TrueDelta

Though fuel prices have moderated, as long as the economy remains soft car buyers will be focusing on fuel economy, not horsepower. In response, manufacturers are rushing to offer at least the alternative of a less powerful, more efficient engine.

The Mazda CX-7, a compact SUV, is a case in point. When the CX-7 was introduced three years ago, only one engine was offered: a 244-horsepower turbocharged 2.3-liter four. A good fit for Mazda’s driver-oriented image, but fuel economy has been a weak spot.

For 2010 Mazda has refreshed the CX-7, and the turbo has been joined by a 161-horsepower non-turbo 2.5-liter four. The new engine is good for EPA ratings of 20 city and 28 highway, compared to 17 and 23 for the 2009 turbo. (For 2010 the turbo improves to 18/25.) The new base model weighs 300 pounds less, so acceleration should be similar to that of the non-turbo fours in the Honda CR-V (20/27) and Toyota RAV4 (22/28).

Back in September 2008 I suggested how gas mileage should be calculated for range-extended electric vehicles like the upcoming Chevrolet Volt: one set of numbers for electric use, and a second set for after the batteries have discharged. General Motors, of course, saw things differently. It wanted the highest possible numbers, both for CAFE and for advertising purposes. And it appears that GM has gotten its way, as the EPA city rating for the Volt will be 230 MPG.

How is this possible? Through a test that makes almost no use of the gasoline engine. Problem is, this figure doesn’t remotely represent the full cost of operating the vehicle.

In a way, though, such a high number will be less misleading. General Motors has so overshot the mark in lobbying for the highest possible number that even the most clueless person will know it’s BS. If they’d finagled a number in the 80 to 100 range then perhaps the average person might have been misled into thinking it was real. But not now.

I needed to drive my family 800 miles (and back) to visit my in-laws. None of my cars are large enough, so I rented a minivan from Alamo. They had by far the best rate.

Alamo gave me the choice of any car in their minivan lane. Aside from a Dodge Grand Caravan and a Toyota Sienna, they also had a Toyota Sequoia, Saturn Outlook, and Ford Flex. I went with the Ford, since a previous test drive had found the seats to be extremely comfortable. It also had more space behind the third row for our luggage than did the Sequoia and Outlook (the minvans do best here). Luggage for five people fit. A bag for the sixth went on the floor between the second and third rows.

The Flex proved exceptionally well suited for traveling 800 miles in a single day. The seats are comfortable and the ride is smooth and quiet.

The biggest surprise of all, though: this massive vehicle got about 25 MPG running a fairly steady 75-80 with three adults and three kids aboard and the A/C on. (Manual calculations were a few tenths short of this figure, the trip computer read a couple tenths higher than this figure.) Running about 65 MPH on a later stretch, the trip computer read over 27–average, not instanteous–until I hit some hills.

I’m amazed that such a large, heavy vehicle can do so well. My compact Mazda struggles to reach 30 at similar speeds. Then again, the Flex’s 3.5-liter V6 is spinning about 2,000 RPM at 75, while the Mazda’s 2.0-liter four is spinning about 3,500. Extra gear ratios help.

President Obama has proposed an increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) to 35.5 MPG by 2016. CAFE is not mandatory, but manufacturers that fail to achieve the average must pay fairly hefty fines, and they don’t like paying fines.

At first glance, 35.5 MPG seems a very ambitious target. After all, most cars these days have real-world gas mileage in the 20s, and SUVs struggle to get into the high teens. Part of the improvement will have to follow from lower sales of trucks. A shift to smaller cars with smaller engines and additional technology will also contribute. The government will no doubt also provide credits for alt fuel vehicles.

But one thing people often don’t realize is that CAFE figures are based on a 55/45 mix of the EPA’s internal city/highway MPG figures, which since 1985 haven’t been the same as the ones on window stickers. That year, in an attempt to bring the public figures in line with real-world experiences, the EPA adjusted the published city figures downward by 10 percent and the highway figures downward by 22 percent. More recently, in 2008, the formulas for the window sticker numbers were changed to incorporate more real-world variables like A/C use. But the internal, gross figures have continued to be used for CAFE.

