Amory Lovins makes his living studying energy use and efficiency. According to the physicist and cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute environmental think tank, the modern automobile uses just one percent of its energy to move its occupant hither and yon. The number is shockingly small, and it may point to big changes for future cars.
Lovins points out that a great deal of an automobile’s engine power does… nothing much. At idle, a car uses its fuel to power accessories and keep itself going. All of which take a friction-filled bite of its overall efficiency. In fact, Lovins reckons only about an eighth of a car’s fuel is burned to turn its wheels. Half of that simply heats up your tires and the air around the vehicle. When you depress the go-pedal, you’re using just six percent of your engine’s total output.
On average– we’re not talking about a Prius or Hummer here– less than 20% of the energy of gasoline is actually used to drive the wheels of the car. That means very little of the gas you bought moves you down the road. It’s like buying a twelve pack and taking one sip.
The numbers look absurd, but if you’ve been around cars long enough, you know they’re not completely ridiculous. You know not to touch the exhaust manifold after the engine’s been running. You know not to stand up in your buddy’s convertible. Combustion engines put out a lot of heat and the atmosphere is not nearly as pliable as it seemed when you were standing still. In every mechanical transaction, friction takes a vig.
Then there’s the weight. Basically, 75 percent of what your car’s doing is moving its own weight. Steel, glass and gas are heavy. The more weight you have to move, the more energy you need to overcome gravity and inertia.
It’s as tough to find fault with the physics as it is to accept the outcome. If you were getting one percent return on an investment, you’d move your money. If your employee worked five minutes a day, you’d hand him a box for his Happy Meal toys and mouse pad and change all the administrative passwords. And yet, we put up with one percent efficiency from our cars? Not for long. As the price of producing that single percentage point grows (in many senses), the pressure to improve our vehicles’ energy efficiency grows stronger.
Of course, physics is kind of nice ‘cause everything goes both ways. If three quarters of your fuel is spent on weight, shedding pounds gives you about a seven-fold energy return. Lower your drag and you can pick up some more. Fancy engines are another solution, but materials and design are where the really dramatic energy savings live.
For example, BMW has developed a process for mass-producing carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFP). CFP is up to 30 percent lighter than aluminum and 50 percent lighter than steel, without concession to strength. Although the cost of production and application currently relegates the technology to aeronautics and serious racing, new procedures have begun delivering the material to mainstream vehicles. OK, the M6 and M3 are not exactly what you’d call fleet cars, but it’s a start.
CFP is also easier to shape than its ferrous colleagues. Instead of pressing a hood and attaching hitches and hinges, a CFP hood can be extruded with all its doodads in place. Any manufacturer who could master mass production would see its vehicles’ number of parts– and related assembly time– plummet. CFP also offers designers the opportunity to use more complicated forms, to create shapes that can’t be [cost-effectively] hammered out of metal.
Reduced reliance on metal stamping would also lead to quicker refresh rates for styles, and more simultaneous choices. Seven different Scion TCs in the same model year. A WRX that screams I just graduated and one that whispers I was never here. Fins for some, no fins for others. Mass customization.
Greater control of vehicle design can also increase the slipperiness of vehicle, further improving efficiency and performance. Lovins believes a 66 mpg SUV is achievable, without compromising current space or driving dynamics. It could big, brutish, tow a small town and safer too boot. Americans can eat their cake and have it too.
Carbon fiber costs around $8.50 a pound, compared to $1 for the same amount of steel. Unless economies of scale can lower unit prices, it seems a hopeless mismatch. Think how much debate surrounds the commercial value of the current “hybrid premium.” If, however, you believe that oil will not dip below $70 a barrel, that global warming is not the liberal conspiracy that Mr. Limbaugh and his supporters suggest, or that a one percent return on your energy dollar is unacceptable, a little hike in sticker prices could represent a big bargain.
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Wow, great article. This is why to me energy should have an appropriate price tag. I currently pay more than $6 a gal. where I live. And that is what the price should be. This keeps a pressure on the consumers, who in turn pressure the manufacturers for more efficient cars. And how can we do that?
The first thing is take the exess wheight out of the cars! Simple physics. Man, cars have porked up in the past years. I can’t even consider a Civic a true economy car now. How heavy is that thing compared to a first generation Honda?
The next thing is drive less. Yup I love cars, I love driving on winding roads and going places. But I can’t stand bumper to bumper traffic on the same strip mall road everyday to work. I bike to work.
