7 ms·

Or maybe we abolish nonsensical, contrary requirements? Whoever actaully believed the fuel consumption figures is a fool. You cant have a 1,5t of a car and exp

• mpweiher 11y ago
  I actually drove my Golf TDI at around the level of 5l/100km in Berlin for many years. Carefully. My girlfriend's Polo is significantly below that. Of course, these cars aren't ton and a half, but more around a ton.
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    • mpweiher 11y ago
      Yeah, I checked for the Polo, empty weight appears to be 1050 kg. The Golf TDI was a '96, so given the trends I expect it to be roughly similar. The original Golf I was under a ton.
    • trymas 11y ago
      I agree that cars are very heavy now, though, usually there are few 'types' of car weight. I do not know which where is used. Usually there are 2 weights: unladen weight and maximum weight. I've heard about some third weight which is between the unladen and maximum weights, something like a car's weight with full tank and a driver, but don't quote me on this. Probably you have the maximum weight listed. My Skoda Fabia (Audi Q3 equivalent) has maximum weight of 1680kg and unladen weight of 1200kg. I refuse to believe that VW Up is heavier than the Skoda Fabia. AFAIK, minivans have quite big weight on their papers, but empty minivan can't weigh 3000kg, which is only possible if it's loaded.
      • codfrantic 11y ago
        He's probably talking about a hybrid e-Up. which is around 1200 kg because of the battery and electric motor tech, The normal Up Weighs around 850 kg.
    • paganel 11y ago
      > Audi Q5, Audi Q3 and VW Up Apart from Up, the other two models you listed are for the above-average-middle-class-people, so to speak, at least in Europe. Most of the car-owners in Europe drive hatchbacks like Opel Corsa (average weight 1200 kg) or Skoda Fabia (average weight 1100 kg).
    • Roboprog 11y ago
      And how. My old '89 Chevy S-10 weighed just over 1700 pounds (770 kg) empty. At 55 MPH (90 kph) on the freeway (back when that was still the limit), it got about 30 MPG (13 km/l / 7.7l/100km). OK, not great mileage, but what do you want for 80s US car tech :-) For safety reasons, or whatever, they don't make mini trucks in the US any more. I did a double take on a new Dodge "Dakota" in the store parking lot the other day. It looked just like a full size pickup as far as I could see.
      • kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
        It wasn't for safety. Compact trucks have too small of a footprint to get away with the CAFE requirements for their size so manufacturers either supersize them (Dakota) or eliminate them altogether (Ranger).
    • lgieron 11y ago
      Audi Q5 weights 1850 kg according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_Q5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_Q5), although this obviously depends on the engine. 2470 kg looks more like maximum allowed weight of car + passengers + cargo.
    • ptaipale 11y ago
      Those are total weights, loaded. The cars themselves have less weight. These numbers are for our country variants: VW Up!: curb weight 920 kg, max total weight 1290 kg. Audi Q3: curb weight 1460 kg, max total weight 1980 kg. Audi Q5: curb weight 1935 kg, max total weight 2460 kg. So, modern passengers are very heavy...
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  • trymas 11y ago
    Yup. Diesel cars can pull of 5l/100km quite easily (even VW Passat from 1998 can do that). My diesel Skoda Fabia consumes 4.6l/100km at 90kmh in highway. If conditions are not terrible, I hover around 5l/100km on average in mixed conditions (city and highway). Though few major traffic jams can ruin statistics pretty badly. Also in winter average is about 5.6l/100km. Maybe /user/emp_zealoth had petrol cars in mind? I've not personally seen a petrol (non hybrid) car consuming less than 7l/100km and when I had one it was 10l/100km (8 if I was lucky) and it was small Peugeot 306. To rant even more.. IMHO, those fuel consumption tests are a total fraud. Look at new diesel sedans, local dealer declares that huge VW Passat TDI uses 4l/100km, or Skoda Octavia TDI (GreenLine or something) uses 3.1l/100km. Maybe it's true when you're driving at 90km/h with wind blowing in your tail and slight downhill.
