Average US fuel economy, getting better but still bad.
 

Autoblog Green reports triumphantly Spike in small-car sales ups average fuel economy to 22.7 mpg in first quarter of 2011:


Yet it only shows how badly the US is doing in availability and market acceptance of fuel efficient cars.

22.7 mpg is a staggering 10.36 L/100 km on average.
For gasoline, that corresponds to a CO2 output of 247.8 gram/km.

For comparison, in Portugal the CO2 output of new cars sold in 2010 was 127.4 gram/km (#1 of 21 EU countries) , 130.8 in France (#2), and 133.9 in Belgium (#6).
If we translate the Belgian average (mostly diesel cars) to mpg, we're talking about 46.1 mpg !


PaleMelanesian once computed that new-EPA is 85% of the less realistic NEDC.
Accounting for that, those 46.1 mpg would become a more realistic 39.2 mpg.

Still a whopping 73 % better than the US average mpg !

It would be interesting to see some kind of comparison between average FE and fuel costs adjusted to a common currency - Euro or USD.

Maybe also including mean income.

EDIT - I meant to add it may answer some questions about how costs affect purchasing decisions.

This reminds me of a thought I had. I wish there were an option on the car page to add in 2 more "epa average" values.

One for average mpg in your country

One for average mpg of your previous vehicle


That way the stats could include not just how much better you are doing than the EPA of your own vehicle, but also how much better you were doing before you switched to a more efficient vehicle (if you did) and how you're doing compared to the average Joe.

I think having those stats would be really cool/a lot of fun.

I'll be honest with you. I went over to the UK in the summer of 2007 and hired a Saab 9.5 TDI Estate Car for my trip (I was traveling with a bike, so I needed a larger car). Despite the mediocre mileage of 36-40mpg and the high price of diesel at the time of 1.30 (pounds, not dollars, but I can't figure out how to make that symbol), I brought my US attitude and didn't care. We're raised with a sense of entitlement and a culture of 'freedom is the open road' that we (as a society in general) rarely even think about how much we're using. It's not likely to change until fuel prices stabilize over $4.50 a gallon or more and even then, only for those who make less than $75k/year. For the rest, it's a right they intent to take full advantage of because they can.

These short spikes in prices really do little to change where people buy their homes, where they choose to work, and what kind of car they drive. All signs are pointing toward this price spike is nearing the end of its course and it saddens me that soon we'll be back under $3.25/gallon and people will be back to buying Suburbans and pick ups they don't use*. It doesn't bode well for any of our future.


*I have no problem with those who own Suburbans and haul around a crew of six or seven all day long or a pick up truck that sees a load of stuff every day. I just have concerns when there's folks having a hard time putting food on the table on the other side of the world because the excessive unnecessary demand in the US forces up energy costs, which in turn forces up food costs.

BTW the 1.30GBP you were paying was for a litre(er), you need 3.69 of those for a US gallon - so you were getting under 10m per litre. :D

I forgot to add, I'm not preaching or attempting to get people to change - I just think it would just be interesting from a stats / behaviour point of view. I wonder if GapFinder has this stat ?

I didn't take it as preaching, I think you're on track to some degree that there's a price that will change behaviour, but there's also other social factors that will be hard to make go away. We're a nation of wanderlusters and it's going to take some real economic pain to change our ways. The time is coming, without a doubt, but most folks aren't thinking that far ahead and these short-term spikes only reassure folks that it's only short-term pain.

I don't think that's quite the root of the problem. I mean, why doesn't this sense of entitlement translate into a lot more people wanting "the old two-seater": updated versions of classic British sports cars? (And, of course, open roads to drive them on.) That'd be a lot more like freedom to me.

Instead, we get these oversized behemoths driving in mostly straight lines on divided highways, and "safety" being a big selling point. Seems to me there's a lot of fear & sense of inadequacy buried in there not too far below the entitlement.

Seems most folks I know prefer a huge vehicle (for safety reasons), and are willing to pay the MPG penalty for it.