So we have to think about doing things differently. If not to save the planet, but to save the things we love doing. Like barreling down an empty street from time to time.
Are CFPs used for body panels only?
If so, weight savings would be negligible.
Also, big picture-wise, cars are massive because other cars are massive.
We could all be zooming around the city in go carts with lawn mower engines except that…. we’re not all zooming around the city in go carts.
increasing the efficiency of SUV’s without compromising certain characteristic qualities would be a wonderful achievement. imagine the possibilities of increasing the efficiency, without sacrificing performance, of a sports car! (e.g. 66mpg m3)
Just think of the energy we could save if we got rid of that pesky atmosphere.
“If you were getting one percent return on an investment, you’d move your money.”
At the risk of going OT I’ll simply note that that’s exactly the rate of return on our Social Security “investment”. Would that I could move mine.
Great article. Just got it listed on fark.com for later!
This is one of the more intelligent articles on TTAC in some time! Excellent! As car enthusiasts we have to think about this kind of stuff, along with all the things we usually cover here.
The problem is that size matters in the efficiency equation, both for engines and vehicles. Sure, smaller is better and more efficient, but the reality in America is that few people care about saving fuel, especially if it means driving around in something less commodious than a quartet or sextet of leather Barcaloungers. And what they’ll pay more for is more weight, padding and comfort, not exotic materials that make a vehicle more efficient.
A related issue is safety. While lightweight is good, a vehicle still needs to be strong enough to protect its occupants. While this can be done –as in the design of many race cars– I question how well it translates into practical designs for everyday vehicles that can be mass produced.
Virages’ post is right, though, we have to think about things differently.
It all comes down to that old notion of mutually assured destruction (remember that, cold war folks?) as ThriftyTechie touched on. I was just doing some refresher reading on the prisoners’ dilemma last night. Car weight is definitely something where every manufacturer has an incentive to make cars heavier, since they don’t want to be pegged as the people who build death traps. Further, the levels of NVH suppression even in entry-level vehicles these days is getting to be on par with late 80s/early 90s luxury cars. The thickness of the steel that helps with the door-closing “thunk” is now taken for granted (except for maybe Subaru, but I digress) ;D
Asking people to take a step back into lighter, presumably louder vehicles would give the impression of poor quality, and I doubt that people are really going to choose rational though and the greatest social benefit over their own self-interest. Car buying has been an emotional decision for a long, long time.
Last point: with mass adoption of lightweight materials, who’s to say that manufacturers won’t just use that to build even larger and more heavily contented vehicles? As long as people are willing to pay almost anything for fuel, I don’t see a mass adoption of this short of (gulp) government intervention or massive incentives for manufacturers.
What’s this about “energy should have an appropriate price tag?” I can’t think of any business selling things for less than they are worth.
There will be a manufactured oil shortage (peak oil hoax)–you can be sure of that. If oil was in as short supply as the chicken littles say, the smart money would be on hoarding. Now. BigOil wouldn’t be practically giving gas away at 2.25 a gallon if it would be worth $45 a gallon in the near future. But they WILL use excuses like hurricanes and the like to manufacture shortages.
Gasoline could probably cost $0.65 a gallon today. However, the bean counters figured out that a national average of somewhere in the $2 range will extract the most possible from the nation. Charge less and get less. Charge more and sell way less.
You can bet that if we all drive 70mpg fruit-powered gokarts that gasoline would hit $11/gal tomorrow so that the Man still gets as much of your paycheck as he can. He won’t starve you yet–you’re of no use to the Man if you’re dead.
That’s the only photo of a guy posing in front of his books where it looks like the books have actually been used. Maybe you’re on to something.
Great article!
I’m currently wrestling with a difficult decision: Lotus Elise or ‘vette? I’m glad that I’m covered either way :)
You’re treading on my Truthyness of why we aren’t building efficient cars.
On the issue of car weight and new technologies. The combination of the two could provide a virtuous circle. There is some potential but we are not there yet. CFPs are stronger and lighter than traditional steel parts. That is why we see them on race cars. And “look at me” cool shifter knobs.
Applying these new materials to cars can reduce the weight and at the same time allow the conservation of current safety standards. What’s more, over time when the average wheight of cars is reduced, there is less mass on the road for potential carnage. Less mass, less death, less consumption.