    • mpweiher 11y ago
      You forgot the bicycle tires. :-)
    • emp_zealoth 11y ago
      Yes, i was talking about gasoline ones, diesels can and do get lower fuel consumption
• silon7 11y ago
  It's achievable with a diesel and not too-heavy foot easily (possibly with some extra NOx ;-)
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• MrRadar 11y ago
  My Chevrolet Sonic (with a 1.4L turbocharged gasoline engine and a curb weight of around 1.4 US tons or 1.5 metric tons) gets 42-ish MPG (5.6 L/100 km) during the summer and my driving conditions aren't even ideal (half my commute is highway speeds with stoplights). A Toyota Prius (Auris) could probably get more than 50 MPG (less than 4.7 L/100 km) on the same route.
  • gamblor956 11y ago
    A larger part of fuel consumption is driving behavior. My Ford Fusion (non-hybrid) only gets about 15 mpg in city/rush-hour driving because I drive very aggressively...but nearly 40 mpg on the freeway using cruise control (set to 75-80mph).
• morsch 11y ago
  The requirement was to incentivise more efficient cars. Manufacturers just decided to ignore the requirement and lie about it instead. Customers decided to believe them. Cars keep getting bigger and heavier. The current Golf -- nominally a compact car -- is half a meter longer (at least 4.25m) than the first one and half a ton heavier (at least 1.2t).
• rtpg 11y ago
  Well sorry for being a fool then. It's impossible to investigate everything about every part of our lives, and personally I feel a bit cheated by these revelations. I think most people are aware there could be cheating, but not on the scale being claimed. I don't think it's unreasonable to have placed a bit of trust in the number.
  • 001sky 11y ago
    that's no excuse, its basically ignorance. not personal critique, but still lots of people follow blindly things they don't understand.
    • dtparr 11y ago
      Of course they do. People have limited time and energy and can't possibly be expected to have a good enough understanding of everything they touch in their daily lives to be able to "understand" them well enough to have sufficiently calibrated bullshit detectors for them all. Maybe you're an expert in ICEs and this was obvious to you. Would you notice if your cell phone charger was actually pulling 10 amps out of the wall instead of the 1 it was rated for? What about if your non-GMO strawberries were actually created in a lab? Your organic beef injected with hormones? The whole point of having these standards is so that consumers can rely on them and don't have to independently analyze everything they buy themselves.
      • 001sky 11y ago
        They didn't call those bands "rage against the machine" and "public enemy" for nuthin now did they? I mean, in all seriousness, why be so serious? Simple points need to be understood, not simply dismissed out of hand. In theory everything the government or your employer tells you is true. In reality, they have alot to gain from asymetric information distribution, both in terms of negotiating financial outcomes but also in terms of maintaining their political power base.
        • mfringel 11y ago
• snowwrestler 11y ago
  Comparing to known fuel effiencies of existing vehicles competely misses the point, which is to stimulate new technology development. For example, aluminum and plastic car body pieces, which reduce weight. If you want to talk about "believable," start from basic physics and calculate the best possible fuel efficiency that a car could be expected to deliver. Even taking into account available materials, fuels, and engines, the answer is way better than what regulations currently require. A lot of the expected gains will come from taking known "custom" solutions and scaling them up to mass market--like greater use of aluminum, and ultimately, composites.
• anthony_d 11y ago
  I've got an 2016 Audi A4. Audi claims 22mpg city, 32mpg highway and 26mpg combined. What I see is 24mpg city, 31mpg highway and 26mpg combined; I don't drive especially slow either. FWIW, I factory ordered a manual transmission so that may make a difference. I'm skeptical of cars that claim crazy high MPG ratings and performance cars claiming good MPG numbers, but for a standard car I do expect the numbers to be achievable. I've gone through a lot of cars over the years and I've gotten very close to the published numbers on all but one (Cadillac CTS).
  • switch007 11y ago
    Those numbers (37.2 miles per imperial gallon) are in the 3.0 TDI territory for Audi in the British(/EU?) market. Many would be disappointed with 37.2 highway for any 2.0 diesel engine: look at the 'Real MPG Avg' column at http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/audi/a4-b8-2008 http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/audi/a4-b8-2008
    • anthony_d 11y ago
      I don't think they're especially good or bad, my point was just that they are almost exactly what Audi claimed. After the VW news I'm rather happy I went with petrol. Actually I never gave diesel a thought because Audi doesn't sell A3 or A4 diesels in the US (at least dealers don't have them and the website doesn't show them).
