EPA to reject Obama fuel efficiency standards early next week

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by Xist

Let's take the perfect car: A 2000 Civic HX manual. What would it take to make that car get 54 MPG? I honestly do not know, but I averaged 44 MPG on a teenage car with 200,000 miles. We have members getting that.

Honda cannot take a 2000 car and make it get 54 mpg. Crash safety standards, air pollution, squirming stylists.

But they did take the current Civic, pulled the gearbox, put nothing back there, then added a motor, generator and battery and called it Insight.
Because, you know, Insight.
And it easily does 54 mpg and if you drive it like you don't give * about it you still get 45 mpg.

[freebeard]

Let's take the perfect car: A 2000 Civic HX manual.

The only perfect 2-door notchback is the VW Type III

The HX trim was offered with the 5-speed manual or a CVT Continuously Variable Transmission which offered three driving ranges, D (standard transmission ratios for normal driving), S (secondary ratios for spirited driving with higher engine speeds), and L (lowest ratios to provide maximum engine braking and peak power). The conventional 4-speed automatic was not available on the HX trim. A JDM variant called the civic RTi was also produced and it featured either manual and automatic transmissions coupled to a Honda real-time all-wheel-drive layout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_...#Transmissions

Why not the CVT in a Honda Civic Aerodeck 1.5i
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_...Civic_Aerodeck

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Honda cannot take a 2000 car and make it get 54 mpg. Crash safety standards, air pollution, squirming stylists.

Hadn't it been for the crash standards, I guess they could do it. Well, maybe with a more technically advanced replacement engine...

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

How did we become the dominant species?

Who's saying we're the dominant species?

Worms far outnumber and outweigh us.

[Xist]

[redpoint5]

Great, now I've got a hankering to play Earthworm Jim.

[Vman455]

Originally Posted by Xist

How did we become the dominant species?

We bred like rabbits, removed all natural checks on our population, and became clever enough to willfully alter our environment to sate our unchangeable instinctive desires.

Incidentally, this will lead to our not being the dominant species someday.

[redpoint5]

I'd still argue we were never the dominant species, as we could never eliminate all worms, for instance. Sure, we can win a fight against individual worms, but their many species don't much care what we're up to, and they vastly outnumber and outweigh us.

Our population is still limited by nature.

I get what you're saying though; we've been the most willfully clever at solving many limits to growth, and that has unintended consequences.

I kinda think genetic engineering (designer babies) will solve/mitigate many problems, including overpopulation, and introduce new and interesting problems. Such is the way of progress!

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Our population is still limited by nature.

Even though there is effective a natural limit to human population growth, it's interesting to say the least how it's been done to take this limit somehow further.

I kinda think genetic engineering (designer babies) will solve/mitigate many problems, including overpopulation, and introduce new and interesting problems. Such is the way of progress!

With so many advances in robotics, I wouldn't really believe a populational decrease to become so bad at all. Demographic changes in some countries on the other hand, scare the hell out of me, but I won't go further on that to not be mistaken as a "racist".

[Xist]

Hopefully they finally breed screaming, crying, and pooping out of babies.