One caveat is as Ash78 points out is NVH. People want their cake and to eat it too. But this is a solvable problem too. There will be a learning curve to applying new materials to solve problems. But it will be better than before.
I don’t mean to quibble, but Light Crude closed at $61.22 and Brent Crude at $59.46 last night. A person would need to be pathologically pessimistic to believe that the prices are not or never will be below $70 a barrel. See CCNMoney.com. Nonetheless, great article. Lighter is better.
To further bring light to this lower-than-snake-****one percent figure…
We must also keep in mind that part of the inefficiency of the automobile is a derivative of the inefficiency of gasoline itself. Upon combustion (and the subsequent conversion of engery), approximately 70% of all the energy stored in gasoline is wasted as heat, leaving only 30% to be converted to mechanical energy.
So when you take a figure like: "…less than 20% of the energy of gasoline is actually used to drive the wheels of the car" it's important to remember that the 20% figure isn't in relation to the whole of the energy stored in gasoline, but in fact is actually applied to the 30% of the energy in gasoline that isn't immediately wasted upon combustion. This leaves us with an adjusted figure of a mere six percent of the energy in your gasoline actually being used to drive the wheels of your car, and this is why we have numbers as low as one percent.
1 percent eh?
So let me get this strait… you want to include the total mass of the vehicle as a loss?
So… What you are saying is that everything that is transported that is not my weight is a loss?
In essence you would need a completely weightless gasoline powered machine that transports ONLY ME to work. Should I just deposit the gasoline directly up my ass?
HEATHROI:
Lovins does, in fact, put up rather than shut up. He’s started a bunch of for-profit companies, including Hypercar (www.hypercar.com), a design firm for those interested in building more efficient vehicles. He, along with almost every major automotive manufacture, believes there’s greenbacks in the green movement.
ThriftyTechie:
BMW started with roofs, but just about anything made of steel or aluminum can be made from carbon reinforced plastics, along with a lot of things that can’t.
I have a formal background in automotive engineering. For my thesis I studied the gross waste of resources that a current vehicle operates with. These numbers above are not new to me, and it is sickening. One alternative that I studied was the use of ceramic materials throughout the vehicle. Ceramic materials would eliminate the losses due to heat and friction. Even if we still burnt dirty, finite gasoline, we would return at least 60% better fuel economy! Unlike a hybrid, this actually would return massive savings over the lifespan of the vehicle.
Lets face it, the standard steel “horse-less” carriage is about as developed as it can get. And the basics are not any different than they were 100 years ago. Without any revolutionary changes to the design and manufacturing approach, we can not go much further with the internal combustion engine.
It will take a company going outside of the box to develop a whole new approach to automotive construction and engineering to show just what can be done.
(Then that company will have to survive when the oil industry goes after them for building something that hurts their business, but thats a whole other conspiracy theory for another time.)
NICKNICK and HEATHROI, the reasoning for an “appropriate price tag” is a little bit more subtle than you might think. The price of energy should not just reflect the cost of pumping it out of the ground and distributing it (heck you guys are paying for it else where by funding a war), but it has associated costs. Even leaving out global warming in the equation, energy use has associated social costs. Local polution, traffic jams due to lack of public transportation.
You make acess to energy a little more difficult and people will think about what the real cost is about using it. So basically I will say the bad word here. I am talking about an energy tax, that can be used to encourage energy conservation and re-injected in to transportation infrastructure and research.
And by the way, as a public institution researcher, I don’t have much money to throw around. But yeah, I will try to tell the manufacturers what I want to drive with what I have in my pocket book.
I think people who enjoy paying $6 a gallon should ante up and pay $9, so that I can get my gas free. And if they feel I should pay $6, then they can pay $12 instead. That way it all works – they’re happy, and I’m happy. Win-win. ;P
As for the “huge American gas guzzler” thing (also being discussed with Expeditions) I have to say that big ol’ honkin’ Lexi, MBs, BMWs, et all dont get particularly better mpg than I get in my F150 – many actually get worse. Same with many sportscars …. but *that* is okay, as we all know. This guy doesn’t say anything new or anything an auto engineer doesn’t know – we all know you have to spend for gas to move the metal around you and to … uhhhhhhhh … break wind, but if we all just did the “need” thing (with needs being defined by some self-appointed autocratic elite) we may as well just all up and move to North Korea where the needs of the proletariat are defined as a few grains of rice, some bugs, and if you’re lucky a small wagon for transport, while the autocrats enjoy the Benz’s that you should not even be able to dream about, lest you die. Gotta love those who feel everyone else should live by their definitions. The world sure would be a great place if everyone would zip it and do precisely what I say, too. Uh huh.