What these adjustments mean: an average of 35.5 MPG in the EPA’s internal figures translates to an average around 27 MPG in terms of a 55/45 mix of the city/highway figures on window stickers. The 42MPG figure for cars? (The 35.5 is the overall target for cars and trucks together.) It equates to about 32 MPG in real-world mixed driving.

Still a large increase from current real-world averages. But the implication isn’t that we’ll all soon be driving small cars. Auto makers might even still offer a car like the new V8-powered Camaro, with real-world suburban fuel economy in the high-teens, as long as they sell a a couple compacts that manage results in the high 30s to offset each one.

Doable? Absolutely.

Thanks to tax incentives, diesels now account for a large percentage of car sales in many European countries. These engines tend to be more powerful, smoother, and quieter than the diesels of even five years ago.

The most extreme example: the 5.9-liter V12 monster Audi offers in the Q7. It produces 500 horsepower at only 3,750 rpm, and 737 pounds-feet of torque at just 1,750 rpm. The next rung down, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes all offer V8 diesels, but these also sell in low volumes.

The meat of the diesel market begins with small fours and tops out with sixes around 3.0 liters. We’re now getting some of the latter in the U.S. Only VW currently offers a four-cylinder diesel in the States.

Even with gas engines, far more choices are offered to buyers in the UK. The 3-Series line across the pond starts a pair of 141-horsepower 2.0-liter fours, one gas, the other diesel.

While most of TrueDelta’s members are in the US and Canada, some are in the UK and elsewhere. In response to requests, we’ve now added UK powertrains for recent model years of most Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, Saabs, and Volvos. Also select Jaguars and VWs.

Have a powertrain that’s still not in there? Let us know, and we’ll do what we can to add it.

So hopefully we’ll start seeing some Gas Mileage Survey responses for these engines, and get a clearer idea of what we’ve been missing out on.

The Presidential Task Force on Autos released it’s New Path to Viability for GM and Chrysler. The administration has concluded that GM can come back strong after a restructuring, but that Chrysler must link up with someone else, specificially Fiat. So far, so good.

The problem:

“The new GM will have a significant focus on developing high fuel-efficiency
cars that have broad consumer appeal because they are cost-effective, have good performance and are
reliable, durable and safe.”

There’s a similar emphasis on fuel economy in discussing the products Chrysler will get from Fiat.

What’s with the fixation on fuel economy as the solution? These companies, especially GM, did not fail because their cars’ fuel economy is not competitive. Aside from a brief recent blip, car buyers are not heavily basing their buying decisions on fuel economy. TrueDelta operates a
real-world gas mileage survey. When people focus on fuel economy, we get more traffic. From this perspective, we’d love people to be fixated on fuel economy. Fact is, while some car buyers are, most are not.

If McDonald’s was in danger of going under, would the solution be limiting its menu to salads?

Washington clearly wants to believe that the only reason Americans aren’t buying more fuel efficient cars is that Detroit doesn’t offer them. This simply isn’t the case. McDonalds offers salads, and GM offers fuel-efficient cars. Bottom line is that most people simply aren’t buying them.

Force these companies to offer only highly efficient cars, and unless gas shoots up in price these companies will fail.

General Motors recently announced that it had disbanded its High Performance Vehicle Operations (HPVO) team. This is more of the same thinking that has essentially bankrupted them. The thinking: the government wants GM to focus on fuel efficiency, not performance, rendering HPVO a political liability. Disbanding HPVO is flawed on two levels.

First off, gas is back under $2/gallon, and even if it wasn’t many of HPVO’s products were reasonably fuel efficient. The 260-horsepower Cobalt SS was rated for 22 MPG city, 30 MPG highway. Supposedly, the first order of business is making GM profitable. Well, killing profitable products in pursuit of a greener image won’t help achieve this goal.

