Why you can't buy a high mpg car....

[Christ]

Originally Posted by niky

As it is... what taxes go into roads in the US are apparently insufficient, so it has to come from somewhere. While I disagree in taxing something and putting the money somewhere else, I'm sure most of us would agree that directly applying a higher gas tax to road infrastructure is a good thing.

I have no faith that it would ever actually happen that way. Clearly the billions annually in gas taxes (which were introduced to pay for the highway system, and nothing else) aren't being spent only on the highway system, else our roads would be much less crappy than they currently are. In fact, they should all be like the Nurburgring, if you ask me. I should be able to ride on my bike taking curves just as fast as I want without fear of a pothole or freeze-damaged road right in front of me at every blink of the eye.

[UltArc]

Originally Posted by Christ

I have no faith that it would ever actually happen that way. Clearly the billions annually in gas taxes (which were introduced to pay for the highway system, and nothing else) aren't being spent only on the highway system, else our roads would be much less crappy than they currently are. In fact, they should all be like the Nurburgring, if you ask me. I should be able to ride on my bike taking curves just as fast as I want without fear of a pothole or freeze-damaged road right in front of me at every blink of the eye.

Bah!

Depends where you are. In the Northeast, I agree, the roads are garbage for the most part. But whenever we go to Florida, the rental car glides so nicely over the clean, smooth pavement.

[jtbo]

Originally Posted by mcrews

Of course there are other people that know better and know how to be in control of their lives, they know to demand fuel efficient vehicles and maybe even higher gas prices, but so minority are those that politicians can rather safely ignore them, give

please, show me what that idiot looks like.........

That reeks of the liberal 'I know what is best for you' attitude!

You worry about saving europe and we'll worry about the usa........and quit calling us for help.

europe has higher fuel prices because of taxes. Tell me where all those taxes go????? To create better roads? NO. To support reseach into more fuel effecient vehicles? NO. To support socialist feel good programs? YES!

As you can see from other replies, some have understood idea bit better.

With higher gas prices there would be more demand for higher mpg vehicles, there would be more research done by manufacturers to improve mpg and also gov would have more pressure to accept higher mpg vehicles to market as it would require some changes to allow economy to work still properly.

We are lucky if 1/10th of money collected from road users will end up to road upkeep, money goes for education system, social security and costs of insane alcohol drinking culture which we have that costs a lot for tax payer, despite the fact that alcohol has much more tax than gas.

Now I pay 1.5€/l from diesel, gas would be 1.7€/l by our local prices which are among the highest in country, but there are no gas stations near so there is healthy amount of profit that they pull.

But that is not all, then I pay yearly tax from car and yearly tax from right to use diesel, which combined make 580 euros for a year, however that is somewhere around 640 euros next year.

Then we all pay from insurance, because of clean record I get 75% discount and pay 'only' 400 euros a year from that.

Then comes yearly inspections, that is around 90 euros a year here.

So just for having a car that I could use on road I pay over a 1000 a year without driving at all and some 60-70% of that is taxes, everything you pay from has 23% of tax, except few rare exceptions that can have bit lower %.

Diesel tax was recently increased by 0.1€ to encourage more eco friendly vehicles, same reasoning was used for increasing yearly taxes.

Every km costs me bit over 0.2€ with hypermiling and aeromods if I drive typical amount in a year, but with my current really low amount of driving I pay closer to 1€/km, I guess that is close to $2/mile?

Then how much is spend on roads?
There is this local road that I have to drive 30km to find first gas station, 6 years ago it got new surface, after that it has got new road markings painted once, at spring you can't drive faster than 60kph as you hit head to roof of the car and it hurts just enough with 60kph. This spring there appeared a hole to bus stop, I don't know how deep it was but man could easily been disappearing there, they put tree branch to hole to warn about it, few months from that they put some asphalt over it, but left most of the smaller holes as they were.

During winter time we get lot of snow and ice, my last tank was horrible because most of it was driven in 5 to 10cm deep snow.

It is quite clear that indeed money is not going where it is collected from.

I pay around 20% of income tax, total taxation is around 60% from my memory, might be bit higher.

Money goes to bureaucrats, 75% of taxes go to paychecks of gov officials, nurses, doctors etc, healthcare is mostly free and we have 3rd most nurses in a world per tax payer from my memory, we still are low on nurses and their workload is huge, so we are really sick people or free system encourages to abuse it, I suspect latter.

