fuel over its lifetime than it takes to build, so with advances in car efficiency its certainly better to buy a new more efficient car than to hold onto a 8 or 10 year old one.

Electrical vehicles are all well and good, but my problem with them is that although emissions are zero at the car, I suspect that the overall efficiency sucks, you are lucky to get what 70 or 80%? efficiency out of the power generation operation, and then you lose 10% in transmission, and then the battery charging operation is not very efficient, and then electric motors are not 100% efficient etc etc, so in the end its more efficient to turn oil into forward motivation at the car rather than have all those steps in between.

From an emissions point of view it might be better, but modern cars are pretty clean now anyway, and as was pointed out earlier compared to cattle operations or the airlines, perhaps automotive emissions are the wrong thing to focus on.

BUT, regardless of that, if you don't need a 5.7l V8 to pull a trailer or whatever, then I don't understand the need to use two or three times as much of what is a finite and increasingly expensive resource compared to driving something more compact and efficient.


I cant imagine Toyota or Honda are making a lot of money on Hybrids, but you need to start somewhere. Personally I think hybrids are the wrong direction, if you look at European fuel efficiency figures, the hybrids are not the most efficient vehicles. That area seems dominated by small turbo diesels. I found the lack of a small diesel option on my recent car hunt rather frustrating. I guess it depends if you think the focus should be on emissions, or on CO2 alone.

That reminds me of the debate that raged when catalytic converters first hit the mainstream. The problem with a catalyst is that in order for it to work most efficiently, you need an air/fuel mix that is roughly 14.7 (otherwise known as λ=1.0), the ratio for complete combustion. Unfortunately, at this ratio the fuel burns extremely hot, resulting in pre-ignition and potential damage to the combustion chamber. The solution for efficient running of the catalyst is to run at λ<1 (i.e. a rich mixture), which allows more complete reduction of NOx at the catalyst but results in less effective oxidation of CO to CO2 or oxidation of unburnt fuel. Running a lean mixture (λ>1) through a 3-way cat more effectively oxidises the unburnt hydrocarbons and CO, but isn't good at reducing oxides of nitrogen.

Ford developed a lean-burn engine in the 80s which was very effective at lowering carbon monoxide and unburnt hydrocarbon emissions; the relatively cool combustion temperatures also allowed much greater compression ratios that in turn significantly increased fuel efficiency. But it couldn't meet emissions criteria for NOx that had been brought in following lobbying by the pro-catalytic converter lobby and was ultimately scrapped. Other manufacturers (notably Mitsubishi and Honda) have since tried to resurrect the idea.

Not at all coincidentally, all diesel engines are lean-burn: as a function of the compression-ignition process they have to be to work at all. This helps explain why diesels are good for low emissions of unburnt and partially-burnt hydrocarbons, but have had difficulties in North America with other aspects of emissions controls (NOx and SOx particularly).

PS I bought my anorak when I applied for a job in the exhaust gas analysis lab of McLaren in Woking, who at the time were working with Ford Europe on some of this stuff.... I'll go and put it on, shall I?

Well even if it were true I rather like my Camry Hybrid and would much rather be driving it than a Hummer.

You mean you didnt already have it on? Thats scarey!

Interesting stuff though, at least to a techy like me. I'll go get mine on too eh...security in numbers

Nerd shall speak unto Nerd

Fred drifting slightly, I've been amused over recent times by being a cc recipient on an exchange of emails between two software engineers. On todays email I understood the sentance 'Sorry, I was out of the office yesterday' but the rest might well have been greek.

Back on Fred...... The solution to fuel economy in North America is cleaner fuel and accepting that reducing consumption is more important than emissions as an overiding factor. We don't need hybrids, far less monstrous things like Chev Malibu's and various SUV's. We need vehicles with smaller, more efficient engines. Like oh, I dunno, Europe say. And if we could import some of that styling and handling that those 'Yurpeans love as well that would be so much better. I never thought I'd gaze on a vauxhall astra (well the Saturn badged one) and think how nice the styling is compared to practically everything else!

Some of us have blazed a trail by driving stylish imported cars with, relatively, small engines.