You are a 'reverse' commuter like a friend of mine who lives in The Beaches and works in Mr. & Mrs. Sauga. He also wouldn't consider taking the TTC. He doesn't pay for parking at his job either. Now, live in Scarberia and take a job on Bay street.
If any major car manufacturer had a product that could give an average car
90-100 mpg, surely it could revise it to make a car that now gets 25 mpg get 32 mpg instead. A little clever tweaking like that would put that particular manufacturer at the top of the heap. The fact nothing like that has happened indicates there is no such product.
Which works on the same theory that there will not be any time- machines, ever. Not even in the future. We would have had visitors by now, eh?
How do you know we haven't???
WOW! for an ultralight you sure are doing pretty good. What do you use when out in salt water?
Not much of a tree-hugger, are you. :)
RE: Subject
Must be a slow day in the news room for this old wives tale to get any ink, virtual or otherwise.
Lew
I have never fished salt water, but I'm sure my '6 and graphite ultralight wont get me much. Even my medium action 7' bass rod will probably be useless even with 20lb test. Naaaa.. just my ultra light and low-hanging fruit for now...:)
Maybe if the blade was heavy enough.
That would suck if you later decided to grow a beard.
I think he's spouting urban myths myself.
That goes along with the 80mpg carburetor that GM bought from the inventor and shelved - and thousands of people "saw" it right there - on the shelf. Water into gasoline - sorta like gold from sea water...
I had my doubts about Buddy Hackett, but other than him, I don't think so.
Yeah, except for one slight difference: there really *is* gold in sea water.
Well, here's one that they tried to squelch, but it finally broke through:
I thought water was known as the universal solvent. JP
Christmas?
If you are willing to wait long enough.
Your square wheels and my square bearings! We coulda been rich! We coulda been contenders!
We can do that now, except it's less about tweaking and more about choices. We could have a more efficient large vehicle, it just wouldn't go stoplight to stoplight like a 60's muscle car.
People buying cars want serious acceleration and hauling power, and lots of amenities and safety gear, regardless of need. Cars are stylish, and usually purchased on want over need.
Many Prius, smart car, Hemi Mega Cab Power Wagon, and H2 purchasers actually buy vehicles for similar reasons, they're making a personal statement. This is documented and studied by auto company marketing departments, with the advertising for a specific vehicle planned to match. A perfect example of this is the new crop of crossover SUV's, with SUV looks, over car or mini-van underpinnings.
My wife had a 1991 4 dr. Mazda Protege "econobox" that reliably got 40 MPG on highway trips with a 1.8L 16v engine. It had decent acceleration with a stick shift, one airbag, a basic interior with non-powered windows and locks, etc... Both of us felt relatively comfortable driving it.
The current car that occupies the same slot in the Mazda line-up weighs almost 800 pounds more, goes like stink (compared to my Protege), and includes power everything as standard equipment. In certain, but not all crashes, it's safer. Heavier cars usually fare better against other vehicles, properly designed lighter cars are often better in single car wrecks. Gas mileage is down in the high-20's.
All of this was really drilled into me when I became a pilot. Everything in physics is a trade-off. More performance = less range, replace the range, get less payload, replace the range and payload, use even more fuel, continue in loop... Cars are no different, it's just not as obvious. If there were some way to drastically increase piston engine efficiency, I think we'd see it in airplanes. A basic, 4 cylinder, 4 seat piston aircraft goes for ~ $300,000 new!
I'm not intending to judge others. My wife drives a 14 MPG 4.0L Jeep Wrangler with 32" tires, because she likes it. It rarely goes off road, never with her at the wheel. It handles like crap, with little accident avoidance capability. The only 4WD usage is in the snow, but as a teacher, she gets most snowy days off! I'm the only one who uses it with the top down, 3-4 days a year, as it messes up her hair. She loves her Jeep and the outdoorsy image that goes with it.
My apologies for the looooooong post!
What a lot of people don't get, is that there are direct conversion formulae.
1 Gallon of fuel contains a finite amount of energy. Period. If that is used to move a Humvee from the stoplights to the next time the brakes are applied and overcoming rolling resistance, wind resistance and friction in the the time we get to the next stoplight...etc. If, for argument sake, it needs all the energy from a gallon of fuel to accomplish this task, a 80mpg carburator or a 1000mpg carburator aren't going to make one bit of difference.It requires a certain amount of fuel to do a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time. And it does not make a difference if you squeeze the fuel through a generator and a set of batteries or create steam first. X amount of fuel = X amount of work. Now, there are stupid ways to DO the work, such as heating up all the air around you in the process of doing the work, or dragging a parachute behind your plane fro no reason...but you will NOT get more from your gallon than what ultimately is stored in that gallon.
I say, hook everything up to a perpetual motion machine.
The "which works on the same theory" post hasn't appeared on my server--this is a response to that.
The car manufacturers have a vested interest in getting good gas mileage. They pay a tax based on average fuel economy. If they had a way to make a '76 Lincoln get 30 mpg by tacking on a gadget they would have used that instead of going to all the trouble of redesigning their entire product line, designing new engines, tooling up new production lines, and all the other costly and time consuming things they needed to do in order to avoid that tax.
While all of this is true, it's ignoring efficiency. If that Humvee with an internal combustion engine gets 10 mpg, if it could be fitted with a 100% efficient engine it might get 30 or more mpg with no change in performance. Trouble is we don't know how to make a 100% efficient engine or anything coming even close. Still any increase in efficiency will reduce fuel consumption.
The CAFE law was changed recently to require CAFE of 35 mpg by 2020. That means that the auto manufacturers are going to be making more small cars and looking for ways to make large ones more efficient.
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