I still don't see many (read: NONE) carpoolers. Still lots of single person drivers in behemoths.

You might be more accurate, but I still see the Chevy Chase 'Vacation' as a rite of passage, which is why we're scared to death of a vehicle with a limited range of 40 miles, even though we rarely go further. I also know that in my 20s I racked up 400,000 miles exploring all points west of the Colorado state line in a dizzying array of criss-cross patterns. I agree that fear is a primary driver right now, but it's funny how folks still don't look at the actual data. Some of the smaller cars have been outperforming the big SUVs for safety for years because they don't roll over (one of the deadliest kinds of crashes).

In any case, I'm not sure if our sense of entitlement to cheap gas will ever go away or even if prices rise we'll suddenly change our collective way of thinking. Nothing will be overnight, but I do like seeing trends like the original post brought up. When the dollars at the new car lots tilt hard enough on the side of economy, we'll start seeing the mpgs all of us envy in the European car markets.

Have a question; why is it that when it comes to bringing the more fuel efficient cars, minivans, and trucks to the US market that the usual answer is that they don't meet the emission and crash standards? It doesn't make sense.

It's almost saying, " Europeans and those in the world markets have to have more polluting and less safe vehicles because of where they are. "

...maybe we should make the U.S.Govt get "out" of our lives, and let us drive paper-thin, death-traps to our hearts' content, so that the "Annual Darwin Awards" could become universally commonplace "daily" awards?

...100 MPG and 100 MPH until "Dawin Awarded"?

The cleanest European diesel are only rated ULEV in California while cars as 2000 prius and 2000 insight are rated SULEV, ie emitting much fewer pollutants, since 2000... Particles, NOx... are pollutants : they kill lifes, while CO2 isn't a pollutant as it doesn't kill anybody (by now... not the same song in 20 years...).

European have obsession about CO2 and diesel have always got the privilege to pollute more... Things seams to change and half a dozen French cities declared to ban old cars (not Euro 2 ie before 10/1997) from their roads before the end of 2011...

Denis.

I wonder if average FE of new cars is a good reflection of trends? The average MPGs could be lowered if a lot of new more efficient cars were bought, but also if less new gas guzzlers hit the road. The difference is that in the latter case the overall amount of fuel used is lower. When the media start regularly telling us that global oil consumption has been declining for the last X months/years, then I'll be less sceptic.

That's because US, Europe and Japan pay attention to different emissions - one prefers lower CO2 but doesn't care about NOx and PM, another vice versa.

Cities restricting use of polluting cars

Thanks :D

Well kind of, I would like to find out what that is and maybe what influences it.

And I will be ignoring any of those "its the fault of the government we have these regulations" or indeed the "the government does not regulate enough" arguments because both are irrelevant.

Having driven some very small cars in my life, I could only wish here in the USA we could get something like an Audi A2. Maybe one of these days people in the US will decide they can no longer afford to drive large inefficient vehicles.

1800 pounds with a 1 liter engine and supercharging or turbocharging for emergency power bursts. 60 MPG at 60 MPH should be the standard today. Maybe in a decade.

regards
Mech

Why wait a whole decade ? Toyota make that car now, and it has the same safety rating at the Yaris which I think is sold in the US ? It even has an auto option for the hard of thinking.

Nissan make essentially an identical car to the Aygo with the Pixo - also sold as a Suzuki.

GM even sold a 1.0 3cyl 12v Corsa in Europe - that's the same company that decided not to sell the Metro any more in the US.

This is not an engineering "what is possible" issue. It is a "what will those people buy and we can make money on" issue.

The technology is there, other people buy it.

Americans aren't even offered it.

EDIT - no supercharger - but guess what, people manage to survive without it.

Man, it makes me mad to think the bailouts could have been avoided.

Now that's funny!:D:thumbup:

I think that we, U.S. consumers, have demonstrated that we will not buy vehicles that are smaller than a certain size, or slower than a certain speed. So why should they go to the effort of homologating them for our market?

