In Development: Detroit Diesel

So far American car manufacturers have been hesitant to adopt diesel for small cars. That might start to change as technology for clean diesel improves, the US continues to set high fleet standards for MPG, and the efficiency of diesel can sometimes far outdo that of petrol.

GM is planning to bring diesel into the US by having a diesel version of it's Chevrolet Cruze. It's rumored to be capable of 50 MPG and might hit showrooms in 2013.

EPA looks at your fuel use

If you go to www.FuelEconomy.gov you can get a personalized report on your own fuel use, compare government MPG ratings to personal reports, and even look at estimates for your carbon impact and petrol consumption. It's pretty neat. I especially like the crowdsourcing opportunities to compare mileage to individual reports. There are some kinks to be worked out (it says my car is a subcompact right now, maybe subcompact for a boat).

 

More importantly by 2013 all new cars will expected to come with this label which which shows average MPG in especially large lettering along with a quick EPA snapshot, average money spent on fuel, and how your car ranks on all these things. Kind of like calories on menus I wonder whether this kind of enforced labelling actually results in lower consumption.

2012 Mustang's Dials

Simple, elegant. Almost art deco. Interior lighting can make them blue and more modern looking if that's your thing.

 

Test drove an SS Camaro and a Mustang GT a few weeks back. More to come, but this camaro-lover really dug the Mustang's design style.

Cold Weather and Hard Facts

It's time for some cold weather driving. Break out your snow tires, flip on your AWD, and remember to steer into the spin. The Canton Daily Ledger answers several car myths about oil changes, work from the dealership, and even washing your car with dishwashing soap. However, my favorite is this cold weather classic:

- Myth: My car engine needs to warm up before driving.

During winter months, it is a common practice for drivers to warm their vehicles up inside, but a cold engine will warm up faster when it is being driven instead of idling. If you use your car infrequently, take a few minutes to warm up your car before you drive away. This allows cold, thick oil to warm up, protecting your engine from damage. For cold weather starts, all you need is 30 seconds to ensure proper oil flow and lubrication. In the event of frigid temperatures, driving at a slower speed for a few miles will give your car enough time to warm up.

I'm not saying we trust all our car advice to some yahoo who lives in Illinois (Junior Damato, the Talking Cars columnist) but I wish my neighbors would read his advice. Because I'm sick of hearing their "pimped out", muffler tuned little POS car idling and being revved up for 30-40 minutes every night usually while I'm trying to enjoy dinner or even better while I'm trying to sleep. It doesn't even sound like a proper car. It sounds like someone's mowing their lawn, but then irritatingly revving their lawnmower, and of course it's obnoxious noise is also likely tuned to carry some distance so it's a really loud lawnmower.

It's great they take their car seriously, and it appears they race other vehicles of theirs (which must be how they pay the mortgage since none of them ever seem to leave to go to work, coke dealer also comes to mind). I'm not a specifically automotive engineer, but it's my understanding engine idle is one of the most wearing portions of an engine's life. An engine wants to be in cruise speed. It does make me wonder why so many aircraft engines require such extensive warm-up periods in comparison, but honestly it doesn't get that cold where I'm at, and they don't even drive it anywhere afterwards. Automative engines are pretty hardy stuff. So stop idling your lawnmower all night. Thanks.

S is for Saturday and Sleek

Tesla Motors plans to release it's luxury electric Model S sometime in 2012. On the outside it looks a lot like you might expect for a luxury sedan. It's got the smooth curves you'd expect to see in a current model luxury sedan, not unlike the designs that are going into a new Infinity or Cadillac. Unlike Tesla's other famous model, the Roadster which was built from a Lotus skeleton, this body chassis is an original design. Given how expensive the technology for a a decent range all electric vehicle is it makes sense Tesla would be pursuing a luxury model meant to compete with the BMWs and Audis of the world.

