Flamboyant Key West is going green with hybrid taxis…not just any taxis, but the famous pink taxis! Five 6’s Taxi Company president Jan Doelman says the hybrid pink taxis “will reduce our emissions factor by 80%,” improving the existing pink fleets mileage from 12 mpg to 35 mpg.
Via: Freep.com
As a basic principle of fuel economy, smaller cars get better gas mileage. Engineering trends keep pushing the limits of the term ‘compact’ car while somehow keeping the interiors large enough to carry people. Unfortunately, the Prius won’t suffice for all drivers, and rightfully so. There are people in the United States who require space shuttle sized SUV’s and Titantic trucks, and nothing is going to change that in the immediate future. America runs on progress, and progress cannot happen without construction and high a high towing capacity. The next generation of GM trucks is attempting to bridge the gap between brute force, and environmental friendliness.
Enova Systems and IC Corporation have delivered a plug-in hybrid diesel electric bus to Denali National Park for use in carting visitors around the pristine wilderness.
The bus (similar to the one pictured above) has a GVWR of 27,500 pounds, carries up to 38 passengers and uses up to 70% less fuel than a similarly equipped conventional bus — so if the bus got 10 mpg with a conventional engine, it could get 30 mpg using Enova’s hybrid system.
There are lots of gas saver devices out there that claim to help you increase your car’s fuel economy. Most of them are of questionable effectiveness — to put it mildly — relying on such things as magnets, mini-tornadoes, and fuel tank pills. I’ve covered some of them in a previous post about potential fuel saving scams.
The sheer number of such questionable gas saving devices makes it difficult for the average person to distinguish the effectiveness of any single one of them. It also instills a general feeling of distrust that any of them could actually work.
Revetec, a little known company from the Gold Coast region of Australia, may be on to something huge: they’ve created an engine that is 50% smaller, 50% lighter, has 50% lower emissions and is cheaper to manufacture than a conventional internal combustion engine of the same horsepower. Oh yeah, did I mention that it doubles the fuel economy too.
What that means is a car like the 2007 Toyota Yaris, which is rated at 40 mpg on the highway, would get 80 mpg with a Revetec engine.
This isn’t some hoax… They have a prototype which has been attached to an actual vehicle and independently tested to substantiate their claims.
All these years, I’ve been doing the simple math of dividing the number of gallons used over a given number of miles driven, to determine how my car is doing on gas mileage.
Now come two professors from Duke University who say that may not be the accurate way to determine how efficient your car really is.
Image source: Wikipedia
There’s been talk about the VW 1L concept for years. Since VW built the original, fuel economy, safety, price, and release date has been speculated upon and argued about, and I’d finally stopped thinking it was ever going to happen. However, according to VW’s CEO, it should hit the market in 2010.
The VW 1L is so named because, in theory, it only consumes one liter of fuel per 100 kilometers traveled. For those of us in the US, this translates into about 235 MPG. Definitely far and above anything on the market currently. The concept, developed in 2002, actually got better fuel economy, scoring a sweet .89L/100km in VW testing. It’s likely to use more fuel in real world use, but with that kind of mileage in testing it’s unlikely that anyone would complain about an “unsatisfactory 200 MPG.”
What if the U.S. federal government raised fuel economy standards? How much further would your vehicle go on a gallon of gas?
The Sierra Club will show you with the MPG Calculator. Choose the make and model of your car, how many miles you drive per year and the average cost you pay for gas at the pump.
For example, I entered Volkswagen Jetta at 12,500 miles per year at $3/gallon. Click on the
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Preventative care is always better than going to the Emergency Room. That's an appropriate comment whether discussing personal health or car maintenance. Today we'd like to finish up our multi-part car care series by mentioning a few things we haven't hit on so far.
Rev up your engines! Today we'll start a series of tips that will run through different aspects of car care.
You've probably heard it before: check your tire pressure! Do you do it? How often? Properly inflated tires improve your gas mileage (conversely, if they are not inflated well, it reduces your mpg). You'll also reduce the wear and tear on your tires, helping them last longer. Oh, and did we mention it's safer, as
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