@Texases,teir 4 grabs them all I believe.
The overwhelming and ubiquitous expansion of the use of computers in automobiles in areas not driven by regulation even provides IMHO hard evidence that the industry would have made use of computer technology naturally too, even if there were no regulatory requirements.
Maybe…but they didn’t. I’m not buying that the manufacturers would have done the right thing and start building cleaner and better gas mileage vehicles on their own. Take a look at the Cafe’ numbers. Those numbers have only changed when the government passed new regulations. GM/Ford and Chryco didn’t advance those numbers even 1/10 of a point until they were forced to.
It costs money for R&D. The use of computers in other parts of the car are mainly for tangible features that can be seen and SOLD as options to consumers. If the manufacturers weren’t going to make a dime off the feature…then I guarantee those features/advancements wouldn’t exist.
As for the EPA getting out of control…In some areas I agree with you on that. But in other areas…no way. Show me the pond/lake/river anywhere in the east you can safely take a drink from.
I don’t know when manufactures did not offer fuel economy cars. It seems that such vehicles go unnoticed or are dismissed until there is a crisis.
Calling a car “economy” for marketing purposes is not the same thing as engineering a car to extract maximum mpg and emissions cleanliness out of it.
Mike, we clearly have a difference of opinion here.
Manufacturers began using computers to meter fuel when/as the technology became available. It was known that fuel injection is better than carburation long before EFI was developed, but it was the ability to run sensor signals through an algorhythm and operate the injectors in that manner that made fuel injection cost effective, reliable, and really efficient. I believe the technology would have evolved without the CAFE mandates. Manufacturers were sensitive to mileage (as a selling feature), efficiency, and reliability long before the feds came into the picture. And, as an added bonus, electronic FI enables more power per gallon by virtue of its ability to allow more complete combustion.
What we would NOT have are EVAP systems. IMHO the size of their contribution to cleaner air is debatable. An entire thread could be run just on that issue alone.
The use of computers in other parts of the car, for saleable features, despite no involvement of the feds, is evidence to me that manufacturers would have evolved to the use of computers even without the feds.
As I previously stated, there was a tremendous amount of improvement in cars and their engines during the first 50 years of existence without any intervention by the feds, all driven my market forces. I have no reason to believe that there would not have been just as much evolution during the second 50 years without fed intervention.
However, as I’ve stated before, I think the EPA did a great deal of good in its early years. But I believe that their continuing to push the limits higher and higher without end has come to the point of being counterproductive. I think that as of this era the EPA is out of control, adding more and more cost to new cars and to the operation of older cars, and adding huge costs and delays to major necessary infrastructure projects for ridiculous reasons.
Manufacturers were sensitive to mileage (as a selling feature), efficiency, and reliability long before the feds came into the picture.
If that’s true…then why were there so few improvements from the 60’s into the 70’s? By the 60’s we were left with 4 manufacturers (GM, Ford, Chryco and AMC) manufacturing 95% of all vehicles sold in the US. Average gas mileage was actually going UP…not down.
I have no reason to believe that there would not have been just as much evolution during the second 50 years without fed intervention.
I contend that the most influential reason to the changes back then was competition. There were dozens of car manufacturers back then…all trying to get a piece of the pie. By the 60’s those dozens dwindled down to just 4…with GM and Ford accounting for 70% of all sales.
But I believe that their continuing to push the limits higher and higher without end has come to the point of being counterproductive.
Possibly…But I think a good part of the problem is this adversarial situation the EPA and the car manufacturers have with each other. They both see each other as the enemy…neither wants to sit down as adults and actually come up with REASONABLE and realistic goals. The big 4 were FORCED to use catalytic converters. Every single improvement in gas mileage and pollution reduction was met with stiff resistance by the car manufacturers.
I would counter, honestly, that the EPA has been largely ineffective in its dealings with vehicles.
For one, they carved out emissions and economy exceptions for light trucks. Suddenly the minivan and SUVs appeared on the scene, and even though they had all the amenities of a normal sedan or station wagon, since they were classified as light trucks they didn’t have to meet the requirements.
They also implemented fleet average mpg, which means as long as you build some 40mpg barebones cheap crapmobile that no one wants, you can still build that 700 horsepower gas guzzling muscle car.
Then they paid a lot more attention to emissions than mileage, and so while engine technology has improved by leaps and bounds, mileage really hasn’t. I was getting 30-40mpg in my 1988 CRX. The guys who had CRX HF’s were adding 10mpg to those numbers. Today’s Civic hybrid, which requires exotic battery technology and electric motor assist and is harder to work on and more dangerous in a wreck, gets the same numbers as the HF guys were turning with their plain old every day normal gas motors 27 years ago.
