Today, Green Car Reports posted what at first glance looked like a potentially interesting article:
Getting Good Gas Mileage Is Hard; Will Tinier Engines Really Help?
The premise of the article is that old chestnut (paraphrasing):
"A smaller engine may not be good for MPG because you have to drive it much harder than a bigger engine."
For dear reader's consideration, writer Antony Ingram offers up various bits of evidence:
- "real world" results of the UK's Focus 1.0L EcoBoost and the Fiat 500 2-cylinder cars are only barely better (or even equal) to the "real world" results for the same car with larger engines
- He claims Fuelly shows that owners of the Ford F-150 V6 Ecoboost are getting the same 17 MPG average as V8 F-150 owners (I challenge this in the comments - not sure where he's seeing these numbers)
- the latest Prius has a better EPA rating & real-world results even though it's using a larger (1.8L) engine than the previous generation (1.5L)
- and a couple of other points...
I think the article starts out asking a really interesting question, but in the end I think he's a bit too sloppy with the "evidence" and he wrecks it. (In my opinion.)
I couldn't help but comment. Then comment again... and again.
Getting Good Gas Mileage Is Hard; Will Tinier Engines Really Help?