2022 marked America’s most fuel-efficient year. For the first time ever, real-world fuel economy averages for cars on American roads reached 26 mpg. Yep, we’ve finally reached the kind of fuel economy I used to get driving a worn out 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan.
In fairness, it’s actually sort of impressive that we’ve gotten this high. Vehicles have gotten bigger, heavier, and more complex. Thomas’ piece has an illuminating chart of an estimate of nearly two-thirds of the vehicles sold in America having either four-wheel-drive or AWD. And it’s not just trucks causing the numbers to look goofy. An estimated 26.5 percent of cars had AWD this year, compared to just 0.9 percent back in 1980.
Adoptions of a variety of technologies are helping, from automakers putting some EVs on the road to transmissions with 7 gears or more. Anyway, leading EV reader Toecutter isn’t impressed:
If we drove vehicles comparable in size/mass to what we had in the 1990s and streamlined their aerodynamics to cut drag by roughly half, we’d easily be at 45+ mpg instead of 26 mpg. A Corvette C5 with an LS1 V8 can get 30 mpg cruising 70 mph on the highway, for comparison.
26 mpg in this context is kind of terrible.
Amusingly, Toecutter’s EV wizardry was mentioned earlier in the day, too. I asked you what would you have a coachbuilder do if you had just crazy money to spend on a vehicle. Cheap Bastard wouldn’t give his money to Rolls-Royce. Instead, he’d give Toecutter a mission:
Just for fun I’d hire Toecutter for the Sisyphean Task of making good on all those wild claims. I want a vehicle that has all the comforts, all the room, all the vroom and low NVH of a ultra luxury car with slippery styling and low weight to yield gazillions of mpg.
I’d also buy a 2nd gen Toyota Mirai and have it retrofitted with a CNG fired Camry hybrid drivetrain set up to use every @&$+℅∆ trick in the book to achieve maximum MPG. That way I could make good on my own, less wild claims.
Rootwyrm got a mention, too, from Jack Trade:
I’ll see your Toecutter, and raise you a hire Rootwyrm to create a best-ever Mopar vehicle using all possible available parts and systems.
Finally, we have Matt Sexton, who has a perfect way of describing the terribly small trunk lid of the Pontiac Grand Prix 2+2 from this morning’s Cold Start:
Christ almighty, that trunk lid fits like a saddle on a chicken.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Note: Enjoy your holiday, no matter if that holiday is Christmas or something else. You may have noticed that our schedule appears to be been scattershot for the past couple of days. Most of the staff have now turned off their screens and are spending time with their families. Jason’s still waiting for the RTV on his heart to cure while it appears David may have gotten sick. Fear not, for we’ll be recharging our batteries to give you stories next week!
I am on a mission to find a nice first gen. Honda Insight, almost bagged one a little over a week ago but moved too slowly. I agree with the comments that 26mpg is great, but if the majority of Americans didn’t think they needed six seats, 4wd, and a foot of ground clearance topped with another 6 foot of vehicle and 2.5 tons to commute to work in the burbs, but I don’t see it changing anytime soon.
Did you say chicken saddle?
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=chicken+saddle+for+hens
Happy holidays everyone, and to our sick friends, get well soon!
Slightly off topic, but as far as fuel efficiency goes, I’m trying to convince my dad’s friend to turn his first gen insight into a Sundae Cup time attack car. If he ever gets it done it’ll be hilarious to see a 70 year old guy that once held the absolute wheel driven piston powered land speed record making that little teardrop cry around a track.
K24 swap that thing. It won’t cry, it will scream!
Take it to the strip, and it might get into the 13s in the 1/4 mile.
Driven around town, it will still get 45-50 mpg.
The only issue with that is that if you k-swap it it won’t meet the Sundae Cup requirements. The most horsepower he could make and stay in that class would be roughly 72 or he would end up over the power to weight ratio limits. They require roughly 25 lbs per hp, so the class is almost exclusively populated with honda fits, and a couple random things like r50 minis.
He does want to drop an ls4 with a g6 manual in the back of one for land speed racing as the track width would stay the same and it would fit in the wheelbase.
Ending the year with a COTD! WOOHOO!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! Thank you for everything!
Also HAPPY FESTIVUS!!!
Hope David&Jason get better soon.
