GM Produces the Volt!

[Warren Dew]

It's illegal for children to sit in a front seat with airbags in the U.S.

Er, no. California is not the U.S. And even in California, there are exceptions:

http://www.iihs.org/laws/childrestraint.aspx

[Warren Dew]

So? When it does, it does. That doesn't mean we ought to artificially raise the price now so that we can begin paying higher prices for other fuels. Why not develop fuel or power sources that cost less than oil?

Because the only thing that will make them cost less than oil is the eventual rise in oil prices over the coming years and decades.

Why do you prefer taxing income, say, over taxing fuel? It has the same pervasive negative effect on the economy.

[Coito ergo sum]

So? When it does, it does. That doesn't mean we ought to artificially raise the price now so that we can begin paying higher prices for other fuels. Why not develop fuel or power sources that cost less than oil?

Because the only thing that will make them cost less than oil is the eventual rise in oil prices over the coming years and decades.

Why do you prefer taxing income, say, over taxing fuel? It has the same pervasive negative effect on the economy.

I don't. I prefer that whatever tax policy we have be as rational as it can be, and unless there is some reason to think that raising gas prices from $3.15 a gallon to $5.00 a gallon is going to spur on private development of an alternative that costs less than $5.00 a gallon, then there isn't a reason to raise the cost. And, again, we know we can generate the power - build nuclear power plants out the wazoo and ensure the grid can handle the load. Done. Before I believe that raising the gas tax $1 or $2 or $3 is going to have any likelihood of seeing a breakthrough in solar, wind, tidal or other power generation technology, I will need to see the business plan and the numbers/assumptions someone used to determine that there is any likelihood. Throwing darts at a dartboard is not what I need to pay $175,000 a year each to 535 Congressmen and $400,000 a year for a President (and $300,000 a year for VP) to do. With all that high paid brainpower, I think someone could put together a business plan demonstrating the rational basis for asserting that raising the gas tax will reasonably likely produce an alternative energy variant that is or may be viable. Too much to ask?

We saw this shit over the last 20 years with this fucking corn ethanol - about 15 odd years ago, this shit started coming up. People started talking about how it's so obvious that we ought to subsidize corn ethanol so that people will buy it, and then we'll just grow our fuel. Well - two fucking seconds of thought about it revealed - and some folks tried to chime in to this effect - that (a) the cost and fuel necessary to grow the corn and produce the ethanol, which is less efficient and just as pollutive as regular gasoline, exceeds that of regular gasoline, (b) by increasing the demand for corn dramatically, the price of everything in the country will go up markedly, as would the price of corn, which then would make ethanol actually more expensive than gasoline, less efficient, just as pollutive and ultimately - nonsense. What happened with corn ethanol as a solution? It's biggest proponents, like Gore, have now admitted they were way off base. Why did that big fucking boondoggle of a mistake happen? (a) because nobody held their feet to the fire to provide a real business plan that showed what the assumptions were and made reasonable predictions, and (b) the whole thing was pushed through by powerful politicians from corn-growing states for their own benefits.

Now, if the purpose is not to spur on alternative fuel development, but is instead a revenue generating method, then the analysis would be whether it maximizes revenue while minimizing negative effects on the economy as compared with other choices. I'm fine with taxes for generating government revenue - I just want them to raise the most revenue with the least negative impact on the economy.

[drl2]

While skimming an automotive-related forum instead of working today I came across a couple of interesting articles that tie in with the vehicle weight discussion:

Mulally Gives Ford Lightness Lead After Threat to End Explorer:

To keep rolling, Mulally is requiring new models introduced from 2012 to 2020 to weigh 250 to 750 pounds less than their predecessors. If they can’t achieve best-in-class fuel economy, he won’t approve them.

“Every engineer needs to think about weight as one of the most fundamental elements,” Kuzak says.

Ford faces tough competition in lightweight design. Honda Motor Co. trimmed 104 pounds from its 2011 Odyssey minivan compared with the previous model.

“To improve fuel-efficiency and reduce greenhouse gases, one of the most important and cost-effective ways is reducing weight,” says Ed Cohen, Honda’s vice president for U.S. government affairs.

But there's a down side, of course:

Not everyone is convinced that lightweight designs are the future. Mulally’s weight trimming turned into a nightmare at Boeing. The Dreamliner is more than three years late because Boeing had to reinforce the fuselage to prevent layers of composite plastic from separating.