Quite frankly we should all be driving electric cars charged by solar energy right now, but thanks to anti-environmental activism (let’s not forget that Carter tried to get the ball rolling in the 70’s, and as soon as Reagan got into office he removed the solar panels from the White House roof and ended all that silly talk about alternative energy thereby starting a 30+ year stagnation of technology that should have been nearly fully developed by now) we’re still driving around in cars that use 100+ year old technology and still create carbon emissions which are adding to the cumulative effect of de-sequestering carbon into the environment.
And the worst part is that vehicles are one of the best success stories of the EPA. Don’t even get me started on industry regulation, waste dumpsite regulation, weak penalties for businesses that violate the already weak laws in place, etc.
Mike, there were as many improvements in engine efficiency and performance during the first 50 years of auto manufacturing as there have been the second 50 years. You can’t compare one decade only with the subsequent five decades and get meaningful results.
I agree that the biggest driver of change back then was competition between manufacturers, and the biggest tool in this change was evolving technology. I’d also argue that the biggest change in the following decades was from competition… mainly Toyota and Honda, with (these past decades) Hyundai, and even Kia thrown in, and the biggest tool in his change was evolving technology.
I’m disinclined to give the feds credit for advancements in automotive technology. They either take technology developed by the private sector and make it mandatory or, in the case of the EPA, take existing requirements that manufacturers have managed to meet despite the costs, and raise them before technology exists to meet the new unrealistic standards.
The feds may have even hampered technological evolution by forcing the manufacturers to dump enormous resources into gas economy that might have been otherwise spent on alternatives. Toyota developed the Prius in spite of the feds, not because of the feds.
I'm disinclined to give the feds credit for advancements in automotive technology.
I don’t think the feds had any technology input. But by setting cafe standards it forced the companies to find ways of making more efficient vehicles. While I agree that computers made it possible for them to advance efficiency…it doesn’t mean they would. Carburetor vehicles worked just fine. But they couldn’t meet emissions and the Cafe’ numbers with that technology.
Car manufacturers were NOT behind the switch to unleaded gas. They fought real hard to block that legislation.
I’m not convinced that car manufacturers would be making as efficient cars today if they weren’t pushed into it.
Gotta agree@Mike,Mike there is a small river near where I live you can supposedly drink out of.I do know most times.when I go a "Floundering"I swallow a bellyful and it hasnt hurt me yet(never even got “Beaver Fever”
We clearly disagree on the issue of the EPAs contribution (ore not) to the evolution of automotive technology. And I doubt if either of us will ever convince the other. There are arguments on both sides, and what we’re really arguing about is a hypothetical situation. What would have happened if the feds hadn’t gotten involved is, like all hypothetical guesses about the past, unprovable.
There’s also the issue of whether the EPA is now promulgating mandates that are counterproductive. I believe they are. Not everyone agrees. I’m satisfied that I’ve made clear arguments, and I never expected everyone to agree. Having made clear arguments is really the best we can expect.
Some current midsize-cars get that 30-40mpg that the old CRX got, which was mentioned
And the midsize cars are roomier, more comfortable, safer, faster, etc. than that CRX. And they’re 10 times more useful, because you can have 4 adults in comfort, plus stuff in the trunk. You can forget that in the CRX
yup . . . cars have definitely improved
@db4690 I will concede that cars have improved, but, for me, there is no new car that is as fun to drive as the MG Midget or its twin, the Austin Healy Sprite. These cars weren’t powerful with their engines of 52 horsepower and a top speed of around 78 mph. There are some larger cars today that equal the mileage of the MG Midget, and there are few cars today that are less reliable, but it was sure fun, at least for me, to drive the MG Midget just to see how much I could do with its limited power by proper selection of the gears. I also thought the VW Beetle of that era with its 36 hp engine was a blast, even though the VW was an evil handling bucket. I also liked driving the Morris 850, or its twin, the Austin 850.
Unfortunately, practicality ruled. Even though I was single when I got my first job in 1965, I bought a Rambler Classic. 550 sedan. I often took my parents with me and I couldn’t transport them in an MG Midget. Besides,that, I needed a dependable car that would start in cold weather.
I know I have wierd tastes. While others were buying the Apple IIe computer back in the early 1980s for $3000, I bought a Texas Instruments TI 99 4A computer for less than $300. It was fun to see just how big a program I could write that would run on that machine. For storage, the machine could be connected to a simple cassette recorder. Getting the most out of that simple computer was akin to getting the most out of the MG Midget.
I suspect that thesamemountainbike is more correct in theory and MikeInNH is more correct in reality. If you have intelligent, practical (buyers), they will over time demand more efficient and cleaner cars, no gov’t intervention necessary. But what you have is a population that is short-sighted and narcissistic and easily distracted by automatic butt scratchers and heated coffee cup holders, so you need the gov’t to come in and mandate unleaded gas, catalytic converters, CAFE standards, etc. I doubt if the typical “monthly payment buyer” spends any time thinking about whether there will be any oil left for his great-grandchildren to use.