The best fuel economy of any pure ICE car sold today is the Mitsubishi Mirage, at 36 city, 43 highway. Cars today, due to increased safety regulations (mostly) are several hundred lbs heavier than a Geo Metro XFI or Honda CRX HF. I think that outside of the performance car realm, the pure ICE car will be dead within 10 years.
The Mitsubishi Mirage passed the FMVSS of its period, and wasn’t much heavier than my Triumph GT6(which is admittedly a total death trap). The modern Mazda Miata weigh about 2,300 lbs, which isn’t bad at all.
Feature reduction goes a long way to cutting weight. Part of what is driving weight is that virtually all new cars come fully loaded with crap that will mostly go unused, so that dealerships and manufacturers can make more profit and the upper 20% of the population that can actually afford these things can display their conspicuous consumption. This is in part why modern cars are so expensive.
If we could go back to a baseline set of features present in cars from the 1990s and early 2000s, I think it would fit most people’s needs without being an uncomfortable penalty box. Cars from that era were already plenty plush and comfortable to ride in, when compared to say, a 1960s little British car.
Having owned my own 1960s little British car I concur. Forget about A/C or power accessories that thing had no radio, no heater, no seatbelts, no roof and no windows. It also got about 25 mpg despite its ancient engine tech (even by 1960s standards) and terrible aerodynamics.
Before converting to electric, my GT6 could get about 30 mpg, with 1930s engine tech. That engine is about half as thermally efficient as a modern fuel-injected 4-cylinder.
15 years ago, I read of someone swapping in an EFI system into that straight-6 2.0L engine as an upgrade for their GT6 MkIII. The conversion necessitated some custom fabrication and mixing and matching parts from other cars. Their claim was that fuel economy increased to 55 mpg at a steady 60 mph on the highway, while 0-60 mph acceleration dropped to 5 seconds from the power increase.
“Their claim was that fuel economy increased to 55 mpg at a steady 60 mph on the highway, while 0-60 mph acceleration dropped to 5 seconds from the power increase.”
That’s quite a claim! Frankly though I’d have to see it to believe it (mostly the 0-60 time), unless you’re talking about something like swapping in a LS and hitting 5s 0-60 on all cylinders and 55 mpg on two.
OTOH a stock GT6 in perfect tune hitting 30 mpg on the highway is plausible.
I saw a GT6 with an LS1 swap at a car show 2 years ago. The owner claimed 11 second 1/4 mile times, and he could still get 30 mpg highway without any concern for things like speed limits. That sounds plausible, because a Corvette C5 using that engine with a similar CdA and significantly more mass gets 30 mpg at a steady 70 mph.
I think 55 mpg with a smaller, less-thirsty engine with modern tech is plausible in a stock-bodied GT6 at 60 mph. Bump that speed to 70 mph, and that same hypothetical configuration might only yield 45 mpg from the added wind resistance if it actually gets 55 mpg at 60 mph.
50 mpg at 70 mph is about what a K-swapped 1st generation Honda Insight will do. There are a few examples of K-swapped Insights on ecomodder.com where the owners kept track of their fuel economy. Due to the small frontal area, the GT6 is not very far off from a CdA standpoint compared to a 1st gen Insight and has roughly the same mass.
It’s possible the guy was in the UK, where the miles are the same length but the gallons are 160 fluid ounces vs 128 fluid ounces in the US.
I think that safety equipment is the factor that really drives up the weight, more than comfort features. I’ve recently rented a Hyundai i20 (or rather its local version, a HB20) in a developing country, and even though the car had almost no comfort features other than A/c and power steering and power windows for the front seats only, it still weighed over 2200 pounds, with a 1000cc 3 cylinder engine. And that is a compact car, slightly smaller than the Golf. You could probably shave off another 100 pounds by deleting the power steering and A/C, but I’m not sure if a lot of people would wanna buy such a car. At least in city traffic, it would be very uncomfortable.
I’m pretty sure my first generation xB weighed about 2500 pounds. That’s an impressive weight for something with four doors, cargo space and airbags. I’m not sure how much more weight it would gain on the road to being ‘refined,’ but it could have been a lot. I swear the thing was even made of thinner than normal steel.
Original FR-S/BRZ/GT86/GR86 weighed about 2700 pounds and felt like a real car.
Like the mirrors that rotate when parked to save literally no space!
