50+mpg Madza2/Ford

Naturally-aspirated, non-hybrid, getting 53mpg? Dang! I'd love to see an HSD version of this car!!! mpg in the 70s? (someone commented below that article that maybe it only has 50 horsepower)

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I took pictures of it at the LA Auto Show. It looks great, just like the rest of Mazda's current cars.





More LA Autoshow photos:
http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-hybrid-news/73000-phv-prius-photos-i-took-la-auto-show.html

 

50hp? Multiple that by 2.
It has 102hp and 103 ft-lb.

 

It states that it is not coming to the US, so I am assuming that is not EPA MPG, but the wildly more inflated Japanese 10.15-mode standard. The Prius gets 83.5 MPG by that standard, so 53 MPG is good but not up there with the hybrids.

 

My SiL has the Mazda2 2008 version and is very happy with it. Make no mistake though, it is a micro-car.

 

That's right. And doing the math in reverse, that means EPA rating would be in the neighborhood of 30ish mpg's. That what tic's folks off too. Remember all the whiners complaining when the 2004 Prius came out? "HEY! I can't get 60mpg! what's up?". The inflated #'s come back to bite, eventually. That's why EPA came up with more realistic testing methods, to model how most folks drive ... with lead feet

 

Okay, kind of long set up here. But about 10 years ago, I worked in a business park on the weekends, but the company I worked for was located in the back behind everyone. Where I worked there were no direct windows outside. So often on the weekends people would sneak back to our garbage dumpsters and illegally dump their stuff. I'd go out and find everything from normal household garbage to couchs magically dumped in our dumpsters.
Well one weekend, I'm working and I hear the slam of the dumpster and then the squeal of tires as someone blazes away. So myself and the one other person that covered the weekends, we go out and look in the dumpster. Well someone had ditched a collection of magazines. Magazines collected over decades. We fished them out, there were 100's...and looked at them.
One thing that was interesting to me were the many car ads. 70's, 80's and 90's. You could kind of tell when the gas crunch of the 70's hit because you saw ad's for Volkswagen Rabbits, and Toyota Corolla's. Then later, Toyota Tercels...
But looking at "decades" worth of these magazines also revealed something disturbing. Even when periods came when gas efficiency was a selling point, through the decades the gas efficiency didn't really change. Infact it seemed to get worse.
So I don't know. In Europe, Asia the foreign market maybe 4 cylinder gas engines can be made to be more efficient. I think that's great. The buzz you hear from almost all automakers is that the future will hold more 4 cylinder engines with CVT's and tweaked, turbo-charged or whatever to get near to hybrid gas efficiency. I don't have a problem with that if they can do it.
However as I looked at Ad's from the 70's touting the fuel efficient marvel of a 25mpg Volkswagen Rabbit and then looked at Ad's from the mid 80's touting the cutting edge fuel efficiency of the 27mpg Toyota Tercel I realized that automakers just weren't really that active in becoming more fuel efficient. It's 2009 and while we've found ways of using lighter materials and perhaps can offer more equipment and vehicle size in comparison to "fuel sippers" of previous decades, overall the MPG of conventional gas cars hasn't really changed much. Just like in the 70's good gas mileage is considered anything "city" being in the 25mpg range, and highway in the 30-30's range. And outside of the diesel, electric or hybrid world, to get those numbers still usually means a significant sacrifice in size and power. In 2009 to get 25-30 mpg, your still looking at driving a small car much like in the 70's.
So anyway, longwinded way to get to my point. But my feeling is while talk of 55 mpg gas powered cars is fantastic. And maybe they do exist and are viable and sold/useable in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, in the U.S.A. it seems automakers and auto sellers don't really want to do anything until either they have to, or it is undeniably profitable.
Infact, if all it took was a CVT and some tinkering with a 4 cylinder engine to boost MPG's into the 50's range then as a consumer I'm actually a little ticked. My feeling then becomes "What took you so long?".
The Prius was the first real tangible commercial success and also real significant mainstream "commercial" vehicle I remember that actually offered a significant difference in MPG's and also emissions. I'm hoping I see progress on all fronts and more real, and fast paced change in hopefully the next 40 years of my life, than what I have witnessed in the Ad's for automobile from the previous 40.
With The Prius, The Leaf, The Volt and Fusion Hybrid...some change has come. But when I hear automakers saying things like, we don't plan to invest too much into "alternative" technologies but we are going to make new more efficient gasoline powered automobiles, I have a hard time believing that isn't just code for "We plan to keep things the way they have been for as long as we possibly can".

 

Why is the May 2007 article posted now?

Ken@Japan

 

Turbo chargers are great for improving efficiency, but automakers have always used turbo chargers to increase horsepower instead of decreasing MPG (due, historically, to marketing).

I think the automakers (and the general public) have been too conditioned to think that a "turbo" emblem means the car must be "high power!," instead of seeing a turbo as "efficiency." The truth is that automakers start with a naturally-aspirated car model engine that is already being sold and then decide to add a turbo version of the vehicle and sell it for more money. Few automakers (mainly Saab, Volvo, Volkswagen, to name the first that come to my mind) have designed engines from the beginning with the intent to have a turbo on them. For example, VW's normal engine may be a 2.0 liter but their turbo-charged engine (which puts out more power) may be a 1.8 liter. In this case, it is an increase on both ends - fuel efficiency and power. No one yet (to my knowledge) has designed a turbo-charged engine with the intent to ONLY increase MPG and NOT increase horsepower. If Toyota, for example, wanted to do this with the Corolla, they would replace the 130hp 1.8 liter engine with a turbo-charged 130hp 1.4 liter engine, and it would be put in the base model and not some fancy "turbo!."

Turbo chargers are great for improving efficiency, but automakers have always used turbo chargers to increase horsepower instead of decreasing MPG (due, historically, to marketing).

 

VW's TSI series engines are very good MPG and power.

Ken@Japan

 

Yes. But, some of them have only a turbocharger.
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volkswagen_Group_petrol_engines]List of Volkswagen Group petrol engines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

Ken@Japan

 

<Ahem> I measured a 0.250 ms startup time with my NHW11 in October, 2005. So the Mazda is only 140% slower than my 2003 Prius.

Sorry folks but auto-stop technology is better than nothing but it should be standard on all cars as well as an integrated alternator/starter motor. That cars are sold without an integrated starter and an alternator is the greatest insult, the highest condemnation of existing, non-hybrid vehicles.

Bob Wilson

 

Ford is working on it's "[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_EcoBoost_engine"]EcoBoost[/ame]" line of engines.

These are all 4cyl and 6cyl direct injection turbo charged engines designed for fuel economy. Eventually, all 8 cyl engines will be replaced with 6cyl EcoBoost units and 6cyl engines will be replaced with 4cyl engines.