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I always wondered why American cars are so inefficient. Seems such a waste of your significantly cheaper gas :) I drive an Opel Astra H 1.7 CDTI and I can get

• GlennS 9y ago
  I've just come from a trip around the US national parks, and noticed something similar. I rented the cheapest, smaller car that I could, which was a 2015 Dodge Dart which would probably be about mid-range in the UK. It claimed 30 miles / gallon for optimal driving. Converting, that's 36 miles / UK gallon. I don't actually own a car at the moment, but for a few years I owned a 1995 Peugeot 106 which normally got just under 50 MPG, say about 40 miles per US gallon. Makes for a pretty disappointing comparison. 20 years later and still 25% behind?
  • irixusr 9y ago
    Well you can't compare the two unless you mention the fuel type.
  • MrRadar 9y ago
    Looking at the Wikipedia article for the Peugeot 106 most of the engines that were offered in the 1995 model year only put out around 100 HP. Since you had a "cheapest" rental Dart I'm assuming it had the base engine which is rated at 160 HP of power, around 60% more powerful. Comparing the curb weights, the 2015 Dart is also around 70% heavier than the 1995 106 which is expected since the Dart is a segment larger than the 106 and it would have all the safety and "infotainment" technologies developed in those 20 years. The increased power of the Dart makes up for the increased weight, and at US fuel prices it still probably costs less to fill up for the average US driver than your 106 would in Europe even though it's more efficient. For comparison, I own a 2012 Chevrolet Sonic (known as the Aveo overseas) with the 1.4 L turbo engine (rated 138 HP). I have a mostly-highway commute and my lifetime average MPG(-US) is 38.0. On a long road trip I take once per year I have gotten over 50 MPG (measured by dividing the fuel I consumed on the trip by the distance I traveled) despite the vehicle only being rated at 38 MPG highway by the EPA. You can easily exceed the EPA highway rating on most cars if you accelerate gently and don't drive too much faster than 70 MPH.
• xyzzyz 9y ago
  Very few Americans drive diesel cars, and diesel MPG is not comparable to gasoline MPG. Do your parents drive diesel too? What's the power of your parent's car engine?
• irixusr 9y ago
  Having lived (and appreciated) Europe and their cars: 1. You guy drive a lot less than us. I do trips three times as long as what would destroy me in Europe (twice a month I drive 500 km without stopping and back the next day) 2. Are you using the imperial gallon or the american gallon? Very common mistake (the mile used in the article looks like and probably is the 3.8l gal) Edit, you're using the right gallon.
  • kmm 9y ago
    Sure (if true), but that's not the point, because driving more doesn't increase mileage. Why does driving more make you prefer less efficient cars? What do you get back from it?
    • irixusr 9y ago
      Sorry I forgot to finish the point for 1. A larger car (more space, inertia and soundproofing) with a bigger engine (lower rpm therefore less noise) with more cylinders (less vibration) is more comfortable and wears you down less. And I loved my wife's no frills stick-shift Versa (4000 rpm at 80 mph really got annoying though) As to American's driving large distances, based on my personal experience, there's no comparison. American cities are further apart, families are more scattered, families are larger. Don't forget that in many ways America is actually two societies in one. One America lives in places largely undistinguishable from Europe. The other has 90 mile one way commute (a colleague. Mine is only 17).
  • systemtest 9y ago
    Driving 500 kilometers without stopping is terribly dangerous for yourself and the people around you. Please be considerate.
    • saimiam 9y ago
      It's a matter of practice. 500 km is 312.5 miles. At 60 mph, this is about 5 hours of driving. You can definitely handle 5 hours of driving at one shot. Start at a time when you don't expect to feel sleepy for the next 5 hours and you'll be set.
• arprocter 9y ago
  Cheaper fuel is the reason the US doesn't care as much about MPG Also worth mentioning that the US gallon and imperial gallon aren't the same size
  • chadgeidel 9y ago
    @kmm's measurements are in Liters per 100KM. The translation is correct.
• izend 9y ago
  Diesel vehicles for the most part which has caused European cities (Paris, London etc...) to have terrible local air quality but lower CO2 emissions!