Eric Noble, head of consulting firm The Car Lab in Orange, California, says customers don’t care about weight when a gallon of U.S. gasoline costs about 25 percent less than it did at its 2008 peak of $4.11. New crash-safety requirements are so demanding that they’ll force regulators to delay fuel-economy improvements, Noble predicts.

“It will take more or much more expensive materials to meet safety requirements,” he says. “Vehicles will tend to get even heavier, since there’s so much competition, raising prices isn’t an option.”

Steel manufactured with new processes that make it lighter and stronger will be making its way into a number of vehicles in the next few years - Steel nanotechnology can reduce the weight of our cars:

The world's largest steel maker, ArcelorMital, says it has come up with a new kind of steel that the world has never seen before. Thanks to nanotechnology, the company says automakers can now match the weight of aluminum cars, but do it in steel at far lower cost.

It can take 188 pounds out of the body-in-white of a car... but total weight savings could be even bigger.
Specifically, ArcelorMital says it can take 188 pounds out of the body-in-white of a car. The body-in-white, or BIW, refers to the basic structure of a car, including the doors, hood and deck lid. That's a big number. By taking so much weight out of the structure, other components such as the powertrain, drivetrain, brakes, etc. can be downsized as well. In other words, the total weight savings could be even bigger.

ArcelorMital is already showing this new kind of steel to automakers. It isn't yet ready to publicly divulge any of the technical aspects of the steel or how it's using nanotechnology to make it. The company says we're still two to three years away before we get those kinds of details. And that's about the time we'll see this steel show up in production. No word yet on which car company may be the first to use it, but the rumor on the street is that Ford is all over this technology.

It'll be nice if this technology can be used economically to build drivetrain parts, suspension, wheels, etc, too, not just for structural assemblies - trimming weight out of anything that rotates is one of the best ways to increase engine efficiency, and losing unsprung weight is one of the best ways to make a car handle better.

[JOZeldenrust]

It'll be nice if this technology can be used economically to build drivetrain parts, suspension, wheels, etc, too, not just for structural assemblies - trimming weight out of anything that rotates is one of the best ways to increase engine efficiency, and losing unsprung weight is one of the best ways to make a car handle better.

Not much chance, I think. The chemical and mechanical properties of plate steel and the steels used for (high precision, high impact) moving parts are so different that weight reduction techniques that work in one are about as likely to work in the other as in another material alltogether, like glass or concrete.

Even traditional steel alloys differ greatly in composition and mechanical properties (tensile strength, hardness, elasticity etc.). Methods of reducing weight are unlike to be transferable across alloys.

[drl2]

Sorry, but you're just mistaken. When I bought my last car, three of the candidates were the S2000, the Z4, and the 330i. All had comparable performance. The S2000 was lightest and got the worst gas mileage; the 330i was heavier by 20% but got 20% better gas mileage. The Z4 was in between on both. The inverse relationship between weight and gasoline use was because aerodynamics are more important than weight.

Bunch of yuppie poser-mobiles there.

I'd be curious, though not curious enough to go find the info myself, to see drag coefficients for those three and see which does in fact provide the most drag. The 330 is a boxy-ish sedan, vs smaller sportscars, but the smaller cars so it might depend on whether testing is done with the top up or down...

Still, it's not really useful to just list a couple of cars and say "this one is more fuel efficient because it's more aerodynamic" when you're leaving out considerations of overall drivetrain efficiency (the S2000 is running a beefed up version of a consumer-grade 4-cyl out of a Civic, vs the Beemer motors that are built to go into cars that start at, I'm guessing, more than $14000 ), type & gearing of the transmissions, final drive gear ratios, wheel & tire size, etc.

Aerodynamics have greatly improved over the years, and continue to improve incrementally, though there's a limit to how aerodynamic a vehicle can be and still hold actual people in comfort. Vehicle weights, though, have gone steadily upward, and that's where there's a lot of room for improvement if it can be done without too much sacrifice in safety and price, whether you're running an internal combustion engine, an electric motor, or a brigade of hamsters drinking coffee.

