Maybe We Shouldn't Be Worried

[Tim Hilliard]

About CAFE standards taking away our 5.0...

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/e88db56b#/e88db56b/6

Sponsored

 

[Tim Hilliard]

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/e88db56b#/e88db56b/10

54MPG seems like a bit of a stretch IMO.

 

[Trackaholic]

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/e88db56b#/e88db56b/10

54MPG seems like a bit of a stretch IMO.

Yeah, I agree. The article mentions that they've gone from ~20 to ~25.5 since October 2007. So basically 5.5 MPG in 7 years. And that's starting from an already "low" number. Each incremental improvement only gets more difficult (expensive) from here on out.

I'm an engineer, and I don't see it happening unless every car is a Volt, Prius, or full electric.

I guess the 54 is based on older EPA testing methods and doesn't really mean 54 on the window sticker, but if I recall it's still quite a goal.

Good luck with that.

-T

 

[DHG1078]

This article had a comforting tone, but it said limited production runs such as the hell cat have minor impact on fleet averages. That is true, selling 2000 cars has practically zero impact on averages when your talking about selling millions a year. It is not saying that big v-8's will still be around in big numbers.

I am also an engineer, and the only way I see a 5.0 getting 54.5 mpg is if the car weighs absolutely nothing, or with heavy use of hybrid technologies like batteries or hydrogen fuel cells.

Ironically, cars powered by hydrogen will produce water vapor which you would think is great. Unfortunately, water vapor is one of the worst (possibly worst, I don't remember which is off the top of my head) green house gasses out there. The batteries are terrible for the environment also after they are done in cars.

54.5 mpg average is a huge goal. It will not be easy/cheap to do. It means bigger emphasis on aerodynamics, which will remove a lot of individuality in car design, more expensive light weight materials, and smaller motors/ hybrid cars. Hopefully we will get more diesels here in the united states.

 

[Tim Hilliard]

This article had a comforting tone, but it said limited production runs such as the hell cat have minor impact on fleet averages. That is true, selling 2000 cars has practically zero impact on averages when your talking about selling millions a year. It is not saying that big v-8's will still be around in big numbers.

I am also an engineer, and the only way I see a 5.0 getting 54.5 mpg is if the car weighs absolutely nothing, or with heavy use of hybrid technologies like batteries or hydrogen fuel cells.

Ironically, cars powered by hydrogen will produce water vapor which you would think is great. Unfortunately, water vapor is one of the worst (possibly worst, I don't remember which is off the top of my head) green house gasses out there. The batteries are terrible for the environment also after they are done in cars.

54.5 mpg average is a huge goal. It will not be easy/cheap to do. It means bigger emphasis on aerodynamics, which will remove a lot of individuality in car design, more expensive light weight materials, and smaller motors/ hybrid cars. Hopefully we will get more diesels here in the united states.

:rant:5.0's don't need to get 54MPG. The Corporate Average needs to hit that number. They just needs to sell a ton of little piss pots that get really good mileage.

I was unaware that the natural process of water evaporation (how clouds form) was considered bad for the environment :shrug:

I have been following fuel cell development since it started, several startups based near me. The dirty little secret no one likes to talk about like all alternatives is the fuel source. It takes lots of natural gas and lots of ammonia (if memory serves) to create hydrogen.

It's the same as the holier-than-thou Prickus drivers and those POS
cars that sit in the left lane in front of me everyday. We are a carbon based society and every component in the engineering/manufacturing/transport of any thing we consume requires oil, lot and lots of oil. Batteries are the least of our problems, just so everyone knows, batteries are extremely easy to recycle(not so sure of latest technology)

Natural gas while today it is plentiful and cheap we waste it, once we have converted to it as the major source it will become prohibitively expensive. Most of your Co-Generation plants (mirco-grids) do not efficiently recover or maximize the heat recovery because today everyone is spinning their meter the other way showing large savings with a cheap fuel source. They are throwing away that heat and in turn using more energy( gas-oil-electricity) due to internal politics/ignorance. Pretty much any large building is making it's own electric/heat today, what do you think will happen with the fuel source suddenly sky rockets?

Pure electric is reliant on a stressed grid, so now we want to add more load to it, coal is falling out of favor strictly due to bad press (technology exists to make it very clean)so clean energy is natural gas, nuke, solar/wind. Solar is unreliable, the footprint is huge for the power made, wind would be good but it suffers from NIMBY.