• alexbeloi 9y ago
  American cars are bigger (longer) and faster. When I've traveled in Europe, I'm always surprised by how small most cars are and how small the parking spots are. High mpg options exist in the US. Americans seem to prefer to trade gas savings for more power and bigger cars rather than saving some cash, at least at the current price point of gas.
  • exclusiv 9y ago
    It makes sense - most of the infrastructure was built before the car. So it's not really feasible to accommodate large vehicles. It's not even possible for them to put the toilet anywhere other than INSIDE the shower in many places because the apartments are so small. Sometimes they even have "floor urinals". I get a laugh out of it every time but they do have some serious size constraints in many places over there.
    • JauntTrooper 9y ago
      I would think much of the infrastructure had to be rebuilt after WW2 though, no?
      • falsedan 9y ago
        The roads? Rights-of-way & property boundaries didn't get bombed, and one narrowing due to right-of-way passing through historical-significant properties restricts the maximum vehicle size for the entire road/region (https://goo.gl/maps/BzJrXer8HmF2 https://goo.gl/maps/BzJrXer8HmF2) Consider this local intersection ('junction'): https://goo.gl/maps/UPjtR5VdSXM2 https://goo.gl/maps/UPjtR5VdSXM2. It's a favourite for the practical driving test: from the left lane, turn right into the side street. It's extremely dangerous, as you have to creep around the corner to the left to get visibility of the oncoming 30mph traffic, without getting so far pass the side street's centre line than you can't safely turn in.
  • flurdy 9y ago
    Re: parking spots My family keeps growing (in numbers, age and size) and as I'm approaching midlife affordability I would love a decent large SUV, like the Volvo XC90 etc to replace my ageing Ford Focus estate. But for the life of me, I can't imagine the pain of owning such a large vehicle. Parking would be a nightmare. At home, in town, anywhere. I live in Hampshire in England and the parking spots around here are all designed with 1970s Golfs and Morris Minors in mind it seems so not SUV compatible at all. I already frequently can only open the door 1/4 of the way and really squeeze my stomach in to get into the car. With a large SUV, I would surely have to enter via the boot all the time. They may only be 5-10cm wider on each side, but that is totally impractical around here. Tesla-esque self-driving/summoning would really solve this as I could just ask the car to reverse a little before I get in, so parking tightly would then not be a problem. For me at least. Thankfully SUVs would be 4x4 as I also would surely have to go partially off-road when meeting other cars on the lanes around here.
• rsync 9y ago
  "What do you get in the place for this lower efficiency? Are American cars that much heavier? More comfortable? Faster?" I cannot speak for everyone, but as someone who lives in the US and also spends a lot of time in Europe, there is a very big lifestyle difference at play here. First, I have a five person family (wife and three kids) and you[1], statistically, as a European, have 1.6 children - and as a highly educated HN reader, probably less (on average). Second, Americans move around a lot more than most europeans do. On the occasions that I have lived in Europe, I always spoke of how interesting it was that we could just "drive to St. Petersburg" or "just drive to Transylvania" or whatever, and otherwise smart and interesting european friends would look at me like I was a crazy person. It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure.[2] So when I drive five people, weighing over 500 lbs total and accompanying luggage the equivalent of one Europe away and over two mountain ranges[3] I am going to need something more than a lawnmower engine. This is not an edge-case - this is something we do multiple times per year. That being said, there are some very interesting cultural differences in the other direction ... once while in Denmark I saw a decent sized horse trailer being hauled by a nice, new Audi A8. Basically 100% of the driving public in the US would have considered this a gaping tear in the fabric of reality. [1] Not you, but you on average. [2] Zurich to Transylvania is 1800km - about the same as SF to Denver which is ~2000 km. [3] CA to MN, for instance, over the Sierras and then the Rockies.
  • paganel 9y ago
    > On the occasions that I have lived in Europe, I always spoke of how interesting it was that we could just "drive to St. Petersburg" or "just drive to Transylvania" or whatever, and otherwise smart and interesting european friends would look at me like I was a crazy person. It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure. Me and my gf did a Bucharest-to-Geneva and back car-trip last year and it was wonderful. There's something to be said about getting up to 2,000 meters in the Swiss Alps using a 1.4l gasoline engine car with 86bhp (probably less now, as the car is already 10 years old), all in third gear. Plus riding on the Austrian and German autobahns, as a car-lover that's pure bliss. Or riding on the Autostrade of Northern Italy in the middle of the night and stopping for an 1-euro ristretto at a gas station which was better-tasting than the majority of coffee-drinks that I had ever had. But you're of course correct, ours was an isolated experience. I think my car was the only Romania (or Eastern-Europe)-licensed plate on the streets of Geneva (and Lausanne). If only gasoline were less expensive...