[Warren Dew]

With all that high paid brainpower, I think someone could put together a business plan demonstrating the rational basis for asserting that raising the gas tax will reasonably likely produce an alternative energy variant that is or may be viable. Too much to ask?

Yes, it's too much to ask. We're talking politicians here. Politicians aren't paid for brainpower; they're paid for winning popularity contests.

We saw this shit over the last 20 years with this fucking corn ethanol - about 15 odd years ago, this shit started coming up. People started talking about how it's so obvious that we ought to subsidize corn ethanol so that people will buy it, and then we'll just grow our fuel.

This is why I'm advocating taxes, rather than subsidies. Subsidies have a habit of becoming handouts; taxes don't.

Now, if the purpose is not to spur on alternative fuel development, but is instead a revenue generating method, then the analysis would be whether it maximizes revenue while minimizing negative effects on the economy as compared with other choices. I'm fine with taxes for generating government revenue - I just want them to raise the most revenue with the least negative impact on the economy.

The tax of course would generate revenue. It would just have the added benefit of improving the fuel efficiency of the economy overall. Note that the whole "alternative fuels" thing is likely the wrong approach in general, as well as in specific cases like corn ethanol - with gas turbines at 60% efficiency, there's a lot of room to improve automobile engines above their present 20%, without changing the kind of fuel they use.

Eric Noble, head of consulting firm The Car Lab in Orange, California, says customers don’t care about weight when a gallon of U.S. gasoline costs about 25 percent less than it did at its 2008 peak of $4.11.

Exactly why we need fuel taxes to push fuel prices up earlier rather than later.

New crash-safety requirements are so demanding that they’ll force regulators to delay fuel-economy improvements, Noble predicts.

“It will take more or much more expensive materials to meet safety requirements,” he says. “Vehicles will tend to get even heavier, since there’s so much competition, raising prices isn’t an option.”

Not to mention child car seat regulations that force people into buying minivans instead of more fuel efficient sedans. I hate to agree with Ian, but he's right that with multiple kids in the U.S., minivans are actually the more fuel efficient option; the gas guzzler option is the SUV.

Steel manufactured with new processes that make it lighter and stronger will be making its way into a number of vehicles in the next few years - Steel nanotechnology can reduce the weight of our cars:

Honestly, the car manufacturers could trivially reduce weight of most cars by 1000 lb, simply by replacing the steel with aluminum. It just makes the cars more expensive, that's all. Oh, and it makes them flammable at high enough temperatures - but still VW seems okay with making the firewall of the Lupo out of it.

[Coito ergo sum]

With all that high paid brainpower, I think someone could put together a business plan demonstrating the rational basis for asserting that raising the gas tax will reasonably likely produce an alternative energy variant that is or may be viable. Too much to ask?

Yes, it's too much to ask. We're talking politicians here. Politicians aren't paid for brainpower; they're paid for winning popularity contests.

Which has been my argument for some time now that they should have their salaries halved.

We saw this shit over the last 20 years with this fucking corn ethanol - about 15 odd years ago, this shit started coming up. People started talking about how it's so obvious that we ought to subsidize corn ethanol so that people will buy it, and then we'll just grow our fuel.

This is why I'm advocating taxes, rather than subsidies. Subsidies have a habit of becoming handouts; taxes don't.

Sure - I'm not opposed to all taxes, just arbitrary ones. I need someone to show me some thoughtful study that links raising gas taxes by $X with a concrete expectation. I'm not saying it has to be certainty - but, something that makes sense to show that there is reasonable likelihood that by raising the tax $X that it will achieve Y result. If not, I don't support the tax, unless it is being done for a revenue generating purpose - which is a whole other ball of wax. If it's for the purpose of raising revenue, then I am o.k. with it if it can be demonstrated that other options were considered and this was the one that generated the most revenue with the least negative impact on the economy.

All I'm saying is that these things need to be subjected to at least some reasonable scrutiny, and that assertions ought to be backed up with evidence or cogent rationale, and not just conclusory statements.

Now, if the purpose is not to spur on alternative fuel development, but is instead a revenue generating method, then the analysis would be whether it maximizes revenue while minimizing negative effects on the economy as compared with other choices. I'm fine with taxes for generating government revenue - I just want them to raise the most revenue with the least negative impact on the economy.