Strange that so many people avoided dying while driving those "paper-thin deathtraps" built in the '50s & '60s, then. Not to mention that they were running on bias-ply tires and often using drum brakes, too.

Or for real irony, consider how many people use their big, safe (supposedly) SUVs & pickups to haul their quads & dirt bikes out to the country where they race around like maniacs. Or the ones which advertise sports like extreme skiing/snowboarding. So the upshot is that you must drive what is in perception an extremely safe vehicle to someplace where you will risk life & limb. (To say nothing of the added dangers of cell phones, in-vehicle infotainment, etc.) Excuse me if the logic escapes me :-)

Yet when we are offered such cars which don't combine their smallness with "how cheap can we possibly build this thing?", they seem to sell. See for instance the Mini.

I hear what your saying and agree, but the problem has been that vehicles that can satisfy those " American " needs with safety and fuel efficiency have been made by our OEMs but not sold here.

I am especially pissed at the pickup truck situation. I've driven Ford products for years, and have had a couple of 7.3 Powerstrokes that have served me well. It wasn't until I was surfing MWM's website, the makers of pretty decent small turbodiesels that a lot of OEMs around the world use, that I got a slap in the face. These same engines are used in the South American versions of the same F Series that we get here, along with the Chevy Silverado, S10, and Ford Ranger. Have been for years. There's nothing different, from what I can tell between these trucks and ours except for the drivetrain and the fact that they get better than 15 mpg. The engines either 2.8L 4 cylinder or 4.2 inline 6 turbodiesels.

A Canadian gentleman got a hold of one of these Sprint diesels and with the factory pieces, put it into his Suburban. Very happy with it, gets way better fuel economy. ( There's a small article in Diesel Power Magazine about it, can't remember which issue though. )

We can get a 6.6L and up turbodiesel, in a 3/4 ton and up truck, that has 400 hp and nearly 800 ft/lbs of torque easily, if you have $50k + for it, yet the truck we need is probably half as costly, has half the power and gets twice the mileage, in the same chassis that we get here.

And available widely in the half ton chassis.

Hmmm.

Sarah (drill baby drill) AND Michelle (I'll bring us $2 gas) could BOTH get in, and my bet would be on $5 gas in the coming years instead of $2... or even $3, or maybe even $4.

Thus it follows that instead of PUs and SUVs, motorists better start being more serious about considering sippers/electrics/bikes and whatnot if they don't want to make fuel the biggest expense in their budgets.

Actually they did make vehicles sort of like this in the 80's it was called a 1982 C code 6.2ltr diesel. The trouble was, GM liked to fix things after making them, they also liked to couple it to crappy transmissions and they liked to put them into the wrong type of vehicles.

If you couple a 6.2 with a 5sp stick 2wd with good gears you can easily get in the high 20's to low 30's in a full size vehicle like a suburban. higher still if you can figure out how to fit it into something smaller like an S10 (you need to borrow the suspension from something beefier though)

Sadly GM didn't couple the 6.2 with good transmissions from the factory with a handfull of 1993 5sp pickup exceptions.

The 6.2 is capable of up to about 40mpg if in something moderately aerodynamic from what I here of the few who have done 5.7 diesel car to 6.2 conversions.

A quick poke around US makers / importers websites seems to suggest more and more smaller and more economical models coming up - the new Aveo looks a big improvement over the old Daewoo Kalos based thing sold just now for example.

I suspect the margins on the really cheap cars - like the Aygo - would be too thin to make them viable, unless Toyota were to make them locally, maybe in Mexico or further south for example - and ship them in.

In terms of general car size and thirst, the North American market seems out of sync with the rest of the world and it has quite a few NA market only models. Now that the US market is no longer the largest in the world I wonder how long those exclusive models will last.

I had one of those beasts in a ex USPS truck. Good motor, but a bad combo for what I had ( wished I had a Cummins B3.9 ). Thing is though, with GM having access to smaller, more power dense engines and the engineering prowess of Detroit Diesel, why they wouldn't offer something better to our market.