Also I agree that we’ve passed the point of diminishing returns. The bureaucracy feeds on itself and wants to continue to grow and find more things to regulate and micromanage, stifling innovation.
Gotta agree@Mike,Mike there is a small river near where I live you can supposedly drink out of.I do know most times.when I go a "Floundering"I swallow a bellyful and it hasnt hurt me yet(never even got "Beaver Fever"
I’ve done the same at local lakes around here…but not one of them would pass any municipalities water test…not even close.
I'm satisfied that I've made clear arguments, and I never expected everyone to agree. Having made clear arguments is really the best we can expect.
Agreed. You’ve made good points…and I’ve agreed with some of them. I’m not convinced the buying public has much influence with large corporations. People want to buy efficient vehicles…they are limited to what’s available. If there isn’t a car around that gets 30mpg and can seat 4 comfortably then you can’t buy one. That’s not going to force the companies to build them.
@db4690 Everything you said is absolutely correct. I would submit, however, that those “midsized” cars you talk about now include the Civic, which used to be a small car. Now the Civic isn’t all that much smaller than my Accord-based TL.
My point is that, yes, we are seeing better mpg when taking into account the size of the vehicle.
But, what if we were still making small cars using today’s improved engine technology. A CRX-sized vehicle today would probably be flirting with 75-100mpg. And while it would be impractical if you needed to haul 4 adults around (but extremely practical in hauling cargo around - I’ve won “you’ll never get that giant thing in that tiny car” bets on more than one occasion with that car), in reality how many times do we need to haul 4 adults around?
My TL will seat 4 comfortably and 5 in a pinch. Most of the time, it seats 1. When the SO comes along, it seats 2. I very, very rarely have anyone in the back seats. There aren’t even any wrinkles in the leather back there it’s used so infrequently.
And I’m not alone. I look at other 4-door cars all the time on my commutes, and it’s pretty rare that I see 2, much less more than 2, people in a car.
What I’m getting at is that vehicle bloat has convinced us that we need big cars that can seat a lot of people, when in reality we don’t. Combine that with being convinced that we need to keep up with Porsches in our family sedans (people tell me all the time that my TL is slow – erm, if I wanted a race car I’d have gotten one, y’know?) and a lot of those engine efficiency gains have been turned toward keeping mileage within legal range while upping horsepower rather than beating the legal mpg range and not worrying so much about power.
A good example is Hyundai’s Veloster. Go on gearhead forums and people rag on it left and right because it’s so slow. They even often compare it unfavorably to the CRX because it’s a “hot-hatch” that emphasizes handling just like the CRX was. That’s especially amusing because the non-turbo Veloster turns in almost identical 0-60 times as the CRX Si while getting 40+mpg (realworld numbers, not fake marketing numbers).
Now imagine what kind of mileage that thing would get if they deleted the back seat and shrunk it down to the size of a CRX. But it’ll never happen because people want engine technology that enables them to go faster without using more gas - they’re not all that interested in using less gas.
My Dad was born in 1904 and died in 2001. I have thought about the technology that was developed or expanded the first 50 years of his life and then the technology that has come since the mid 1950s. From 1904 the mid 1950s, the nation was wired for electrical power. Radio and television came into being. Computers were developed and being used by businesses in the mid 1950s. One of the major networks programmed an algorithm into a computer to predict the outcome of the 1952 election. According to the results from the computer, Eisenhower was predicted to win by a,landslide. The network didn’t believe the vote would be that lopsided, so the computer results were never announced. It turned out that the computer prediction was dead accurate. The transistor was developed in Bell Labs in 1949. In the early 1950s, the telephone company had started doing digital transmission over fiber optic cable
When I was in the 6th grade in 1952, cars would be powered by nuclear energy. Yet, my car today is powered by an internal combustion engine just as my 1947 Pontiac was. The 1940 Oldsmobile introduced the first really successful automatic transmission. When Pontiac offered the Hydramatic transmission in 1948,_70% of its cars were sold with that option.
What has,happened since the mid 1950s? Cars have improved but not really changed in the way they operate. Televisions have improved, but I am not sure the programs offered have.
I think Tesla is making a long overdue breakthrough in the way automobiles are powered. Sure, we have improved on existing technologies since the 1950s. I think it is time to think out of the box and develop some new ideas.
Back on the Tesla front - the new model X is out starting Sept. 29. They “will launch with a premium-priced special version called the Signature series that will cost between $132,000 and $144,000, a Tesla spokeswoman said.”
For that kind of money, I’d get a P85-D myself. Faster, seats just as many people, and looks better.
In the early 1950s, the telephone company had started doing digital transmission over fiber optic cable
First fiber optic phone system wasn’t installed until the 70’s.