The tax of course would generate revenue. It would just have the added benefit of improving the fuel efficiency of the economy overall. Note that the whole "alternative fuels" thing is likely the wrong approach in general, as well as in specific cases like corn ethanol - with gas turbines at 60% efficiency, there's a lot of room to improve automobile engines above their present 20%, without changing the kind of fuel they use.

I don't know that it's been demonstrated that it would improve the fuel efficiency of the economy overall. Gas prices are much higher than they were 10 years ago now, and I don't think fuel economy has been effected by that. There is elasticity in people's buying habits, and behavior may not change if prices go up only $1 but might change if they go up $2 or $3. What I haven't seen is a good study done on what that number is. Raising gas prices one penny won't do dick. Raising gas prices by $100 a gallon would grind transportation to an almost complete halt - however what number above a penny will effect behavior and what number below $100 will not overburdern the system has not, to me, been demonstrated.

As for improving engine efficiency - having spoken to dozens of folks in my circle of friends who work in the auto industry - if they could make a dramatic improvement engine efficiency very easily they would have done it. They want to. They don't know how. That's the thing about this - it ain't a conspiracy - if Ford engineers could make Ford's engines even 10% more efficient than they are now, they fucking damn well would. I'm not saying it can't happen - I'm saying they've tried for many years now, and they don't know how, basically, so far. Essentially, there is only so much energy in a volume of gasoline.

Eric Noble, head of consulting firm The Car Lab in Orange, California, says customers don’t care about weight when a gallon of U.S. gasoline costs about 25 percent less than it did at its 2008 peak of $4.11.

Exactly why we need fuel taxes to push fuel prices up earlier rather than later.

For what? To get them to buy smaller cars? There is, I'm sure, a price for gas that will start causing people to in droves to buy smaller cars. But, note, that's a different issue than encouraging people to invent alternative energy sources.

Frankly - I'm not sure the benefit of incentivizing X number of Americans to buy smaller cars would be. So, I have an SUV that gets about 20 MPG. So, if I buy a car next time that gets 28 MPG, does it really make a difference?

Further, raising gas prices hits the "most vulnerable among us" the hardest. The poor - single mothers - minorities in the inner cities - these sales taxes on necessities like gasoline are about the most regressive taxes you can impose.

Honestly, the car manufacturers could trivially reduce weight of most cars by 1000 lb, simply by replacing the steel with aluminum. It just makes the cars more expensive, that's all. Oh, and it makes them flammable at high enough temperatures - but still VW seems okay with making the firewall of the Lupo out of it.

Trivially? You overstate the simplicity. The vehicles become less safe and less able to withstand crash safety tests, for one thing.

[Warren Dew]

Bunch of yuppie poser-mobiles there.

You can't expect me to cruise with my girl in a Prius, can you?


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2546/368 ... c77e40.jpg


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2483/368 ... fab8c8.jpg


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3647/368 ... 52f26d.jpg

I'd be curious, though not curious enough to go find the info myself, to see drag coefficients for those three and see which does in fact provide the most drag. The 330 is a boxy-ish sedan, vs smaller sportscars, but the smaller cars so it might depend on whether testing is done with the top up or down...

The last 3 series Cd I saw was in the low 0.3s, though it might have been for the prior version; it might give the impression of "boxy", but the windshield rake is strong and and they seem to have spent a lot of wind tunnel time on it. The Z4 is a considerably higher 0.38, I believe. Presumably the S2000 is closer to the Z4. The roadsters are tested with the top up, but both of them have more upright windshields than the 3 series, plus the rear window is also more upright resulting in earlier air flow detachment.

Still, it's not really useful to just list a couple of cars and say "this one is more fuel efficient because it's more aerodynamic" when you're leaving out considerations of overall drivetrain efficiency (the S2000 is running a beefed up version of a consumer-grade 4-cyl out of a Civic, vs the Beemer motors that are built to go into cars that start at, I'm guessing, more than $14000 ), type & gearing of the transmissions, final drive gear ratios, wheel & tire size, etc.

I would agree that the comparisons between the cars of the 1960s and those of today would be more germane.

For the record, the S2000 engine was specially designed for the car - it was basically Honda's prototype for variable valve timing - though it might have been used in later Civics. It had a bunch of other idiosyncracies as well, such as a 9000 rpm redline and oval rather than cylindrical cylinders. I do suspect that the BMWs have extra hardware to squeeze more power out of each gallon of gas, but that's another example of how better fuel efficiency may require increased, rather than decreased, weight.

