Free Republic

Conservation: The Chevy Volt is said to be able to get 230 miles per gallon. That's if it's continually plugged into a fragile and overburdened power grid. Where will you be when the lights go out? Since most U.S. electricity generation is not carbon-free, the Congressional Research Service agrees. The "widespread adoption of plug-in hybrid vehicles through 2030 may have only a small effect on, and might actually increase, carbon emissions," it observes. "If you are using coal-fired power plants and half the country's electricity comes from coal powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?"...

EPA Secretly Changing MPG Numbers Ahead Of Cash For Clunkers, Screwing Consumers By Matt Hardigree, 3:30 PM on Mon Consumers hoping to trade in their old "clunkers" for new vehicles through the Cash for Clunkers (or CARS) program are discovering the EPA changed fuel economy numbers for some cars last week, making it impossible to trade them in! New Jersey resident Jeff Chase was considering trading in his 1989 Mazda 929 for a new car and checked the government's FuelEconomy.gov website and it said it met the 18 MPG threshold to be considered a gas-guzzling clunker. He went back later...

What is the most efficient vehicle on the planet? And more importantly, how far can it go on a single liter of gas? The Microjoule is your answer, getting over 3,794 kilometers per liter, or approximately 8,923 miles per gallon! Looking less like a car than an amoeba-on-wheels, the Microjoule is the design of students from the French Technical School, St. Joseph La Joliverie, who are set to compete in the Eco-Marathon 2008 to be held in Europe this coming May.

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another..."If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

What if you could buy a car for yourself, one for your spouse, and one for each of your kids, and still spend way less than you would on one average new car? Well, if you lived in China you could. This is not a toy, not a concept car. It is a newly developed single seat car in highly aerodynamic tear-shape road-proven real car. It is ready to be launched as a single-seater for sale in Shanghai in 2010 for a mere RMB 4,000 (US$600)! Interested? Wait till you learn that it will cruise at 100-120 Km/Hr with an...

Anyone interested in a car that gets 110 mpg, 400 hp, and 500 tq? Of course you are, but where can you get such an automobile? What if I told you that you just need to get the engine, and put it in your car? Awesome huh? A man has invented an E85 engine that gets all those stats. E85 is known for being very inefficient, but it delivers more horsepower to engines that can run on it while reducing mpg. All we needed was someone to make E85 efficient. Well, now we have.

It’s rare that we test two-year-old cars, but this particular Accord is rarer—in the U.S., anyway—than burlesque houses in a Texan polygamy camp. Under the hood is a 2.2-liter four-cylinder engine. It’s happy as low as 1300 rpm, but power starts at about 1600, with a whopping 251 pound-feet of torque (55 percent more than the current four-cylinder Accord) available at 2000 rpm. There is a nearly imperceptible difference between 70- or 80-percent throttle and flat-footing it, meaning the car feels quick when driven at about 8/10th, but sluggish when it’s really hammered. It took 8.9 seconds to wind the...

President Obama announced on May 19, 2009, a “historic agreement to help America break its addiction to oil.” The centerpiece of that announcement was a new 35.5-mpg CAFE standard for 2016. Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has been advocating the entry of fuel-efficient cars into the market for years. The time is now ripe, and we are in the midst of a major national push for the adoption of these cars. One of the barriers to widespread adoption is the common-yet-misleading line of logic that most consumers follow—that fuel efficiency equates to smaller, less safe cars. This misperception is fed by...

According to reports in The New York Times and elsewhere, President Barack Obama will resolve conflicts between state and Federal fuel economy standards by announcing that California's stricter limits will be applied nationwide. By the 2016 model year, new rules will require each carmaker's Corporate Average Fleet Economy (CAFE) to reach 42 miles per gallon, weighted by sales. That is the level effectively required by California's limits on greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide.

Now that the Obama administration is reconsidering California's plan to increase the fuel economy of cars sold in the Golden State and 13 others to 35 miles per gallon by 2016, we wondered how close the automakers are to getting there.

MPG PRESS RELEASE: MPG ACTIVIST AND IRANIAN JOURNALIST ALI VAHID FLEES POLITICAL PERSECUTION AFTER EXECUTION OF YET ANOTHER MPG MEMBER IN IRAN The Marze Por Gohar Party is pleased to announce that our member Ali Vahid has successfully managed to flee the political persecution that he was suffering in the Islamic Republic of Iran due to the severe threats posed to his life. Mr. Vahid was the Editor in Chief for various publications in Iran, with Nedaye Ghumes being the more prominent publication he managed. Starting six months ago, Mr. Vahid, who had been a subject of political persecution, censorship...