New lighter weight materials, wether CFP or otherwise, will help increase vehicle efficiency. However, I do not forsee the opportunity for mass producing customized bodies because of this technology. Even if the material is more easily formed than steel, it will still need to be molded somehow. Building such a mold would still be costly and time consuming with all of the development and material costs associated with it.
Lighter may be better for fuel economy. However, lighter is NOT better for surviving getting hit.
Many will pay for the weight and the sense of security (even if it’s false).
Regarding the line:
It’s as tough to find fault with the physics as it is to accept the outcome. If you were getting one percent return on an investment, you’d move your money. If your employee worked five minutes a day, you’d hand him a box for his Happy Meal toys and mouse pad and change all the administrative passwords.
The above assumes there’s CURRENTLY a better investment. There’s not. There’s currently bad trade-offs. Replacing bad employees IS justified since there are other employees available. There’s NOTHING currently available that replaces current vehicles at anything near current costs.
Having said that – I wouldn’t doubt deisel electric drive cars will be common 50 years from now.
And yet, we put up with one percent efficiency from our cars?
I put up with horrible efficiency from halogen lamps at my desk because I can afford their superior light. Also, my cats like the halogens’ inefficient heat.
Increase electric rates (or taxes) by a factor of 10 to $1.50/Kw Hour, and I might change my behavior (and annoy my cats).
Lovins has been doing some interesting work for a long time. His technical numbers have thus far proven to be pretty good, but where he tends to get blue sky is in his projections of how fast the auto industry can transform itself.
Engineers like Lovins seem to see the world as a largely rationalistic calculation of costs and benefits. So back in the late 1990s, Lovins projected that Detroit would have embraced a whole range of major design changes by now . . . because it would have saved them lots of money. Well, Lovins may be right that this was the rational way to go, but that’s not at all what happened.
Entropy prevailed. Perhaps one reason why is that visionary engineers have very little power in Detroit.
Uh…
FIBERGLASS and ALUMINUM.
Just had to say it. We HAVE the materials to make light cars for relatively cheap. Even safety can be put in there, really. Here’s an interesting and relevant video on the Lotus Elise, while we are talking about lightness:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7072924456318931568&q=lotus+elise
Notice that the Elise was put together in a VERY short time. Carmakers can put out light cars quickly if they try, but most are wasting energy in various places in the development process. Aerodynamics should be a no brainer – we know how to make cars sleek, we just need to do it!
All this “carbon fibre” and “car of tomorrow” and “new tech” is missing the point that we have the ability RIGHT NOW to make better, more efficient cars.
excellent article, thanks!
Adamatari
Glad you brought up the Elise. That car could probably be retrofitted with a 90hp tdi and net 65+ mpg on that chassis. Of course, that would defy a lot of the purpose of the chassis design (sport), but the point stands that the technology does exist.
The Elise, or moreso the Prius, use pretty advanced aerodynamics to help achieve their respective goals, something that most cars forego in the name of style. Point being that if people would accept “ugly,” we could definitely eke a few more mpg from a given platform.
Hey, come to think about it, I would rather drive a Smart on the A-10 from Paris to LeMans, than drive a Ford Expedition on I-95 between DC and NYC. But I guess I do have a twisted sense of security.
Well said WaaaaHooo
A bit of hyperbole here that detracted from the main point:
Someone already mentioned that oil is below 70USD already, actually around 61.00 this morning.
And the last time I checked, 20% of a 12-pack is much more than a sip; more like 2 1/2 cans. Still not enough for me, but a vast improvement.
And really, are we so dim witted in the first place that we need to have 20% explained to us? That sounds a bit condescending which is very characteristic of a certain political mindset. Oh well…
This is all a bit ivorytowerish to me.
Virages, in Canada we have Smart cars.In the U.S. they call them golf carts.
You just have to see one trying to get around in 6 inches of snow,to understand how stupid it is to drive a Smart car.
Good to see that Amory Lovins is still doing his thing. Very nice, upbeat, calm article as befits the holiday season.
@ seldomawake:
Vette
We’ll get lighter, more efficient cars when it is economically advantageous, in the Adam Smith “Enlightened Self Interest model”, to do so.