Your Obama was pushing some healthcare bill from my memory, I guess that you might be soon enjoying the same then? For me it looks horrible future for US, as it has always been land of free and good place for those that stand for themselves and understand that there is no big nanny to take care of you all the time, but it seems US is changing to similar of our country and I think it is a shame, it does make good feelings of course, but there people loose their understanding of caring from themselves quite quickly.

Now how this relates to high MPG vehicles and why those are not available is such that there is no real concrete reason to have one when you can easily afford running gas guzzler. Eco things are minority's interest, there is most that don't care a bit, some like to be trendy and buy those carbon credits and do some other silly more wasteful than really eco, for nation wide effect only high gas prices will push enough to create interest to higher mpg vehicles, but it is like shooting onself to leg to demand higher gas prices at first glanze, look into deeper, wider, bigger picture and despite drawbacks that would give, it would still be better in a long run to reduce gas consumption.

There is individual level and then bigger level, individual level is often not very important, especially if nation wide consumption should be lowered to be more eco or to survive future crisis that might or might not come.

Problem that I see in a future is that there are lot of nations in Asia that start to use gas more and more every day, there consumption increase is really fast and even if we could half our consumption (which we can't in reality), it will be soon that oil consumption overtakes production, increase in consumption has been years more than increase in production, now when that happens and buffers are not able to balance markets, we get far more than four times price of gas than it is now and it will happen very quick, to prepare for that it would be good to increase gas prices and start pushing research of alternatives lot more before the rush.

It is bit like blood sample, it stings and is not fun by any means, but sometimes it is bloody good thing to take.

What I would prefer is complete individual autonomy, free gas and big V8 for everyone, but I guess I just did born too late and have to accept that world is different, still I do hate things like streetlights that here are mostly for feel good factor without any real safety related element, they have their place, but lighting empty roads over 10 hours is not it, but that is how world has gone, safety nannying something, maybe Mexico would be better place to live

[hat_man]

Just throwing my two cents here but during the "gas crisis" a few decades ago we could get fairly fuel efficient cars. Not efficient by todays standards, but efficient by the standards of the day.

IMHO I think the auto industry, the oil industry, and the gov't are in bed with each other. As long as cars aren't as fuel efficient as they could be then the fed. and state gov'ts can collect $$$'s in fuel taxes and use them wherever they want. I have two reasons for this opinion........

1) If you look at some older cars and trucks they out perform some of todays vehicles. Then we get a hold of them and "tweak" them to get even better mpg's. If we can figure it out why can't the "geniuses" in the R and D departments of the auto industry? Makes you wonder doesn't it? You see a new car come out today and the advertisements say it has "improved" fuel economy because it went from 20mpg to 22mpg. So what they really mean is that it went from really cruddy mpg to just a bit better cruddy mpg. It's only been in the last few years that there has been an increase in domestic mpg "technology". My opinion is that the auto industry saw that they were losing market share to the more efficient imports and proposed to the gov't that they needed to "release" some of the "technology" (that they probably already had sitting on a shelf in the R and D department) to compete or the gov't would lose out in tax dollars on many different levels. Fuel taxes, income taxes on domestic workers, etc. As long as we were making vehicles that were "almost" as good as the imports the auto industry was happy with sales figures, the oil industry was happy because the fuel efficiency was "technologically hindered" and the gov't was happy with it's influx of tax dollars. When the imports started getting a foothold on domestic car sales, all three saw a drop in revenue and something had to be done.

2) Look at the big auto industry bailout. All arguing aside about wether it was a good idea or not, it was supposed to help the auto industry get back on its feet (compete in the marketplace). You would think that the first cars coming out after the bailout would be something the majority of consumers would buy and be comparable and competetive with the import market that was "hurting" them. What did we see? Gas guzzling Camaro's, Mustang's, and Charger's. Cars designed to be too powerful, too expensive, and too fuel INefficient for domestic consumers needs. Why couldn't they build a fuel efficient family 4-door that would compete with the imports and appeal to the majority of car buyers? I realize there are cars out there now like the Ford Focus and other similar cars, but why now and not before or immediately after the bailout?

