NADA: New cafe rules price people out of market.

Good grief. What a load of crap. We've been hearing this BS from the US auto industry forever

Fighting the CAFE standards vs. being ahead of them is why GM and Ford are the last remaining US car companies and only have a 32% share of US market.

Produce a safe, cost effective, five passenger family car that gets 50 mpg by 2010? Impossible!!!!

 

Lobbyists and special interest groups. Ugg NADA is a joke and nothing more than a front for automotive manufactures. Believing them is like taking advice on smoking from Phillip Morris!

 

And just imagine that was biodiesel.

 

Not much better than hybrid alone in fuel economy, but quite a bit more expensive.

This has been analyzed in depth here on PC is you are interested.

 

My next car unless Ford or Toyota match it.

Volvo Unveils Plug-in Hybrid Diesel V60: 124 MPG, 30 Electric Miles, AWD, 0-60 in 6.9 Sec

Hopefully the 2015 model gets 100 electric miles.

 

Don't confuse diesel plug-ins with straight petrol hybrids.

Efficiency is a ratio of work-out/energy-in. The name of the game is max efficiency.

 

You just added three premium cost items together into one car (hybrid, diesel and turbo). How you assume this will be affordable is beyond me. They have been producing turbos and diesels for quite some time and they are still expensive. Have you ever priced out a Jetta vs. a Jetta TDi? How about an Chevy 2500 gas truck vs. a Duramax? Your proposed car would carry a $6,000-$8,000 premium and for what kind of monetary gain? Have you ever calculated the annual fuel savings between 50mpg and 60mpg over 15,000miles? It's $200/yr or $2,000 over 150,000 miles at $4/ga.

I'm all for saving fuel but the premium just doesn't pencil out thus you would have to make the car super cool to entice buyers. You'll end up with a low volume niche car.

 

124 mpg turbo Diesel hybrid electric would make you about $2,000 per year over a Prius at 50 mpg with $10 gas (UK price today). Break even on a $14,000 price difference in 7 years.

Lots of moving targets.

Not to worry, we'll be driving hydrogen fuel cell powered FCX100's and our kids will be asking if internal combustion engines were before or after the dinosaurs?

 

Ok but let's stay based in reality and $10/ga fuel is not even close to a reality in the next 5-7yrs so a realistic payoff would be more like 14yrs in your hypothetical scenario.

 

According the Plugincars.com article you linked to, the 124mpg figure is on the European test cycle.

The European test cycle for the Prius is 72.4mpg.

If the EPA test cycle is approximately 1/3 less than the European cycle (Prius EPA = 50mpg vs. 72.4 mpg Euro), the Volvo Diesel plug-in's EPA test cycle will be about 80 or so MPG.

If that Volvo ever makes it to the U.S. market, no casual buyer (i.e. non-hypermiler) will ever be able to get anything close to 124mpg.

 

For those who haven't read threads like http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-h...ts-tomorrow-expected-55mpg-2.html#post1365152, the "54.5 mpg" for CAFE purposes translates into (by my calculations) ~38-40 mpg combined on the window sticker. Other source I've read like Good and Bad News Emerges From CAFE's Fine Print - Edmunds.com say ~36 mpg.

The Gen 3 Prius liftback already counts as getting a bit over 70 mpg for CAFE purposes.

 

The car (currently vaporware) is a plug-in. Psuns is ignoring electricity related pollution, GHG production, and consumption costs.

 

Yep.

Isn't is curious how the best hypermilers report numbers right around CAFE ?

 

It's a reality in UK and Europe now. US could come to its senses over next 5-7 years and start taxing oil like US survival depends upon cutting oil use.

With 124 mpg AWD Volvo wagon going on sale next year who knows. I'd guess the 2015 model will be up to 100 miles in electric mode, probably bumping it up to 150 mpg.

A perfect storm of perfectly sensible solutions.

 

You mean the Volvo going on sale next week?

Volvo has 1,000 V60 Plug-in Hybrids slated for production. First-round models — offered only in Electric Silver — are expected to sell out quickly, with most ending up in Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Britain. The XC60 Plug-in Hybrid is nearing production with no numbers announced. If you’re in the United States, start saving up, and look forward to a 2014 arrival.

I'm putting my Prius gas savings in my piggy bank now for 2015.