Aerodynamics have greatly improved over the years, and continue to improve incrementally, though there's a limit to how aerodynamic a vehicle can be and still hold actual people in comfort. Vehicle weights, though, have gone steadily upward, and that's where there's a lot of room for improvement if it can be done without too much sacrifice in safety and price, whether you're running an internal combustion engine, an electric motor, or a brigade of hamsters drinking coffee.

Well, the Prius has a Cd of 0.25, which is a significant improvement over the low 0.3s of most current sedans. I think there's still significant room for improvement. An enclosed lower body pan can help a lot - yet another example of where better fuel efficiency may go with increased weight.

Weights for similar classes of vehicles have remained similar in the U.S. Average weights for passenger vehicles overall have gone up mostly because people switched from cars to SUVs when cars were subject to CAFE mileage requirements and SUVs were not.

It wouldn't take much of an increase in fuel prices to get people out of the SUVs - I noticed that when gas prices hit $4/gal, most people in this area left their SUVs at home and there were barely any on the road. Getting people out of minivans and making sedans smaller would require easing off the safety rules - or enough of a fuel price increase to make aluminum cars cost effective.

[Warren Dew]

I don't know that it's been demonstrated that it would improve the fuel efficiency of the economy overall. Gas prices are much higher than they were 10 years ago now, and I don't think fuel economy has been effected by that.

Think again:

1999
Real GDP: $10,780 Billion (2005 dollars)
Energy consumption: 2215.9 Mtoe (million tons of oil equivalent)

2009
Real GDP: $12,881 Billion (2005 dollars)
Energy consumption: 2201.4 Mtoe

Sources:
http://www.data360.org/dataset.aspx?Data_Set_Id=355
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_ ... ted_States

In other words, the economy grew by an inflation adjusted 20% over that time with no increase in energy consumption. That's the kind of efficiency improvement you can expect from increased fuel prices.

As for improving engine efficiency - having spoken to dozens of folks in my circle of friends who work in the auto industry - if they could make a dramatic improvement engine efficiency very easily they would have done it. They want to. They don't know how. That's the thing about this - it ain't a conspiracy - if Ford engineers could make Ford's engines even 10% more efficient than they are now, they fucking damn well would. I'm not saying it can't happen - I'm saying they've tried for many years now, and they don't know how, basically, so far.

Actually, over the last "many years now", they have made substantial efficiency improvements. Compare their engines now to 30 years ago, and you'll see a big change. Fuel injection, high swirl combustion chambers, more valves per cylinder - if they aren't familiar with their successes over the years, better sell your Ford stock.

And, that's how they need to continue. It's not a matter of making one dramatic improvement - it's a matter of making a large number of small improvements.

Plus, they are assuming "within the price budget consumers will pay". Let them use forged crankshafts and they can run at higher RPM, and get the same power out of a smaller and more fuel efficient engine. Right now, they can't sell the resulting higher priced cars to consumers, though. Raise gasoline prices, and they'll be able to sell those improvements.

Frankly - I'm not sure the benefit of incentivizing X number of Americans to buy smaller cars would be. So, I have an SUV that gets about 20 MPG. So, if I buy a car next time that gets 28 MPG, does it really make a difference?

A 40% improvement? Yes, it makes a huge difference.

Further, raising gas prices hits the "most vulnerable among us" the hardest. The poor - single mothers - minorities in the inner cities - these sales taxes on necessities like gasoline are about the most regressive taxes you can impose.

That might have been true decades ago. It's not any more. One good thing about inner cities is that they tend to have good public transportation networks these days. Meanwhile, the people who own the gas guzzling SUVs are the affluent suburban yuppies.

[Coito ergo sum]

As for improving engine efficiency - having spoken to dozens of folks in my circle of friends who work in the auto industry - if they could make a dramatic improvement engine efficiency very easily they would have done it. They want to. They don't know how. That's the thing about this - it ain't a conspiracy - if Ford engineers could make Ford's engines even 10% more efficient than they are now, they fucking damn well would. I'm not saying it can't happen - I'm saying they've tried for many years now, and they don't know how, basically, so far.