Do we really need 220+hp in our cars? Do we need incredible 0-60 times? Not really. My little truck has just over 110hp and can get up to 85mph and when driven realistically gets 26mpg (before mods) and does it with engine and fuel injection "technology" that is 15 years old and the disadvantage of rear wheel drive and crappy aerodynamics. Just think what could be capable today without even having to pay for a hybrid. A fuel efficient mid sized car with 100hp, advanced front wheel drive, aerodynamic styling to keeps it's Cd low, 6-speed transmission to give it a higher highway gear without sacrificing the needed lower in-town gearing, and whatever else can be thought of to help it be fuel efficient, practical, and affordable. Can you imagine the mpg on a car like this? Would you buy it? Do you see this car on the market? Of course not. The auto industry would never build it. Too much money to be lost by the other two groups in this venture.

Again this is only my opinion, but it begs the question.....WHY?

[serialk11r]

^^ hell, just add that 6th gear into all transmissions already. Honda/Toyota, I'm looking at you... 5 speed vs. 6 speed transmission costs the OEM like what, maybe 100 bucks I'm guessing?

[minispeed]

Why stop at 6, 8 speeds are plenty now and the 10s are coming.

[Flakbadger]

Originally Posted by hat_man

Just think what could be capable today without even having to pay for a hybrid.

I agree with everything you said, and especially this line... Because I'm getting pretty close to the EPA estimates for a hybrid at less than 1/2 the cost. I'm doing it with nothing other than responsible driving techniques. Imagine what we could accomplish by teaching responsible driving instead of relying on auto companies to make their cars counteract irresponsible driving.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by minispeed

Why stop at 6, 8 speeds are plenty now and the 10s are coming.

With a manual box on ~2-3L engines and smaller displacement high revving engines I think 5 close ratios + 2 standard wide spaced (that means like 0.7 ish) is good enough, a lot of the time the last gear on the automatic version is ~70% of the reduction ratio of the last gear on the manual transmission, so basically adding an extra gear to what manual boxes are now should bring a good 10-15% improvement in highway fuel economy on most cars.

With under like 160hp 6 is probably enough, shorten the first 5 a tiny bit and then use the 6th one to drop the revs down a bit more, maybe 10-20%. MT economy car gearing isn't usually all that bad, when you consider the requirement of being able to run up hills and against wind and stuff in last gear.

With large displacement engines 8 or more is good of course. Lambos with their 7 extremely close ratios on a 7L engine could use like 10 lol. I think they cruise at the typical rpms you find on 2L engines.

[user removed]

I think when Ford puts the 1.0 Ecoboost in a 2 dr Fiesta, hopefully with a 6 speed that gives you about 2k RPM at 70 MPH and a CD below .25 it should be good for about 60 MPG at 60 MPH, maybe a little better, with start stop.

regards
Mech

[niky]

Six speeds is enough for small engines, as long as sixth is the right gear. Smaller engines are less efficient cruising at higher speeds and a seventh or eight gear would be wasted on them if they couldn't maintain... say... 80 mph... at just 1500-2000 rpm.

------

As for the bail-out... Do note that the Camaro was developed pre-bail-out and that Chevrolet has released the Eco Cruze and Sonic, and is planning on (someday) releasing the Spark over there, a car that can hit well into the high 40's on the highway.

Review: 2011 Chevrolet Spark 1.2 (Global-Spec) | The Truth About Cars (shameless self-plug)

Also, Chrysler is releasing a Dodge Dart with a seven-speed transmission.

They are trying to build and sell global cars in the US. It's up to the US market itself to cooperate and latch on. But what are you going to do with a population that wants nothing but big, bigger and even bigger cars? Granted, the amount of high displacement octane-sniffing V8 worship in US TV and magazine commercials, videogames, Top Gear UK and US episodes on Speed and NASCAR (and assorted) races has built up a culture addicted to big displacement torque... but look at the US and see how, even with the gas guzzler tax and various incentives, buyer preference still trends towards cars with larger footprints and displacement than anywhere else.

If people can buy big cars, they will buy big cars. Big cars are more comfortable. Big cars are more spacious. Big cars are more... big.

You're blaming companies for selling products people will buy. Blame the people for buying those products! Blame the people who buy yet another CamCord or TrailExplorerRango when all they need is a Fit.

Originally Posted by Christ

I have no faith that it would ever actually happen that way. Clearly the billions annually in gas taxes (which were introduced to pay for the highway system, and nothing else) aren't being spent only on the highway system, else our roads would be much less crappy than they currently are. In fact, they should all be like the Nurburgring, if you ask me. I should be able to ride on my bike taking curves just as fast as I want without fear of a pothole or freeze-damaged road right in front of me at every blink of the eye.

The Nurburgring is bankrupt, mind you...