Yeah, I think the late 90s were kind of the sweet spot of car development. You got some very reliable vehicles, decent power. Most everything had good HVAC, power windows and locks.
Didn’t know you had a GT6, I have a TR250. Funny thing is I feel fairly safe in it. I know objectively it is a deathtrap, but my first couple cars were AH Sprites. The big TR feels pretty substantial next to those and the Saab Sonett I had a few years back.
In the US which isn’t saying much. Go outside the US and you’ll find lots of ICE only cars that can best your Mirage. For example a few years ago I rented a diesel Volvo D40 in Sweden that averaged about 4L/100km over 1000 miles or so of driving. The gas VW Polo I rented a few years before used 4.9 to do the same trip.
Yes these do exist, I had a Renault 1.5 l diesel station wagon as a company car, and it did 4.5-5 l /100 km with a totally normal driving style, but you could get significantly below 4 liter when driving carefully. Impressive, but every small (up to 2 liters) diesel engine I’ve driven just lacks refinement. Sure you can get used to it and ignore it, but for me noise and comfort are important. While I don’t mind the sound of a big V8, little diesels sound horrible to me.
I thought the < 2L diesels in the Skoda Octavia and the Peugeot 2008 rentals I had in France were great. I was more perturbed by the lack of power windows in the back of the Peugeot than any NVH issues from under the hood.
That Peugeot made up for those backseat manual window cranks with built in GPS satnav to guide me through the beautiful but incomprehensible French country roads. THAT feature was night and day to someone like myself who doesn't read French well and can't keep up with the constantly changing road signs.
Correct me if I’m wrong but were those rentals with less than 20 thousand km? Because I do know the Skoda/Golf 2 l diesel very well, it was my second company car. The first 10-20000 km it was very quiet, but after that it started to sound and feel a lot more like an old diesel. I guess if you changed the motor mounts every 2 years or so, they would stay quiet and refined? I have been in a lot of diesels, I have yet to see a really refined 4 cyl diesel that isn’t brand new.
Dunno. They looked new and rental agencies tend not to keep cars for that long but being rentals they might have gotten a lot of miles in a short time.
I dunno how hard changing those motor mounts is but on my (gas) Mazda the most common one to fail is $25 and a 10-15 minute job with basic hand tools, hardly worth the hassle of making a warranty claim. If it’s not the motor mounts the fix to a shaky idle just might be to upgrade your brake lamps to LEDs. Seriously.
I don’t know if it’s just the motor mounts, but I’ve driven a number of older 4 cyl diesels, and they all felt so much worse than an equivalent gas engine. I know that some people don’t care at all about it, and some even love the semi truck-like noise and vibrations, but others (like me) find it enough of a deterrent to not even consider buying one.
Kind of a moot point anyway given the progress in fuel efficency gasoline engines have been making.
Or just get an EV. I hear those are the smoothest of all.
I like the diesel sound. My old 1.2 liter 3-cylinder has it.
But then 5th gen Renault Espace with 1.6 twin-turbo charged diesel hardly can hear having any engine on it. Winter morning I can get some nostalgia for a first minute or so.
Kinda sad that ICE cars still are barely besting my 42 mpg 12 year old Cruze. That car weighs 3000 lbs so it isn’t a tin can or buzz box on the highway. Even this winter on snow tires and a commute that’s horrible for fuel economy it’s still getting 38 mpg. In the summer that goes up 10% operating outside the EPA test regime.
To be fair, I drive my 4×4 tacoma like 2000-3000 miles a year because trail miles it gets like 10-12mpg. freeway miles, it gets like 17-20 if i draft behind a truck.
My every day car is a 2021 toyota venza, I get like 37mpg combined. 40 freeway.
America, being a car country, if more individuals had more room for a shit box “daily”, we’d probably have higher mpg numbers overall. Apartments, that have parking, usually only allot only a single parking spot per apartment regardless of rooms (if they even have parking spots). This intentional disparity makes people daily the only car they have which is usually going to be nicer than a shit box.
Cities, especially in states like California, that passed legislation that parking isn’t needed per housing unit is quite literally adding to this mpg-apocalypse.
The next part is poor people can’t afford new electric vehicles and hybrids let alone used ones.
It’s time to bring into the conversation about retrofitting cars with hybrid powerplants.
This is actually easier than it sounds.