As long as the price of fuel keeps trending upward, and more people start to do research on other options that have better mpg, hopefully not too much longer. The US market has never had to deal with continuously high energy prices on a regular basis like the European and Japanese markets have for years. The adjustment is rough and even though new models are coming to market that can address it, most can't afford to buy them right now.

Power has always been a form of luxury, and we are rich enough to afford relatively inefficient cars. We are also a slothful people. Try to buy a car with a manual transmission or (horror of horrors) crank windows here.

They have sold a bunch, for sure. But the Mini isn't anything like an economy car, or a good-gas-mileage-car, or a typical european car. To produce a Mini that is more like a euro-spec car, it would have a 1-liter engine or smaller, making about 80-90hp. Not a car that would sell here, in my opinion. I mean, how often do you see a Mini that is not an S-type? This suggests that the base mini with 120hp is generally considered inadequate. Most Mini buyers, if they hadn't bought a Mini, would have been looking at something like a Civic Si, but then would have bought a Subaru wagon. They would not have been looking at decked-out Fits, Yariseses, Civics, Fiestas, or Corollas. At least that is my perception. I am often wrong. :)


I know nothing about diesels, sorry. But think of this. The smallest gasoline engine offered in a full-size pickup or a Expedition still has better acceleration than the diesels you mention (I suspect). But, very few are sold, because it is widely perceived that they are not strong enough. Plus diesels have their own market acceptance issues. So how can Ford expect to sell a decent number of them here in the US? I think that if you MADE people drive them, they would eventually say, yeah this is a decent truck. But very few people will walk into a showroom and hope to buy a full-sized truck that performs like a 4.2 liter TD would. Not to mention that they would have to pay extra, because pretty much any engine has to be more expensive to make than a pushrod V8. Just my opinions on the matter.

It's a marketing issue. The Mini and the Prius got popular with the rich folks and consequently sold well. The new Fiat 500 is going to do the same thing. If style and efficiency are blended right, folks'll buy it.

Americans are a vain bunch, and the OEMs are tone deaf by and large. But every now and then they have a genius moment and build something that the people want and want bad.

Right now, 35 mpg rated seems to be the big deal with the smaller cars at 41 mpg. Big whoop, not a big enough jump to justify spending tens of thousands for it. Now if they offered something that can break 50 mpg or better, I might show a pulse, 60 mpg with no fancy driving tricks and room enough for my brood and you will have a customer. Break 35 mpg in a minivan or wagon off the showroom floor, and I'll get customers for you.

Piwoslaw has what I want but I can't buy it here, darn.

Yes, that's my point. It's not an economy car which doesn't sell because it is perceived as cheap. It's a car which gets better than US average mpg by virtue of being small, and that smallness is part of its sales appeal. Fuel economy is just a side effect.

Same has applied to a number of other cars, like the Honda CRX & older Civic that now get modded. Or we might consider the fact that Lotus regularly comes in at or near the top of the CAFE rankings, and they sure aren't selling on fuel economy :-)

That's because it doesn't really make sense and doesn't hold up.

Many Euro cars are just as crash-worthy if not more so than US cars or the next Korean import.
Then there's the models that do get exported to the US.
While we mostly buy them with the smaller engines, often 2L and less, these aren't even imported in US - you get the top-of-the-range power/displacement engines, and only those.

Lets take the BMW 3 series Sedan.
It gets sold in the US, so it does meet the US crash requirements.
US : 28 mpg at best, in the 2.8i , 3L, 230 HP version
EU : 37.3 mpg , 316i 1.6L, 122 HP petrol version; and if they would let you have them, the 52.3mpg 316d 2L diesel with 116HP

Clearly, it's not really a matter of crash requirements.


Next there is the protectionist ways to keep out diesels in quite a few states, under the guise of environmental protection - while big pick-up trucks with diesels can freely be sold despite polluting far more.