But even if there was no longer a market for high-performance vehicles, disbanding this team was a mistake. What many people outside and (especially)inside GM fail to realize is that interpersonal relationships are just as necessary, and harder to develop, than individual talent for developing great cars. I wrote a Ph.D. thesis on this topic. Why? Because talent can only realize its potential when other people recognize this talent, and listen to it. Without great teams, any talent that is present tends to get frustrated.

Judging from its products, HPVO was an effective team. No need for high-performance cars at the moment? Then have this team work on something that is needed. Don’t disband it.

As it stands, TrueDelta’s Gas Mileage Survey goes well beyond other such surveys to capture key information about how and where a car is driven. But it could be better still.

Under consideration: questions about fuel type (percent ethanol, biofuel), roof racks, and the date of the fillup. Maybe also questions on mods, so cars with heavy mods can be included. In all cases, these questions would be optional, because the survey is already pushing the length limit for many participants.

So, any comments or suggestions? Would you like to see something added or done differently?

Just a few months ago seemingly everyone was criticizing Detroit for failing to foresee $4.00 gas and develop fuel efficient cars accordingly. Even today we hear that these companies should refocus on alt fuels.

But how many of those who claimed that Detroit should have spent billions of dollars to develop more fuel efficient vehicles predicted that fuel prices would fall by more than 50 percent in just a few months?

If gas remains below $2.00, or even below $3.50 (which seemed to be the tipping point), who will buy these alt fuel cars? After all, they’re going to cost a lot more than conventional cars, especially at first.

Talk is cheap, hindsight is 20/20, and when events move too quickly even for hindsight, there’s always amnesia. Has anyone who chided Detroit a few months ago for not offering fuel efficient cars stepped forward and said, “Well, I was wrong. Fuel prices are back down, and then some, so the solution isn’t as simple as it seemed?”

In reality, with fuel prices so unpredictable and currently low, investing in fuel efficient and alt fuel cars is much more like buying health insurance than the core of a viable business. Now, health insurance is always good to have. But Detroit has been like a family just barely scraping by–keeping up with insurance payments takes a back seat to paying the mortgage and putting food on the table.

What do people do when they haven’t paid for health insurance, then get sick, and can’t work enough to pay the mortgage? They ask for government assistance, of course.

Anyone who has paid close attention to the EPA ratings–or the real-world fuel economy figures on TrueDelta, has probably noticed that compact cars don’t tend to get much fuel economy on the highway than midsize or even large cars.

Take Toyota’s offerings, for example: 

Yaris – subcompact:  29/35

Corolla – compact: 27/35

Camry – midsize: 21/31

Camry V6 – midsize: 19/28

Avalon – fullsize: 19/28

So, the tiny, 106-horsepower Yaris manages to go only 25 percent farther on a gallon of gas than the large, semi-luxurious 268-horsepower Avalon. Compared to the also much larger, 158-horsepower Camry, the subcompact’s advantage is just 13 percent.

What gives? Well, aside from the fact that the main fuel economy hit of additional weight is getting that weight up to speed, not keeping it there, gearing makes a huge difference. Smaller cars usually have fewer gear ratios in their transmissions–four vs. give or six in this case. And to compensate for their relative lack of power the overall gear ratios (gear ratio multiplied by final drive ratio) in these cars are usually shorter (numerically higher). As a result, the engines in these cars turn more rpm on the highway. The EPA highway test includes a maximum simulated speed of 60 MPH. Even at this speed these smaller engines often turn around 3,000 rpm, while the larger engines when paired with taller gearing are spinning in the low 2000s. Engine efficiency starts to dive around 2,500 rpm.

Drive the 70ish speeds common on today’s highways, and the real-world difference likely shrinks even more. My 2.0-liter Mazda Protege5 gets 27 to 28 on the highway–because the speed limit where I live is 70. I’ve read that the same car, driven at a constant 55, gets close to 40 miles-per-gallon.

The obvious solution: transmissions with six-plus speeds for smaller cars. No doubt they’re coming. Each gear ratio adds about $100 to the price of a car, and given our recent experience with fuel prices many people should be ready to spend another $200 for a five-to-seven MPG bump in highway fuel economy.

Thanks to Matt K of The Auto Writer for asking the question that led to this post.