I Care more About MPG Than MPH
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 03.14.08
That is the name of a new campaign to promote the idea that "Enough is enough. Time for us to show that we care more about our car's gas mileage than we do about how long it takes our car to go from 0 to 60." Brian Carr, who blogs at Daily Fuel Economy Tip, hopes to show that "through the “I Care More About MPG Than MPH” campaign us gas sippers of the world can come together and show that there are MANY car buying consumers our there who want these car companies to step up and do their part to help reduce our gasoline consumption and our impact on the environment by giving us more environmentally friendly and gas thrifty options."
He has set up Facebook and Myspace pages to facilitate the mingling of fellow campaigners. He hopes to get a million people to join; on Facebook at the time of this writing he has eight, but hey, it has only been a day or two.
For the rest of the world, we need an "I care more about litres/100km than km/hr" but it does not have quite the same ring. ::Daily Fuel Economy Tip via ::Hawker400 at Hugg
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I am surprised it took so long for this to surface as a grass roots issue.
Try sometime to order a new car with a fully manual transmission. They barely exist.
Try to get one with a four-banger and less than rubber peeling, balls to the back seat acceleration. Not on the lot.
We are continually told "we only sell what customers want." What they really mean is they offer what makes them the most profit. Those with more common sense are left in a minority, underserved demographic.
As a Non-American, I'm pleased to see the prices American drivers are paying at the pumps closer reflect what the rest of the world pays at the pumps.
Europeans have been paying well over $5/ us gallon
Many places in Canada are now $4.50/us gallon
I agree! I'd love to see an alternative, give us Diesel. Give us Electric! Give us Hydrogen...
I was looking at this years line-up of vehicles being offered. The Accord, bigger. The Camry, bigger. The Focus, bigger. The F-150, bigger. The Caravan, bigger.
Only a smattering of 'eco' or 'green' vehicles...
Meanwhile we are living in darker and cooler homes, spending extra time recycling everthing we can find,. taking shorter showers, basically doing everything within our meager power to help. All that effort gets blown out the tailpipe on our way to work. Sheesh!
As a Non-American, I'm pleased to see the prices American drivers are paying at the pumps closer reflect what the rest of the world pays at the pumps.
Europeans have been paying well over $5/ us gallon
Many places in Canada are now $4.50/us gallon
I agree! I'd love to see an alternative, give us Diesel. Give us Electric! Give us Hydrogen...
I was looking at this years line-up of vehicles being offered. The Accord, bigger. The Camry, bigger. The Focus, bigger. The F-150, bigger. The Caravan, bigger.
Only a smattering of 'eco' or 'green' vehicles...
Meanwhile we are living in darker and cooler homes, spending extra time recycling everthing we can find,. taking shorter showers, basically doing everything within our meager power to help. All that effort gets blown out the tailpipe on our way to work. Sheesh!
Beyond just better, more efficient cars, how about more options between the bicycle and the buick??? most of us really don't need a car for many trips, but a two wheeler is too exposed while a car is overkill just to get to the store and back....how about this: www.BugEV.net one cent per mile!
I had to build my MPG getter. I built a car that gets 1000miles per tank (55mpg) and out accelerates most VWs. Show me where the auto gtgs are for hign milage autos on earthday!!!
Just launched a site that I thought you might be interested in. It's a calculator that compares mpg between hybrid and gas vehicles and calculates your potential monthly savings. You can try it out at http://www.hybridvsgas.com. If you have any suggestions, let me know.
Sheesh....if you're so concerned about mpg, why not ride a horse? They're cuddly, organic, consume no fossil fuels (in fact, they produce amazing amounts of methane), and require far less infrastructure support them. Better yet, if you ride to a bar on a horse, you can be stone drunk and the horse will take you back home. Between horses, trains, and bicycles we could all be living in 1890 again, but with better hygene and the internet.
Try sometime to order a new car with a fully manual transmission. They barely exist.
Manual Transmissions in most cars are actually NOT more efficient in most cars today (Automatic transmissions shift faster, choose the more efficient gear quicker than most people actually will, and in general, are less enthusiastic). If you really think this is an issue, why not go dual clutch or CVT - much more efficient than manual.
The more power your car produces, the more efficient it becomes at lower speeds, thus you get better gas mileage. If you drive a 3500 lb car with a 100 hp 4 banger, you are going to actually lose out on mpg because how hard the little engine has to try to move the car, how long it takes, and the power it takes to sustain the speed. You shouldn't really be worried about MPG but more about emissions. MPG does not necessarily mean less emissions - that's where hybrids step in. They actually don't get really all that great of MPG, it's that they create much less emissions and this is what people miss, they think hybrid = mileage, when really hybrid allows for a smaller engine with fewer emissions to power a bigger car and still be as efficient at moving around as a bigger car.
A point that you also miss is that a "bigger" car is not necessarily less efficient. If a car becomes bigger but weighs less it can increase efficiency. And as the case is with most of these companies, even though they are getting bigger, the drag coefficient is decreasing, thus throwing the whole "bigger" argument out.
If you really want to improve upon the efficiency of cars, get an engineering degree and do some research to actually do something about it rather than lobbying irrelevant issues.