Nuke is most viable but too many people don't understand it.

We have the best quality power in the world, things are being set in motion to change that to make it lower quality. Americans have no idea how good our electric is compared to other countries. We barely deviate from 60hz, corporations a certain one in particular would like to change that. Think of every appliance in your house plugged into an outlet requiring a separate power supply so it doesn't burn up due to frequency and voltage deviations. That's a lot of new consumer spending, the road we are headed down.

We don't need vehicles that are aerodynamic, in the next few years at our current growth rate you will be lucky to maintain a speed to take advantage of it, we need less people- not popular but I'm a realist not a sheep. We can not sustain our current direction, all the shell games we have been playing for the last century are about all played out. I'll be impressed if our world resembles anything like our current one assuming we make it to 2025. :rant:

 

[DHG1078]

I understand it is a fleet average. The 5.0 still has to get much better mpg, or Ford has to limit sales of the big v-8's to keep a high fleet average. I don't want to know what the gas-guzzler tax and other applicable taxes will be like in 2025 with current mpg ratings.

I don't want to turn this thread into a global warming thread, but I was unaware that there was only water vapor in the atmosphere when there was clouds :shrugs: There is a direct correlation between the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and the temperature. As temperatures rise, so does the amount of water vapor. This is an issue because water vapor retains heat. More water vapor means more heat is retained and it goes on and on. Water vapor has been known to be a big player in green house gases. It wasn't until fairly recently that we were able to start determining exactly how big of a role.

 

[Suddueth13]

Sorry DHG, but you have to show some sources on that showing how water vapor retains more heat than carbon dioxide does.

 

[w3rkn]

Sorry DHG, but you have to show some sources on that showing how water vapor retains more heat than carbon dioxide does.

?

One is a gas, the other a free floating liquid.
It holds more heat, because it has more mass, but what he is trying to say is that the more water vapor in the atmosphere, the more greenhouse gasses rise because it traps the planets heat.

Thus more water vapor... & so on..




CAFE standard are fleet averages, so you will see incentives on the turbos and probably tax/premium on v8. Nothing any of us have to worry about for the next 10 years..

 

[tbonez3858]

For Ford the V8 is extinct and thats just the facts. Ford sells 1/2 million F-series trucks per year. The ecoboost gets 1 to 2 mpg better per truck and that is critical to Fords Cafe standard and hence why they are dumping their investments in that direction. The F-series is Fords bread and butter and it funds the V8 in the Mustang. Ford is clearly moving away from the V8 in the F-series and the eco boost already outsells all other engines in the Fseries combined. There is no investment and no funding to produce a V8 for the infinitesimally small crowd that wants a high hp performance Mustang crowd. Ford will produce a monster hybrid or V6 twin turbo and after one drive the Mustang crowd will become believers. There will be complaining but when they get a lighter, faster, better, better mpg car the complaints wont last long.

Look at the financials and run the numbers - Its $150,000,000 in savings for the EB Fseries alone! (from the link below)..

You'd think that extra 1-2 MPG would be irrelevant, but it's crucial…. CAFE-wise. Ford sells on the order of half a million F-trucks each year. If each one costs Ford (and thus, customers) even as little as $300 more in gas guzzler taxes per vehicle, when multiplied by half a million, that becomes real money, real quickly.

You will still be able to get a V8 from a boutique auto manufacturer because, lets be real, the cafe standards are for the masses and not the rich. Im not a wealth redistribution or class warfare guy but those are the facts. There are two sets of rules one for the masses and one for the people that can drop 100/200k for a car and not even think about it. The crowd that pays 200k for a car is the same crowd that write massive campaign checks.



http://spectator.org/articles/34932/goodbye-v-8s-engines-could

 

[DHG1078]

?

One is a gas, the other a free floating liquid.
It holds more heat, because it has more mass, but what he is trying to say is that the more water vapor in the atmosphere, the more greenhouse gasses rise because it traps the planets heat.

Thus more water vapor... & so on..




CAFE standard are fleet averages, so you will see incentives on the turbos and probably tax/premium on v8. Nothing any of us have to worry about for the next 10 years..

