Why is S car fuel mileage so poor?

[Brett Dikeman]

At 10:34 PM -0400 9/25/04, Enzeder wrote:
>Why would they make more power?  Remember, this is in a highway cruise test.

No, re-read the statement:

>From the EPA web site: "The highway is a 10 mile trip with an 
>average speed of 48 mph. The vehicle is started "hot" and there is 
>very little idling and no stops."

That doesn't say "we start the mileage measurement from a 
standstill".  It implies, if anything, that the vehicle is started 
and immediately accelerated to speed.

A 340hp V8, accelerating a 4,000lb car to 50mph- is going to use a 
bit more fuel than a 300hp V8, and if it does so faster, the car will 
spend more time at a higher speed.  Lower gearing makes a difference 
too, it takes a little more energy to throw everything around faster, 
etc.  Over a 10 mile test, these things all make a difference.  I 
know if I accelerated very lightly and drove 10mi, I'd get a 
drastically different average mileage result than if I accelerated 
hard and drove 10mi.  Probably close to several mpg...

Oh, and by the way, PLEASE edit your replies.  You should not be 
quoting the entire thread each time you reply to a message; just like 
I did with this message, include only the relevant bits.  Yes, it 
takes effort, but it keeps the archives "clean" and means less 
bandwidth for both us and subscribers.  Just 1kB means a difference 
of over a megabyte in trasferred traffic on our end per message, and 
if you multiply that by several dozen messages a day...

Brett
PS: Discovered (by accident) in Eudora today that if you 
shift-command-r while selecting just the bit you want to reply to, 
Eudora only includes that text in the new message!  Very, very 
spiffy.  I'd be surprised if the Mozilla-based programs along wit 
Apple Mail didn't do this as well...if they don't, I'm going to make 
a feature request or two...
-- 
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/