Actually, over the last "many years now", they have made substantial efficiency improvements. Compare their engines now to 30 years ago, and you'll see a big change. Fuel injection, high swirl combustion chambers, more valves per cylinder - if they aren't familiar with their successes over the years, better sell your Ford stock.

And, that's how they need to continue. It's not a matter of making one dramatic improvement - it's a matter of making a large number of small improvements.

Of course, and they have. But, the idea that it is "easy" to just make dramatic increases in efficiency is wrong, which is the assertion I contested. It isn't.

Plus, they are assuming "within the price budget consumers will pay". Let them

Let them? Nobody is stopping them. Well, of course, they have to price the vehicle so people will pay for it. I'm not going to buy a $100,000 vehicle - ever. And, I sure as hell don't want the government subsidizing the cost.

use forged crankshafts and they can run at higher RPM, and get the same power out of a smaller and more fuel efficient engine. Right now, they can't sell the resulting higher priced cars to consumers, though. Raise gasoline prices, and they'll be able to sell those improvements.

How much? One penny? 50 cents? $1? $2? $10? No it isn't just "raise gasoline prices and they'll be able to sell those improvements." Not by a long shot. It may well be that people just don't have the money to buy cars that are that expensive. You might need to raise prices so high that the economy is killed in the process. Raising fuel prices boosts inflation on all consumer goods, among other things. It makes the cost of going to work higher, and causes the labor rate to be pushed up too because people pay more to get to work. If they then have to buy more expensive cars, then they need more money too - if they can get it, then the cost of goods/services sold by the employer goes up.

A small increase in fuel prices reverberates throughout the economy.

Frankly - I'm not sure the benefit of incentivizing X number of Americans to buy smaller cars would be. So, I have an SUV that gets about 20 MPG. So, if I buy a car next time that gets 28 MPG, does it really make a difference?

A 40% improvement? Yes, it makes a huge difference.

In what respect? Why? Just 'cuz? And, is it worth all the costs your suggesting? Raising gas taxes, increasing the cost of automobiles?

Further, raising gas prices hits the "most vulnerable among us" the hardest. The poor - single mothers - minorities in the inner cities - these sales taxes on necessities like gasoline are about the most regressive taxes you can impose.

That might have been true decades ago. It's not any more. One good thing about inner cities is that they tend to have good public transportation networks these days. Meanwhile, the people who own the gas guzzling SUVs are the affluent suburban yuppies.

Are you kidding?

[drl2]

As for improving engine efficiency - having spoken to dozens of folks in my circle of friends who work in the auto industry - if they could make a dramatic improvement engine efficiency very easily they would have done it. They want to. They don't know how. That's the thing about this - it ain't a conspiracy - if Ford engineers could make Ford's engines even 10% more efficient than they are now, they fucking damn well would. I'm not saying it can't happen - I'm saying they've tried for many years now, and they don't know how, basically, so far. Essentially, there is only so much energy in a volume of gasoline.

There's an interesting phenomenon going on in the internal combustion engine world, a sort of mini-renaissance that's made possible largely by the availability of cheap, plentiful computing power, both in terms of what's embeddable in a vehicle for engine management and in terms of the hardware and software used in modeling airflow, mechanical efficiency, etc. While the move to smaller, overhead-cam, variable-valve-timing engines (not to mention five-speed transmissions) happened gradually over decades, we're currently seeing some major advances happening rather quickly. This year I can go buy a base-model Mustang - starting price around $23K, and not a lightweight car at all - that makes 305HP out of a V6 that gets 31MPG. Five years it would have been hard to convince anyone that a car of that size with that power could get that kind of real-world mileage. Most of the efficiency gains from that motor, and many others that have hit the market or will be over the next few years - come from precise choices of materials and airflow patterns determined through testing in simulations and from the kind of precise tuning that's made possible when your car's on-board computer is significantly more powerful than the systems that were used to design vehicles just a few years ago. GDI (gasoline direct injection - usually bringing with it a 3-6% efficiency boost, from what I've read) is becoming cheaper and more commonplace and will probably be almost ubiquitous in a few years; cylinder shut-off at cruising speed is just about standard on the few pushrod motors that are still around, and may start making its way into overhead cam designs if they can get it working there; engine shutdown while idling is becoming more prevalent; six-speed transmissions are at least options on almost all of the few models where they don't come standard, and 8-speeds will start appearing next year in some cars that don't have teutonic logos (and prices) on the hood.