  • david-given 11y ago
    (You need to specify whether you're US or UK. Different gallon sizes! It makes US MPG ratings seem significantly worse than UK ones.)
    • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      And those darn Europeans measure it in liters-per-100-kilometer, just to make it worse!
    • anthony_d 11y ago
      Yeah, I always forget about that. I'm in the US so I'm allowed to forget about the rest of the world, right?
• gambiting 11y ago
  My 2013 Qashqai 1.6dCi 4x4 weighs exactly 1630kg and uses between 5-6 litres of diesel for every 100km traveled, depending how aggressively I drive it. And no, that's not the value from the car's computer, that's an actual usage.
• dmoo 11y ago
  Just one bit of evidence to the contrary. I have filled the 70 litre tank in a 1.6tdi VW Passat and driven 1400 km with 5 occupants and luggage. This was mainly European motorway driving.
• vonmoltke 11y ago
  > You cant have a 1,5t of a car and expect it to use only 5l/100km So you are telling me that my actual, measured fuel consumption numbers of 4.25l/100km on flat highways in the US South are impossible? I have a diesel Passat (yes, one of the NOx Boxes :P) and can get from Dallas, TX to Pensacola, FL (650 mi) without refueling and with a decent reserve (~2 gallons) still in the tank.
  • eveningcoffee 11y ago
    The thing is that this report does actually not provide any data about fuel consumption - only about CO2 emissions. What they do is wild speculation and possibly a smear campaign because people care more about the fuel economy (their own money) than CO2 emissions. It is interesting that this (some) data is provided but how it is presented does not make it look very credible.
    • MagnumOpus 11y ago
      What are you on about? For any given type of fuel, fuel consumption is related exactly 1:1 proportionately to CO2 emission (as carbon particulate and CO emissions are microscopically small these days). That is basic chemistry - where else would the fuel go? Therefore any claim about CO2 emissions equates to a claim about fuel consumption.
      • eveningcoffee 11y ago
        Yes, it should be. The problem is that these findings do not reflect my anecdotal experience. I have two recent measurements. About 500 km round trip and small trips inside the city. This is accordingly about 17% and 21% increase (and it was in the same region for the older model of the same car). Sorry, I did not include the make and model of the car because I do not want to leak too much personal information but it is nowhere close to the claimed difference. Even more the round trip was mostly on the highway and included small city part (let say about 20 km). This differs from the official test cycle. Also the city traffic includes high elevation differences and very bad slow traffic with constant stopping. Also the car was more occupied in both cases (official tests consider about 70 kg driver and 7 kg luggage). This means that in more fair test the results should be even more close to the official numbers. So what could explain this? I do not know as we do not see the fuel economy numbers. Perhaps during the official tests the car is actually stationary and can not take enough air and the burning is not that efficient but a good exhaust filter hides this problem? What is also strange is the difference between BMW 3rd series and 5th series because both use the same engines (and also some Renault models do use BMW engines but it do not know about Megane). I calculated the fuel consumption and CO2 ratio for several models and it is about the same (as expected). I also calculated weight to CO2 ratio for similar engines over few series and this gave also very similar results. As the different series look quite similar these days then I would assume that they also have quite similar aerodynamics.
• Nacraile 11y ago
  Your comparison with motorcycles is a bit flawed. Weight is the wrong thing to look at; at highway speeds drag is a major factor and motorcycles actually have higher drag coefficients than cars. You're also understating motorcycle fuel economy: I can easily get 4.5L/100km on my 600cc I4 doing 100km/h (although I more typically drive 130km/h and get 5L/100). I have friends who regularly do < 4L/100km in practice (on a 250, though).
• epsylon 11y ago
  Your numbers are also false for motorcycles (which all run on gas and not diesel which is the subject of the conversation here). My BMW's 800cc rotax paralell twin does exactly that (4.5L cruising on the highway). Even the 1200cc boxer does that AFAIK.