HI,
Imagine a Turbine-Electric hybrid. Turbine runs at maximum efficiency all the time, power goes into the battery.

Dan

I had both the '74 Civic and '76 Accord. My recollection is that the Civic was 1200 or 1300 cc and about the same number of pounds. The Accord was a 1600. Enjoyed both cars.

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Uh, no. Sorry, but aside from Europe and Canada (and neither have more stringent CRASH regulations, the most important ones in the US, rather than the pedestrian safety issues you are trying to represent with your above statement), no other area in the world has safety regulations as strict as the US. There's a very good reason why cars from China and India can't be sold here. There are numerous vehicles sold in Japan and Europe that are not allowed to be sold here due to safety regulations or lack of submitted vehicles to crash for testing. The US has the most stringent safety regulations, especially in regards to testing the vehicles. Each variation in vehicles in regards to engine and transmission, as well as various seating requirements, ALL must be tested for the vehicle to be certified as suitable for the US market.

Hybrids are selling over MSRP due to the fact that the factories making them are limited to how many they can produce. There isn't a hybrid line capable of supporting current demand, hence the increase in price (not to mention the limitations of supplies for producing the batteries, which is one of the other main limitations currently on hybrid vehicle production). It's not as if you can change a truck production line into a hybrid line in a day. The same can be said about the new Pontiac G8. It's selling at over MSRP too. It's not particularly fuel efficient, but the demand for it is more than the factory can currently produce. Does that mean that the demand for large, less fuel efficient vehicles is great across the board? Hardly.

No, you merely implied that the improvements should be large enough to matter. When you consider the amount of money that goes into doing such a retrofit, it doesn't. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars for the equipment and work necessary for this type of job. And improvement of 1-4 mpg is hardly the reason for these conversions, it's the ease of being able to drive it around day to day and not have to worry about setting points-style breakers and adjusting carb jets because it's 30 degrees one day and 60 the next.

I didn't say they COULDN'T do anything, as you seem to think I have. I've said two things: 1) it isn't what the public wants and 2) it's expensive! The American public wants all those creature comforts in their cars, or at least the major of them do. Why else does EVERY car company have these options on their cars? Sure, there are people out there that don't want all that stuff (I'm one of them! All my cars are manual transmission, my truck even has all manual locks and windows), but the majority of people want heated leather seats and DVD players in the back of every seat. These features add weight, they decrease fuel economy overall, and, the biggest parts, they put a lot of money into the car companies wallets. Which parts do you think is what a business finds most important?

As for your project, great. But once again, you seem to gloss over the fact that you don't have to submit your rear-engined car for crash testing, nor do you have to worry about various safety, emission, and warranty requirements that a car manufacturer has to. Car design isn't as simple as "Lets make this as fuel efficient as possible!" You have to take into account the fact that the car is suppose to last for 10 years or longer, whether or not it will withstand the abuse of being on public roads, and hundreds of other factors such as whether or not it will sell when you ship it to dealerships. It doesn't matter if I make a car that gets 80 mpg on the highway if it breaks down a week after the customer buys it. Or if it costs $1 million dollars. Of if it only sits 1 person and has no room for anything else. If it doesn't sell and make the company money, it isn't going to matter. Car companies are first and foremost businesses, and they are there to make MONEY. If they don't, they go out of business.

As for the automotive surveys, yes, I've done many of them. The last one I did was about 4 pages long. There was every possible question there, from tranmission types, to engine preferences, to fuel economy and options considerations. If you are trying to claim that they are limited and fuel economy isn't part of the questions, you are either lying outright or skipped over 2 pages worth of the survey. Either way, you clearly have no interest in doing anything other than misrepresenting the car companies as evil and part of some horrible gas conspiracy. With this, I'm done with this thread, as there is very little else for discussion in that regard. Oh, and don't try to play the "You must work for the evil car companies card." I work in computers. Cars are just a hobby for me.