The technology makes these advances possible, but it seems likely that their relatively quick adoption is driven at least in part by rising fuel prices, therefore at least in part by fuel taxes.

(That said, I still want a car with a big rumbly V8 )

Honestly, the car manufacturers could trivially reduce weight of most cars by 1000 lb, simply by replacing the steel with aluminum. It just makes the cars more expensive, that's all. Oh, and it makes them flammable at high enough temperatures - but still VW seems okay with making the firewall of the Lupo out of it.

Trivially? You overstate the simplicity. The vehicles become less safe and less able to withstand crash safety tests, for one thing.

Automakers have widely adopted aluminum where it makes sense; engine blocks and cylinder heads, for example, are rarely cast from iron these days except in trucks where maximum block strength is deemed more important than weight savings - and even those iron blocks are lighter and stronger than they used to be, thanks to new casting processes. Aluminum is becoming fairly common in suspension parts, especially in sporty cars where it's important to get unsprung weight down. But as a chassis component? Probably not anytime soon on any large scale. Safety issues aside, your "just makes the cars more expensive" would likely become "just prices the cars out of reach of most people", especially if the increase in demand for aluminum raised the price dramatically. I also think 1000 lbs is wishful thinking; some weight reduction from Al as already been done, as I mentioned, and you might be surprised at how much the "other stuff" in a car weighs - the interior parts, air bags, masses of wiring, sound deadening materials, exhaust pipes where you generally want stainless steel to avoid rust from exposure to the elements, and yes, even the many layers of paint.

[Coito ergo sum]

[

Honestly, the car manufacturers could trivially reduce weight of most cars by 1000 lb, simply by replacing the steel with aluminum. It just makes the cars more expensive, that's all. Oh, and it makes them flammable at high enough temperatures - but still VW seems okay with making the firewall of the Lupo out of it.

Trivially? You overstate the simplicity. The vehicles become less safe and less able to withstand crash safety tests, for one thing.

Automakers have widely adopted aluminum where it makes sense; engine blocks and cylinder heads, for example, are rarely cast from iron these days except in trucks where maximum block strength is deemed more important than weight savings - and even those iron blocks are lighter and stronger than they used to be, thanks to new casting processes. Aluminum is becoming fairly common in suspension parts, especially in sporty cars where it's important to get unsprung weight down. But as a chassis component? Probably not anytime soon on any large scale. Safety issues aside, your "just makes the cars more expensive" would likely become "just prices the cars out of reach of most people", especially if the increase in demand for aluminum raised the price dramatically. I also think 1000 lbs is wishful thinking; some weight reduction from Al as already been done, as I mentioned, and you might be surprised at how much the "other stuff" in a car weighs - the interior parts, air bags, masses of wiring, sound deadening materials, exhaust pipes where you generally want stainless steel to avoid rust from exposure to the elements, and yes, even the many layers of paint.

Sure - I understand - but, aluminum is much more difficult to work with and you need much more of it to be as strong as steel. It's much more difficult to weld aluminum and takes a lot more energy in order to make the same welds. It's more complicated and more expensive to work with and to meet safety criteria it fucks with the basic design of most vehicles.

[drl2]

Sure - I understand - but, aluminum is much more difficult to work with and you need much more of it to be as strong as steel. It's much more difficult to weld aluminum and takes a lot more energy in order to make the same welds. It's more complicated and more expensive to work with and to meet safety criteria it fucks with the basic design of most vehicles.

You didn't need the "but" because I think was agreeing with you... which, I'll admit, makes me slightly uncomfortable.

[Warren Dew]

Plus, they are assuming "within the price budget consumers will pay". Let them

Let them? ...

Bit of a quote mine there, cutting off my quote in the middle of a phrase.

A 40% improvement? Yes, it makes a huge difference.

In what respect? Why? Just 'cuz? And, is it worth all the costs your suggesting? Raising gas taxes, increasing the cost of automobiles?

You're the one claiming a small increase in fuel prices "reverberates throughout the economy". Quite obviously, a 40% fuel efficiency improvement would exactly counteract a 40% fuel price increase, which is far from small. The benefits from fuel efficiency improvements reverberate through the economy as well.