Thank you for clarifying that for me w3rkn. I should have explained it a little better. Lot's of crappy stuff going on in my wife's family so I have to cram my thoughts in in a short period of time.

If people have an interest in a thread in discussing the mechanisms of climate change, I would enjoy such a conversation topic and maybe learn something from others as well as give input on some research I have done when I get some spare time. This thread just isn't the place for that.

 

[DHG1078]

For Ford the V8 is extinct and thats just the facts. Ford sells 1/2 million F-series trucks per year. The ecoboost gets 1 to 2 mpg better per truck and that is critical to Fords Cafe standard and hence why they are dumping their investments in that direction. The F-series is Fords bread and butter and it funds the V8 in the Mustang. Ford is clearly moving away from the V8 in the F-series and the eco boost already outsells all other engines in the Fseries combined. There is no investment and no funding to produce a V8 for the infinitesimally small crowd that wants a high hp performance Mustang crowd. Ford will produce a monster hybrid or V6 twin turbo and after one drive the Mustang crowd will become believers. There will be complaining but when they get a lighter, faster, better, better mpg car the complaints wont last long.

Look at the financials and run the numbers - Its $150,000,000 in savings for the EB Fseries alone! (from the link below)..

You'd think that extra 1-2 MPG would be irrelevant, but it's crucial…. CAFE-wise. Ford sells on the order of half a million F-trucks each year. If each one costs Ford (and thus, customers) even as little as $300 more in gas guzzler taxes per vehicle, when multiplied by half a million, that becomes real money, real quickly.

You will still be able to get a V8 from a boutique auto manufacturer because, lets be real, the cafe standards are for the masses and not the rich. Im not a wealth redistribution or class warfare guy but those are the facts. There are two sets of rules one for the masses and one for the people that can drop 100/200k for a car and not even think about it. The crowd that pays 200k for a car is the same crowd that write massive campaign checks.



http://spectator.org/articles/34932/goodbye-v-8s-engines-could

Well said, I just want to add that ford sold 763,402 F-series trucks last year :eyebulge:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...gent-u-s-car-industry-2013-sales-results-show

I am unsure what percentage of that is F-150 sales though.

 

[Suddueth13]

?

One is a gas, the other a free floating liquid.
It holds more heat, because it has more mass, but what he is trying to say is that the more water vapor in the atmosphere, the more greenhouse gasses rise because it traps the planets heat.

Thus more water vapor... & so on..




CAFE standard are fleet averages, so you will see incentives on the turbos and probably tax/premium on v8. Nothing any of us have to worry about for the next 10 years..

Exactly. Carbon Dioxide is the number one greenhouse gas. You need to show some proof where it shows water vapor retaining more heat than carbon dioxide. Unless you think more clouds in the sky would cause a runaway warming effect?

 

[Tim Hilliard]

CO2...the claim is it causes a warming effect...the claim is it is man made, because mankind does have that much ego. Some claim we are in a cooling cycle, it all depends which way the wind is blowing as far as study grants are currently going. We only have accurate recorded data going back 150 years, maybe the earth is just in a 300 year cycle, maybe it is a 22K year cycle, or a 10 million year cycle...C02 makes up an infinitely small percentage of the atmosphere I'm curious what effect doubling it really has on temperature. <Placing Flame Suit On>

 

[Suddueth13]

No one in the scientific community legitimately studying climate change say we are in a cooling period. CO2 isn't man made, but man is releasing more if it into the atmosphere than would naturally occur. I believe I saw the other day that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are now the highest they've ever been. The great thing about climate change and global warming is that it's real whether you believe it or not.

 

[Seabee1973]

CO2...the claim is it causes a warming effect...the claim is it is man made, because mankind does have that much ego. Some claim we are in a cooling cycle, it all depends which way the wind is blowing as far as study grants are currently going. We only have accurate recorded data going back 150 years, maybe the earth is just in a 300 year cycle, maybe it is a 22K year cycle, or a 10 million year cycle...C02 makes up an infinitely small percentage of the atmosphere I'm curious what effect doubling it really has on temperature. <Placing Flame Suit On>

Climate change is here and it is not going away any time soon. As one guy posted, its true and multiplying... some places may not seem so with harsh winters... no point in further explaining, do your research and its effects especially the ocean with ice cap melting and ocean level rising and islands disappearing from that...

Sponsored