 

But despite its very aesthetically pleasing exterior and typically plush looking interiors this remains an interesting car in that they are advertising it will be able to travel 145, 230, or 300 miles on a single 45 minute charge depending on which battery pack you purchase. As someone who fills up about every 300 miles that is getting impressively towards normal consumer use. And you don't even have to go to the gas station, you can plug in at home. Unfortunately for now this sort of thing is going to be out of reach from the typical consumer. I've seen in the mid-50s for pricing which is of course more expensive than the mid-30s you could probably spend on an otherwise similar petroleum fueled internal combustion powered sedan. But for now, the engineering is impressive. Stop by ElectroVelocity for some interesting videos on the design and technology that went into the Model S.

You and the captain make it happen

Pilot Captain John Cox answers reader questions about commercial aviation: including, what happens when both your jet engines lose power? Why burn excess fuel via drag so the plane can be under "max landing weight"?

 

And what's this, GM going to get in on the US diesel car market? They'll probably bring over one of the diesel cars they're already selling in the European market. Seems like there's going to be a lot more diesel in our future.

That design is nuts!

First go read this very funny rant on how car companies overdesign their cars, or: no more clever gizmos please. I'm sympathetic as having seen some of the new cars out are clever enough to tell you your instaneous gas mileage, how many miles you can continue driving on your tank, but then they put the cup holder directly behind the shift stick. I guess those of us who still drive a manual aren't taken into account because how am I supposed to feed my coffee habit when I'd be knocking it over with my elbow every time I change gears. Or I could hold it, you know, if it didn't take two hands to drive a stick.

Then watch this clever (or not?) new development for engines, a nutating disk from AFRL. The disk appears to be able to perform both the compression and ignition cycles of a typical engine piston in a single stroke. They talk up the goal of this as being to save weight for UAVs. But whenever they talk about something being application specific for UAVs, it's probably because it lacks in other arenas. Perhaps it's not as hearty, not as powerful, or maybe not as reliable. Neat looking concept though.

Cruze's New Oil Pump: Brilliant or Imbecilic?

Chevrolet has been trying to roll out the Chevy Volt; supposed MPG master of the road. Meanwhile it's sneaking out another contender in the fuel efficienct category: the Chevrolet Cruze. Gets great gas mileage (purported 40 mpg highway), looks cute (sort of like a civic), and so far looks nice and classy on the inside. Seems like Chevy is finally learning from Ford you need to have nice interiors to entice people. But more on that later.

 

Chevrolet is bragging about their new variable displacement oil pump. Most auto oil pumps use engine rpm to drive them and feed necessary oil to all the moving metal-on-metal parts in your engine. This could potentially mean you'd end up, at times, with the engine driving your oil pump higher than it needs to be for moments when you don't need to feed a lot of oil into your car. The idea with this pump is the oil pressure pushes the housing against a spring that when the oil pressure tries to go to a higher pressure than that of the spring it can't, reduces the displacement, and therefore reduces the oil pressure.

 

This isn't too much different from a standard oil pump where oil pressure increases with engine rpm. But in this case, load also has an affect thereby reducing oil efficiency even further. And by spending less of the engine power driving the pump, slight increase in mpg. However, to get this tradeoff is greater complexity. True, it's still hydraulically driven, but now requires nine spring-loaded vanes instead of just bypassing the excess oil like your typical oil pump.

 

Then again, it's not entirely new either. VW and Audi have been running similar designs for a while now, granted not on your "average" car like a Chevy Cruze. So, will it be a smart decision or a stupid one?

Oh is that all

A University of Michigan researcher, John DeCicco, says we can triple our fuel economy in 25 years. How, you might ask, is such a wondrous thing possible?

He finds that the solution is in our garages if Americans shift gears in terms of priorities.

---

Reaching such a horizon would entail cultural change in a gearhead world attuned to nuances of power performance. DeCicco identifies emerging trends for what he dubs "efficiency compatible" design strategies, enticing buyers away from brute force and toward smart technologies, intelligent safety features and svelte styling. Amenities like Bluetooth hookups, communication bandwidth and other information technology enhance customer value with minimal demands on power.