For Transverse engines, a simple transmission-based MGU is all that’s necessary along with the battery and controller, for even more universal applications, Suzuki’s SVHS mild hybrid configuration with an ISG (integrated starter generator) that replaces the starter and alternator with a single unit could help a lot.
This could immensely help for Toyota’s older generation Camrys, especially since
In fact, for unibody vehicles like Minivans, CUVs, and even SUV class vehicles could benefit from hybridification. There are some other nuances for emissions like catalytic converter heaters, adding automatic start/stop. But studies done in the past for retrofit systems, at least on a mass produced scale, would definitely save mpgs across the board.
People with multiple parking spots rarely have a gas saver and a bigger car. Parking spots are clearly not the issue.
Retrofitting a different power train, be it electric, hybrid or whatever else, is a big and expensive job. Given that it would only make sense for older cars (let’s say at least 10 years), how can that make sense economically? You would have to invest 10-15k $ in a car that’s worth considerably less, just to save on fuel? Unless it would be done on a massive scale (like having entire factories that retrofit old Camrys by the thousands), it would never make sense.
26 mpg in a 2006 Caravan? Not buying it. My 2003 Caravan did maybe 20mpg highway with a tailwind. my 2008 Caravan with the 6spd auto delivered much better highway economy, routinely 23-24. I once achieved 25.5 hypermiling the snot out of it. 26 would be achievable but difficult in a 6spd caravan, but that’s not possible in a 4spd Caravan.
26 mpg was easy, driving a ’99 Caravan with a 2.4L I4/3AT at a steady 65 mph.
Okay I forgot they still made 4 cylinder caravans until 2007, I guess that explains it. My experience was with an ’03 3.3 4spd and an ’08 3.8 6spd.
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanza and happy New Year to all Autopians, staffers and readers alike. Thanks for many (too many) hours of entertainment and enlightenment. Look forward to more fun in ‘24. I’ll sign off with my favorite Carrol Shelby quote:
“I’ve always been asked, ‘What is my favorite car?’ and I’ve always said ‘The next one.’ “
Until the next one!
Happy (Pontiac) Solstice to those who observe.
I don’t know how much y’all know about how chickens operate, but one of the things roosters do, is jump on a hen’s back to mate, and their spurs pull out feathers and claw up the hen’s back.
Some backyard chicken owners solve this problem by not keeping a rooster. They are kind of a pain to deal with anyway.
But another solution is actually, chicken saddles for the hens, made of tough stuff that the roosters can’t stratch through.
Life is weird.
I know a Burmese python that absolutely loves chickens.
I’m betting he doesn’t look to see if they are wearing a saddle first either.
All due respect toecutter and rootwyr m would not be able to prove their claims.
Toecutter is famous for making ridiculous aerodynamic claims but the fact is that cars can be much more aerodynamic than they currently generally are, and that 100mpg in a four passenger sedan is absolutely practical. See VW XL1.
VW XL1 is a two-seater.
A four-seater gasoline ICE-powered car that can approach 100 mpg is the Edison VLC2. It weighed 800 lbs, was claimed by the builder to be able to pass FMVSS when it was built in 2011, could seat 4 adults, had a Cd value of 0.16, and using the engine from a Smart ForTwo, could achieve 89 MPG. Using a custom engine modified to run E85, it got 102 MPGe.
Another was the diesel-electric GM Precept midsized sedan. 2,600 lbs, 0.16 Cd, governed to 80 mph top speed, and could get 80 MPG EPA combined.
Others to consider that can seat 4 or 5 are the Dodge Intrepid ESX2 and Ford Prodigy, both of which got over 70 mpg, and both having Cd values under 0.2.
Yes the VW XL1 is a two seater, but I meant that the existence of a two seater getting above 200mpg implies the practicality of a four seater getting above 100mpg.
I think the Edison VLC2 is a perfect example of why a Cd of 0.16 is not ever gonna happen in a practical automobile: its a really weird barely four seat car with no storage space and separate wheels. That looks rather difficult to park, hard to maintain with those dorky suspension portal hubs things, and I wouldn’t really want to be seen in that thing.
I think that’s a perfect example of how the Honda Insight, Prius, Lucid, and Tesla have taken streamlining almost to the practical limit.