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DOOM Master

And who said anything about Chinese and Indian cars being sold here? Those two countries are a special case, as the countries are more concerned with growing the economy than they are anything else. That's why you have so many coal miners dying in China, and lax emissions laws in India. When you look at the developed nations in Europe and Japan, the situation is a bit different. (Oh, and cars built in China are sold in the US. Jeep has exported Chinese built vehicles to the US for some time now.) "Lack of submitted vehicles" is a pretty key phrase. No point in submitting a vehicle if you don't think the profit margins are going to be large enough to justify the expense of testing a vehicle in the US. Many of the cars produced in Japan for the domestic market are far uglier than anything sold here, there's no point in bringing them to the US, since they won't sell.



The fact that demand for hybrids is vastly outstripping supply, should be a strong indicator that they'll sell.



Where? I said nothing about that. Never said it did. No kidding. Where did I say one should do it for the gas mileage improvements?



And you're wrong on both accounts. Hybrid sales are up as are the sales of alternative fueled vehicles. Nor, are the changes necessarily all that expensive. I seriously doubt that the idle cutoff module is going to be adding to it's cars will increase the price by a significant amount. Ford will also realize cost savings by using the same transmission in all its vehicles (or at least, all the ones equipped with automatic transmissions), since they'll no longer have to deal with so many different versions. Cutting your inventory costs by just a few percent is the same as increasing your sales profits by 10% or more. Because they're extremely cheap to install. A DVD player retails for $50, the wholesale cost is a few dollars. A car maker can slap a DVD player into for a few bucks and add a couple hundred dollars to the sale price of the vehicle. The cost of the electronics in vehicles passed the cost of steel in them some 10 years ago, and for domestic car makers, the largest expense in putting a car together is the labor costs. Of course, if you focus on short term goals, at the expense of long term goals, your time in business is probably going to be rather short.

And if these things are so onerous, why is Porsche still able to sell a rear engined car? Never said it was. Yes, and even with millions of dollars in customer research, car makers still turn out models that sell poorly. However, there is clearly a demand for such vehicles, and the car makers aren't putting forth as much effort as they could be towards meeting that demand. Nor do the car makers have the luxury of waiting around to do something about it. According to the head of Shell Oil, demand will outstrip supply by 2015.It should be noted that current estimates project the number of cars in China will equal the number of cars in the US at around that time. Presently, the Chinese government subsidises the price of gas so that it stays at $3/gal. That is just pushing demand up.

The ones I filled out were about 4 pages long (I think one may have been as long as 6), and didn't ask anything about fuel economy. They were about if I wanted more electronics in the car. I don't care if you think I'm a liar or not, I will note, however, I posted numerous cites in this thread backing up many of my positions, while you have posted none. Ha! I've said over and over that I think they're as lazy as every other company out there. I've said nothing about them being "evil" or part of a "conspiracy." You can try to paint me with that brush if you want, but it won't stick. Bye, and I work in the automotive industry and have for about the past 6 years.

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Dan

There is a lot of really cheap technology out there that can increase fuel efficiency. A few years back, I owned a HD Wide-Glide that had been modified (head-work by Dave Perewitz, steep street cam, among other things) and I wanted even more performance. The engine was normally aspirated through an S&S Super E racing carb, and I've always had a niggle with carbs that don't pick up and atomize fuel efficiently at low loads (low throttle means that the butterfly is throttled back). I installed a Doug Yost Power Tube (clover-shaped orifice on a pre-atomizer) above the main jet and re-jetted several thousands above the previous, and got VERY impressive torque throughout a much wider RPM range than previously, but also boosted my mileage from about 45 mpg to 50 mpg in two-up riding on weekend day-trips. That bike could run away from any stock Evo-powered Harley, and just sip gas on day-trips. You don't have to give up performance to get fuel economy.

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Hi, Interesting tuning tips. BTW: Is that new clover-shaped fuel jet easy to cleen,keep clean and set up? For the spectacular performance increase, it sounds like the next generation in tuning procedure.

Best regards, Dan