• chadgeidel 9y ago
  American cars (read SUVs and Trucks) are much, much bigger. I drive a Mini Cooper (R56S) which is probably about the same size as your Astra. Most of my co-workers and non-"car guy" friends think it's impossibly small. Even "small" CUVs (a smaller, more car-like SUV popular here in the States) dwarf my car. Vanishingly few US folks would want to drive something with under 300 hp and fewer than 4 doors. Not to mention the interior space people think is "appropriate". Your first sentence really covers it. We have really cheap gas, so we don't care that fuel economy is bad. Every time someone I know comments about how poor gas mileage their car gets I respond with "what are you willing to give up"? They aren't - they want a giant SUV with hundreds of horsepower and they want to get 50-60 MPG.
• mikeash 9y ago
  There are a ton of Priuses on American roads, which I think are a bit larger, will easily meet or exceed those fuel efficiency numbers, and do it all while burning gasoline instead of diesel. (Diesel is more energy dense, so it's easier to get better MPG numbers with it. Diesel is also more expensive in the US, so it's not cost effective unless the efficiency gain is significant.) It's not all that hard to find efficient cars here. The Honda Civic is rated at 32MPG city/42 highway (and our ratings tend to come in a bit worse than real-world driving will give you), Toyota Corolla is 30/42, Chevy Cruze is 31/47. You can do worse if you want, but you don't have to.
  • irixusr 9y ago
    Good points, but diesel's higher MPG doesn't have to do with the difference in energy density but in cycle efficiency. The Diesel cycle is, all things equal, inherently less efficient than the Otto cycle. Hoever, since it allows much higher compression ratio it's efficiency ends up being very high (20 vs. 30 traditionally) [see Faires]
• awalton 9y ago
  > I always wondered why American cars are so inefficient. Seems such a waste of your significantly cheaper gas Cart before the horse? Cars are inefficient because gas is dirt cheap. If gas were expensive, people would shift away from guzzlers. We have documented evidence of this happening after both the 70s gas crisis and the shift towards hybrids/EVs during the $4/gallon gas $100/barrel of oil days. It's a pretty easy optimization game to play. If we increased gas taxes instead of flat demanding a fleet MPG (which the manufacturers simply game by making one or two hyper-efficient compliance vehicles which lets them continue to build guzzlers), you'd see how quickly the market would turn...
• CountHackulus 9y ago
  Opel is owned by GM (well, until March 2017). You're actually driving an American car. Assuming the 2015 and up model year it's platform sharing with the Buick Verano. The big difference here is that your engine is a diesel, and that makes a big difference in city driving when you're idling a lot.
• maxsilver 9y ago
  > American cars are so inefficient. They don't have to be -- the Chevy Volt (Vauxhall Ampere) is one of the most efficient cars on the planet, and is designed and manufactured in America (including the battery). Many Americans just prefer inefficient cars, and vote with their wallets. For some, it's a badge of honour to have a car that's really huge (SUV moms) or loud and spitting out smoke (Muscle Cars / Pickup Trucks), as a cultural identity statement.
• batushka 9y ago
  US made such a phenomenal win with cheap gas that Europeans still mis. Exposure to cheap energy EMPOWERED people across vast country. Robust chevy v8 powers everything for decades and still going strong: from cars, trucks, boats, generators - you name it. This came exact opposite in the old continent. The fact we drive efficient lawn mowers is just a sad testament for this failed energy policy.
  • namdnay 9y ago
    The US got the "win", but everyone will pay the consequences... I'm not sure that was a very good policy
• therealdrag0 9y ago
  I drive a Scion xA in America, it's only 100mpg. I think small cars like this (Honda Fit, etc) are catching on, at least in cities. But even still I only get 32-38mpg; maybe from worse aerodynamics?