Also 89mpg is remarkably bad for a car like that considering somebody averaged 80mpg from New York to California in a tdi swapped Honda Insight that isn’t super weird. Even 102mpg suggests that that kind of extreme streamlining is good for a 20% improvement at best.
The Edison VLC2 was less about streamlining, and more about weight reduction(even if it was very streamlined, and its design did help reduce the area component of CdA). It was designed to keep weight down as much as possible while passing FMVSS. Its outboard wheels help form protective barriers in a crash.
The practical limit of streamlining for a 5-seater is probably somewhere below a Cd value of 0.15. Consider the GM Precept(0.16 Cd), Ford Probe V(0.137), Solectria Sunrise(0.17 Cd), Stella solar prototype(0.11 Cd), and GAC ENO.146(0.146 Cd). This would entail throwing the corporate styling zeitgeist dujour completely out the window, and planned obsolescence regarding body design along with it, along with the oversized wheels, oversized grilles, fake vents, and all of those stupid creases modern cars have for “styling”.
The 1st gen Insight had a 0.25 Cd value. The current gen Prius is at a 0.28, but the most slipperiest model was at a 0.24. The Lucid is at roughly 0.20. The Tesla Model 3 is at a 0.23 and Model S PLAID at 0.20.
If one really wanted to go all-out with the drag reduction, I think a Cd value of roughly 0.11 is doable for a road car with about 5″ ground clearance. It would look a lot like a space ship, and I think Citroen bringing back the DS or SM would be an excellent excuse to do this(that pneumatic suspension could give it an adjustable ride height, even).
I have a Milan SL velomobile with 2.9″ of ground clearance that has a Cd value of 0.08. It was designed by Dutch aerodynamicist Eggert Bulk.
Out of curiosity, how’s the pedestrian safety hood height/shape regulations affect the Cd? Cam you still hit an ultra-low Cd in a car that conforms to those regulations?
Are these creases really stupid though? Don’t they also serve a purpose other than be pleasing aesthetically? Don’t they add stability on large panels, thus allowing for the use of thinner (=lighter) steel (or aluminum)?
“and I wouldn’t really want to be seen in that thing.”
And if your only alternative was the bus?
That thing sounds a lot more comfortable and kinda roomy compared to the Messerschmitt KR200 my grandfather carted his three kids around in. Their alternative was the bus.
Motorcycles exist, and I would prefer that to the suppository.
Yes they do and you technically can get three kids on them. You might not want too though.
Citroen got 100mpg out of the five seat AX Diesel back in the eighties.
UK gallons though, so only 83US mpg.
If rootwyrm claims he can put something together, I can guarantee you he could prove it. That dude knows his shit, most especially regarding mopars, but is really experienced with all kinds of vehicles. Way more than me. Whereas I’m more of a hobbyist/tinkerer, I think rootwyrm has done this stuff for a living, for decades. While him and I may not agree about some things, his automotive knowledge probably exceeds that of anyone on this site(although I think David Tracy would give him a good run for the money).
My claims are based on math and upon prototype vehicles which others have built that serve as a guide to what is possible/plausible. The vehicles I’ve proposed here are all theoretical. My proposals aren’t baseless though, as I do have an engineering degree and am currently employed as an electrical engineer and thus have some grasp of what goes into building EVs.
With that said, I have built a one-seater that can exceed 100 miles per kWh at 30-35 mph, but that’s not a real car, blurring the lines between a bicycle, a motorcycle, and a microcar. It was designed as an “fuck you” to those trying to collect taxes and insurance money, by fitting the legal definition of a “bicycle” while retaining the functionality of a small car and costing almost nothing to operate. I’ve also converted ICE vehicles to electric including my own Triumph GT6, and have worked on a custom-built 1-seat 3-wheeled electric car(an actual car without a bicycle drivetrain) which I designed and a friend subsequently put it together/fabricated parts for it. All of these projects are in partial states of completion, and only 2 of them currently run.
Here’s some old pics:
https://imgur.com/
Triumph GT6 EV:
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Electric “bicycle”/microcar:
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The Minion:
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Use the above imgur link, and then put the character string at the end of it to see the pics. This way, I can post this without it being flagged as spam.
I really hope Autopian figures out a safe way to post pictures and video links.
That stuff really helps sometimes.
I meant no disrespect. But I meant it is unlikely a single person or shop could surpass the massive resources of an auto manufacturer if held to the same rules and regulations.