FrontPage Interview’s guest today is Hadi T. Ardestani, a Nuclear Waste Management Expert and a Marz-e Por Gohar Nuclear Issues Specialist. He is also a Marz-e Por Gohar Nuclear Committee Chairman and an M.S. Environmental Sciences and Management, Nuclear Waste Management Specialist. FP: Hadi T. Ardestani, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Ardestani: Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear activities as a nuclear specialist in Marz-e Por Gohar and as the chairman for MPG's nuclear committee. FP: I would like to focus with you today on Iran and what we would call...

< > Say you have the ability to trade in a 10 MPG SUV for a 20 MPG crossover, or a 25 MPG car for a 50 MPG hybrid. Which switch is better for the environment? As it turns out, the former, even though one might be tempted to say that the former only improves efficiency by 10 MPG while the latter improves it by 25. Assume a 100 mile trip. The SUV will consume 10 gallons versus 5 gallons for the crossover for a net savings of 5 gallons. The car will consume 4 gallongs versus 2 gallons for...

Rising fuel prices, both in the U.S. and abroad, means that automakers can now offer similar engines in vehicles sold throughout the world. According to Automotive News, General Motors' next small car, the Chevrolet Cruze, will be offered with a new 1.4-liter force-fed four-banger, putting out between 120 and 140 horsepower and returning fuel mileage in the 40 mpg range.

NAPOLEON, Ohio - Doug Pelmear has lots of secrets beneath the hood of his black 1987 Ford Mustang on which the only outward hint of individuality is a series of stickers. But looks can be deceiving. Mr. Pelmear's 21-year-old pony car has enough technological innovation to quadruple the classic Mustang's original gas mileage while almost doubling its available horsepower. That's 80 miles per gallon and 400 horsepower, folks. And the 48-year-old electronics engineer and master mechanic is not done yet. The third-generation automotive tinkerer hopes that next year his Mustang - more specifically its engine - will help him win...

This time, a high mile per gallon number was recorded in Europe and not with a Peugeot. A group of German motor journalists managed to get 3.2 l/100 km (73 mpg U.S.) in a Skoda Fabia TDI Greenline. The car had a 1.4 TDI (diesel) engine good for 80 HP. The thirty-six journalists (we're guessing not all of them at the same time) drove the Czech subcompact for 124 km (about 80 miles), using normal highways between Austria and Germany and never going below 60 km/h (40 mph). The only "trick" they used was maintaining as constant a speed as...

Sure you want to save gas, but there's a lot of bad advice on how to do it. Some of it makes no difference, and some of it can wind up costing you. With gasoline prices hitting record levels, it seems everyone has a tip on how to save fuel. Much of the advice is well-intentioned, but in the end, much of it won't lower your gas bill. Here's a look at a few misconceptions: #1. Fill Your Tank in the Morning You may have heard that it's best to fill your gas tank in the early morning while the...

Motorheads don’t want to hear it; refuse to believe it — but ugly realities are coming down hard on the ‘09 Camaro that will very possibly cause GM to pull the plug before the first one ever rolls off the line. Doubt that? Consider the stillborn rear-wheel-drive next generation Chevy Impala — nixed because of concerns within GM about the possibility of meeting the pending (2012) 35 mpg fuel economy edict recently passed by Congress. A lighter front-drive car with a V-6 instead of a V-8 can make the cut; a V-8 RWD Impala can’t. So it’s gone. So is...

While Hyundai offers a front wheel drive minivan in the U.S. market called the Entourage, it's only available with the Korean manufacturer's 3.8L gas V-6. It gets an EPA overall rating of 18mpg, which is competitive in its segment here in North America but no great shakes overall. Overseas, Hyundai has just released a new eight-seat rear wheel drive full-sized van called the i800. The i800 gets motivation from a 2.5L four cylinder diesel engine with common rail injection. The diesel generates 170hp and 289lb-ft of torque which won't get any enthusiasts excited in this application (what enthusiast would...

Khosla Ventures has increased its investment in fuel-injection company Transonic Combustion, Inc. to become the company’s largest preferred shareholder. Transonic is an R&D-phase company developing an advanced fuel injection system for automobiles which promises to dramatically increase fuel efficiency. This fuel injection system allows engines to run on gasoline, diesel and a wide range of bio-renewables. Transonic says that a unique aspect of its technology is that it can precisely control fuel heat release during the combustion process without using spark ignition or relying on compression ignition. Although it is holding details on the technology close, Transonic says that the...