Yes, there is additional NOx and soot (filtered out these days) output with diesels, so it isn't the optimal solution in the long run, but it can help solve part of the problem for the time being.

I can see what you mean. I guess my point was that if people are asking for something more like what is usually bought in Europe, or something efficient, the Mini is neither. It's a small, luxury niche vehicle, that happens to get okay gas mileage as long as you don't compare it to similarly sized cars.

I do agree that there is a long line of bad economy cars that the collective consumer psyche in the US has not forgiven.

Yes.
Overall fuel use is going down here.

Partly due to more diesels.
Partly due to more modern, more fuel-efficient cars.

We're also now getting small petrol engines with diesel-like fuel consumption.
The US is getting one of those, the Ford Fiesta, and it's a hit.
We can only hope it'll open some eyes and that more manufacturers will follow suit.
There's still a market for new Metro's in the US.

But does anyone really need a 6L engine - even in a pick-up ?
Over here, we put that kind of engine in trucks. Real trucks that is, lorries.

I think the most wasteful and needless use of fuel around these parts is transporting kids to school.

All you see around here is moms making the "commute" with their kids in a surface street traffic jam that rivals the worst of LA freeways.

What ever happened to the School Bus? Riding a bike? Walking?

it's part of our culture of fear, and imagined safety. we need giant vehicles to protect us. we need to take our kids to school because so many kids get kidnapped by strangers while walking to school. also part of our culture of spoiling kids, and wanting to hold on to them forever, rather than releasing them into the world. sigh.

I was talking to a gentleman who makes aftertreatment systems for diesels ( add on aftermarket ) who originally was from London and is now based in the States. He explained to me that the Cummins ISB is used in the buses in London ( 5.9L-6.7L ); most of the city buses we have are equipped with 9L and up engines and only average 22 mph.

No we don't need trucks with that much motor. Unless you pull caravans or heavy trailers 90% of the time it's a true waste. Most people never use a pickup for what its meant for anyway, just like the size and image. The euro diesels like the Bimmer 3.0 make like 425 lb/ft of torque. The 7.3 Powerstroke made that when it first came out and its over double the size.

Ford now has a 4.5 ISB Cummins in its pickups that has more than enough torque for a lot of what we do. And they don't sell it here.

A VW wagon TDI would more or less do what the 307 does - same size, similar MPG (arguably better with the more modern engines). You would need to mod it and yourself to match PW's progress though :D

Of course in Europe we also get the 1.6 TDI engine - my dad claims 80+ MPG (imp) in his. :eek:

We have to keep some good bits for ourselves. :thumbup:

Our brilliant leaders have knocked down all the neighborhood schools (that most everyone could easily walk to) in favor of sparkling new Taj Mahals on the outskirts of town that nobody walks to, so everyone must be bussed or individually driven there... except for the new housing subdivisions that sprout up next to the new Taj Mahal, which eventually will recreate what was there in the first place, except with a dead zone in the center of town, thus ensuring that sprawl is a permanent blight on the landscape. :mad:

Add to that this thing where no longer does living within the boundaries of a school district mean you go to school in that district. Every day, numerous school busses thunder past my house (they really ARE noisy GD things, aren't they???) from several towns up to 25 miles away. Is all this bussing the reason schools are a funding black hole i.e. there is never, ever enough money? :mad:

The school district in the commuter town i live in will not bus a child that is closer than 2 miles as the crow flies even if you offer to pay for the privilege. As it turned out, we lived 3.3 miles from school by street, but only 1.9 as the crow flew. Wish I knew a big enough crow to fly my kid to school lol.


Ah, but that brings up another issue... suburban sprawl and the costs associated with it.

Besides the newer houses being built further from town, the infrastructure to support a more distant community and the subsequent job commuting that follows also wreak havoc on our fuel needs / emission concerns.

One of then Governor Ahhnolds statements after taking office was that the creation of new cities and subdivisions has costs much greater than if we invested in urban redevelopment. Ahhnold was right. Too bad he couldn't do anything about it.