Oh is that all. Rather than develop new technologies, we'll just convince the American consumer they need less horsepower. Yeah that'll be easy. I guess DeCicco doesn't know; you can't lead a horse to water.

Greener than thou

There's a new Swiss report talking about battery powered hybrid vehicles. Apparently the actual supply of the metal and the power to process that metal is what costs the most. Extracting the lithium, and transporting materials, is not as significant a contributor. The Register reports that the study indicated an efficient diesel car would do less environmental damage than a battery powered hybrid, but you have to dig for that tidbit.

 

Most of the report is spent describing the environmental impact of manufacturing and transporting batteries, and how (naturally) batteries made from recycled materials or using hydropower to process rather than coal have a lower environmental impact (duh!). But here's the clincher:

A break even analysis shows that an ICEV would need to consume less than 3.9 L/100km to cause lower CED than a BEV or less than 2.6 L/100km to cause a lower EI99 H/A score. Consumptions in this range are achieved by some small and very efficient diesel ICEVs, for example, from Ford and Volkswagen (13, 39).

That's 78 and 90 mpg respectively for those of us in the states. As for the models the study mentions I'm not sure. Looks like Volkswagen has a 1.6L diesel TDI Golf that comes in around 80ish mpg highway available in Europe. But that's at the top end, using only a particular technology of theirs. Yeah it's there, and it's around the corner, but that's the efficiency necessary to beat a battery right now. Because even with not fantastic mileage, you're still getting less CO2 emissions. And we're not seeing those kinds of mpg numbers in the states anytime soon. Not to mention when it looked like diesels were coming over here in droves just not seeing that either. I guess Prius owners like to feel high and mighty about their choice just as much as non-Prius owners like to use battery manufacturing and disposal as excuses they are still doing the right thing. When in fact, best I can determine from the city, disposal between a hybrid with a lithium battery vs a "normal" car had near the same environmental impact. That could also be Europe's recycling requirements coming into play.

 

Still, both the report and the article (and the recent Cash for Clunkers bit of pork legislation) fail to get the obvious. It's generally environmentally friendlier to keep driving your old clunker around, even if it gets terrible gas mileage. The cost to manufacture a new car is no small thing. Buying new cars creates demand for more new cars. Even if these new cars use less petrol, you're often better off keeping your car a few more years, if being environmentally friendly is what's important to you.

Mystery Science Car Manual

I was looking for some information and stumbled upon the surprising fact that Chevrolet has all its car manuals for its latest cars online in easy PDF format. Of course, being able to find scanned car manuals is nothing new. But having the official ones all on an easy to access page is pretty nifty. So I was leafing through and just had to laugh. Here's why.

What's up with this "safety" mechanism? How am I supposed to keep my kidnap victims in my car? Or more importantly, how effective is my trunk as a zombie catching device when the zombie can just open the trunk and get the heck outta there?

I assume this means we should anchor babies in car seats so they don't float away. That or training our kids early to be sailors when we run out of oil and can't drive around in cars anymore.

In the US we have air bags. In Canada and Mexico, you just hold a beach ball on your lap. It's probably just as effective. That or they were too lazy to figure out how to spell "air bag" in Spanish or French. Or possibly the translation of air bag is something disgusting in one of those languages. Anyways, why complain when hanging out in your car is like a day at the beach!

This is pretty good. Not only does this car have some powerful ultrasound or see-through device that can clearly see your fetus but apparently it's really darned uncomfortable to drive when your pregnant. Look how unhappy that woman looks. Motion vibes are coming off her back she's so uncomfortable. The auto manual also reminds us, like the airplanes, that the best way to protect your kids is to save your own life first.

Maybe this is a clever graph for the BP oil spill. Or a new mode of transportation.

"You can lose control of the vehicle if you try"... to sleep while driving. Also not recommended. Or maybe she passed out from the jolting experience of adjusting her seat too fast.

I hope helpless adults doesn't include Project Engineers. Because they're pretty helpless. But I still reserve the right to leave them in my car if necessary. Since clearly locking them in the trunk won't work.