Seems kinda obvious.
Or we’ll get them when we surrender our freedom and get our Ladas. Ask the average North Korean how he likes his car.
One percent is correct if you’re thinking only about your own meat moving. But as a famous engineer once said (will say?) “I canna change the laws of physics!”
There is plenty of weight savings potential in better design and newer materials, but many things do have to stay. There is a certain minimum needed to provide crashworthyness and weather protection. And federal regulations seem to add more weight every year. Crash standards, pedestrian protection, emission controls; it take s a dedicated design team to knit these needs together with something that will sell.
Another problem with carbon fiber: it doesn’t recycle. Steel is the most recycled resource people use. Its behavior in all conditions is well known, and it fails in predicatable ways. As far as I know nobody can take composites made of high strength fibers and epoxy and turn them into anything else but junk.
There is plenty of heat lost in internal combustion engines. Enthalpy Happens. But if you want a compact, cheap, reliable energy source, it’s going to be hot. You have to cram too much energy under the hood not to lose much to heat. Look at the storage potential of a gallon of gas compared to anything and it wins in all catagories.
Diesels go all out and extract as much as possible from that heat. Hybrids use a smaller hot gas engine and add in a little storage to offset the small motor.
More than anything else, I think a better driver knows how to drive any vehicle using less gas, and planning your day to shorten the route and minimize the miles results in overall better efficiency. Proper maintenance (especially tire pressure) results in improved milage and a car that runs longer before needed to be replaced. A car that does not need to be replaced uses less resources than creating one.
I want to see every car have a new metric on the dash: miles per gallon per person. Even four people in an expedition get 48 mpgpp. Encourage carpooling and large families.
Changing the fundamental design and construction (materials) of a car will have an impact not only on safety, but service and repair. BMW employed light(er) weight aluminum in the from sub frame of the new 3 series in order to maintain 50/50 weight ratio front to rear. I’m a little out of my expertise here, but I believe that the aluminum sub frame is bonded to the firewall. When damaged, the entire unit must be replaced because aluminum’s material properties will not allow it to be straightened more then a fraction of degree (or so). This requires many hours of training and a costly certification to do correctly. The Fords and Toyotas will not be happy to pay such a high price for the change.
What this creates is not an insurmountable engineering obstacle (certainly design will catch-up and bring the cost of repair down eventually). The issue is a large barrier to entry for these new materials. BWM started with the roof panel because it is not (very) structural and because the change benefited other performance attributes of the vehicle beyond fuel efficiency. The average sedan will not see those same benefits making the perceived “cost” of switching materials even higher.
The only way new materials will be brought to the automotive market is for them to be matured in another industry (planes – Boeing 787, for example). The materials, processes, and accessory service and support markets can evolve away from the economically “inefficient” auto industry.
Why is light always ‘unsafe’? I understand physics, but the idea is that the force (of the impact) has to ‘transfer’ somewhere. The large vs. small does not look good when the smaller object is somehow held stationary, therefore absorbing the entire force of impact.
However, cars in normal circumstances are NOT stationary. I have been in my share of accidents and most of them were myself in a small car hit by a large SUV or van. Here are 3 examples:
Chevy Blazer into side (90 degree) of Mazda Miata @ 25mph
Plymouth Voyager into rear of MGB @ 10mph
Buick Regal into rear of Honda Civic @ 15mph
A funny thing happpened in all of these ‘overmatched’ collisions. There was surprisingly little damage! Actually the larger vehicle in each instance had equivalent damage to the smaller vehicle. Here’s what happened: the excess force became motion. That’s right, the small car got ‘punted’ a little. No matter how grippy your tires are they will lose grip the minute a larger vehicle smacks your ride.
Granted, a head-on collision would effectively have planted the smaller car and the results would have been much worse. But most accidents aren’t head-on collisions, and NO vehicle does very well in those anyway, large or small.
insightOwner: I was with you right up until “large families”. How does moving more people more efficiently save energy?
Insight does make some valid points if we all practised good driving and planing,the impact would be huge.
Even older, large well maintained vehicles can get good fuel economy if you drive em right.
ihatetrees:
December 12th, 2006 at 11:11 am
Lighter may be better for fuel economy. However, lighter is NOT better for surviving getting hit.
Well, that’s not really true. Kinetic energy goes as mass, so if you hit something in a lighter car the chassis has less energy to dissipate, same for the something that was hit.
As for BEING hit, a lighter car can devote more of its weight for safety structures. Imagine a carbon fiber based car that weighs 50% that of a steel car, say 2000 lbs instead of 4000 lbs. Carbon fiber is both stronger and lighter than steel. The carbon fiber car can easily afford to tack on more structural parts devoted to safety (i.e. crush members, etc) due to the much lower weight. Say, another 200 lbs worth. It can now still have a smaller engine, better efficiency, and have more of its structure devoted to handling impacts than the steel car, making it safer.
So, in general: yes, lighter is less safe if you’re comparing within the same type of construction material but not if you’re using modern materials (i.e. carbon fiber and composites) that are both stronger and lighter than the benchmark, steel.
This argument is actually laid out by Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute in their Hypercar publications in far greater detail and with more persuasion than I can muster at the moment.
rodster
I don’t remember all the fancy physics terms for it all (it’s been over 10 years since HS), but the rate at which the small vehicle changes direction or speed in an accident is a function of it’s inertia/momentum. Basically if a really small car gets t-boned by a larger one, the small car driver’s body is subject to a high g-force when the small car is quickly jolted aside. Assuming no intrustion, the real damage is the internal organs colliding against the skeleton–especially the brain against the skull. A larger car does not experience the same G-forces in the jolt becase more of its inertia is initially transfered to the smaller vehicle before it moves.
That made sense in my head.
Great article. Thanks for challenging us to think differently about a serious issue. The level of hostility in some of the postings above just illustrates how uncomfortable some folks are with that challenge.
Musings, such as Amory’s, inevitably get picked up by politicians who use them as a basis to “call for” increasing the corporate average fuel efficiency regulations. In doing so, they always overlook the cost of achieving their demands. Physicists and politicians get by with this game but engineers and businessmen can’t. Aside from pious idealists of the Prius persuasion, most consumers won’t fall for a scheme where the additional capital cost of a car far outweighs the operating savings over the car’s expected lifetime.
linnta08: If everybody is going in the same direction, why not carpool? Since the car gets basically the same milage with one or four people, you can quadruple the efficiency by getting three friends to go along. It’s even better if they supply gas money and/or donuts. mmmm donuts.
Weight is an issue, but CFP is not the panacea. First off, it’s made from petrochemicals (oil) which could otherwise be in your gas tank. Second, carbon fiber composites fail catastrophically, unlike metals which fail gradually. This is why carbon fiber wheels aren’t street legal. CFP body panels are OK but CFP structural members could be a major problem.
The other issue is that the mass market does not care about weight, it cares about NVH. Case in point the Citroen AX, extremely lightweight construction, praised by car magazines for its handling and trashed by everyone else for being tinny and flimsy.
Finally, one of the main reasons why Europeans like diesels is because they can illegally run them on tax-free agricultural and industrial fuel (red diesel).
Is Amory Lovins related to Borat?
Basically if a really small car gets t-boned by a larger one, the small car driver’s body is subject to a high g-force when the small car is quickly jolted aside. Assuming no intrustion, the real damage is the internal organs colliding against the skeleton–especially the brain against the skull.
So that explains my current mental state…
What is interesting is that in the world of sport bikes and touring bikes, weight is consistently thought of as the enemy (we’ll skip the Harley’s and their clones, that is sort of an industry involved with building ever greater variations of ‘66 396 Chevelles). Thus, a new Kawasaki sport tourer has 180 hp in a 580 lb. bike. Most of the new 600cc sport bikes have about 130 hp for less than 370 lbs. In bikes the pursuit of lightness is an accepted part of being on the cutting edge. But, in automobiles weight is something that is accepted, just add a bit more torque/hp to get it moving.
The easiest way to increase gas mileage/speed in a vehicle is to reduce the weight. But try to get that philosophy through the insurance companies and legislators. The combination of those two (along with your friendly local litigators) conspire to inhibit light vehicles. Add those forces to folks’ natural tendencies towards wanting large private spaces, and, voila, large heavy vehicles everywhere I look. Just don’t hit me when I go past you on my 45 mpg 130 mph bike.
to borrow a phrase from the baker/hamilton iraq study group, what we apparently have here is something of a ‘new way forward.’
i like it.
anything that will get us to stop doing things like we did, and start doing things like we should, is fine with me.
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Is Amory Lovins related to Borat?
I is very excite about fool efficiensee!