fuel efficient cars

[BobD]

We were looking for a small fuel efficient car, and ended up buying an Aveo5. Wished we had had the choice of these.

http://www.greencarsite.co.uk/diesel-green-cars.htm

A funny thing about small cars in the US, is the perception of safety. I have often heard guys question the safety of small cars, and say how they feel safe in their pickup trucks. The same guys ride motorcycles at weekends lol

BobD

EDIT: I forgot to mention, the UK gallon is 20% larger than the US gallon (20oz to pint instead of 16)

[Neil Gendzwill]

Small cars are definitely less safe than larger cars. They are tested in collisions with walls and other such barriers, where they are effectively hitting something of their own weight. But in collisions with larger vehicles, they lose. There's only so much you can do with clever engineering before you run headlong into physics.

[Allee]

Diesel technology is amazing on some of the Euro cars, and has been for a long time. I can remember friends in NZ having some of the bigger diesel Peugeots (405's and 605's) in the mid 90's, and they were dreamboats, some of the nicest cars I've ever been in. Everyone thinks noisy, smelly truck as soon as you mention diesel, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Most of the cars on that list are teeny tiny in a way that most North Americans can't even comprehend, but the mileage is stunning. We get some worthy TDi's in Canada - a friend was telling me that he rode with a buddy in his Golf TDi from Calgary to Seattle - 1100 km on one tank.

The Peugeot 308 would be my pick of that list. Mmmmm.

[BryanZ]

Buying a new car to save money on gas?

[BobD]

Buying a new car to save money on gas?

Had to trade down anyway for lower payments

BobD

[kjl]

Small cars are definitely less safe than larger cars. They are tested in collisions with walls and other such barriers, where they are effectively hitting something of their own weight. But in collisions with larger vehicles, they lose. There's only so much you can do with clever engineering before you run headlong into physics.

A few years ago, I read a pretty detailed study showing trucks and SUVs were significantly less safe in practice than smaller cars. Yes, in a head-on collision, a small car will get totally destroyed by a pickup or an SUV - there are a few non-obvious and interesting points that they raised, however:

1) head-on collisions are very rare. The vast majority of fatal accidents are not head-on, and in particular, for SUVs and maybe pickups, are actually rollovers, so much so that any advantage in headon collisions was lost (for example, if all SUV drivers in head-on collisions survive and all small car drivers die, SUV drivers still lose overall if there are 100 times as many rollovers as headon collisions).

2) SUVs and pickups were more likely to be involved in accidents than small cars. Whether that is because small cars handle better so drivers can avoid accidents, or drivers of small cars are terrified so they drive safer, or SUV and pickup drivers are lulled into false security and drive less attentively was not addressed, but the end data was pretty unassailable: SUVs and pickups were significantly more likely to be involved in accidents.

3) I remember looking at the final statistics and of the top 10 dangerous cars (driver/passengers most likely to die), like 7-8 of them were trucks or SUVs, and only the other 2-3 were the tiny subcompacts you'd expect to be deathtraps. I can't remember which cars were the safest, but I think they were basically the normal sized, reasonably well handling cars, like your Sentras and Civics and the like. Also iirc the SUVs based on cars instead of trucks (Rav4, etc.) were safe as well.

4) The most shocking thing to me looking at the data was: SUV drivers were slightly more likely to die in a car accident than small car drivers, but way, way, way more likely to kill somebody else. It was a lose/LOSE situation if you were in one.

I don't know if the data still applies. This was at least a few years ago, when SUVs were basically just light trucks with a different macho looking body on top of it, and so were basically starting out without the benefit of decades of advances in car safety. If they have made SUVs as maneuverable and able to avoid accidents as small cars and as unlikely to roll in a collision, perhaps it is different now.

[bobdea]

there was even a book written about it

Bumper Mentality

A review of Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty: SUVs Buy the book

By Stephanie Mencimer

Have you ever wondered why sport utility vehicle drivers seem like such *******s? Surely it's no coincidence that Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Dem-ocratic National Committee, tours Washington in one of the biggest SUVs on the market, the Cadillac Escalade, or that Jesse Ventura loves the Lincoln Navigator. Well, according to New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher's new book, High and Mighty, the connection between the two isn't a coincidence. Unlike any other vehicle before it, the SUV is the car of choice for the nation's most self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver is likely to be.

According to market research conducted by the country's leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others."

He says, too, that SUV drivers generally don't care about anyone else's kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them rather than with what's practical, and they tend to want to control or have control over the people around them. David Bostwick, Chrysler's market research director, tells Bradsher, "If you have a sport utility, you can have the smoked windows, put the children in the back and pretend you're still single."

Armed with such research, automakers have, over the past decade, ramped up their SUV designs to appeal even more to the "reptilian" instincts of the many Americans who are attracted to SUVs not because of their perceived safety, but for their obvious aggressiveness. Automakers have intentionally designed the latest models to resemble ferocious animals. The Dodge Durango, for instance, was built to resemble a savage jungle cat, with vertical bars across the grille to represent teeth and big jaw-like fenders. Bradsher quotes a former Ford market researcher who says the SUV craze is "about not letting anything get in your way, and at the extreme, about intimidating others to get out of your way."

Not surprisingly, most SUV customers over the past decade hail from a group that is the embodiment of American narcissism: baby boomers. Affluent, and often socially liberal, baby boomers have embraced the four-wheel-drive SUV as a symbol of their ability to defy the conventions of old age, of their independence and "outdoorsiness," making the off-road vehicle a force to be reckoned with on the American blacktop. But as Bradsher declares in his title, this baby boomer fetish is considerably more harmful than the mere annoyance of yet another Rolling Stones tour or the endless commercials for Propecia. In their attempt to appear youthful and hip, SUV owners have filled the American highways with vehicles that exact a distinctly human cost, frequently killing innocent drivers who would have survived a collision with a lesser vehicle. Bradsher quotes auto execs who concede that the self-centered lifestyle of SUV buyers is apparent in "their willingness to endanger other motorists so as to achieve small improvements in their personal safety."

After covering the auto industry for six years, Bradsher is an unabashed critic of sports-utility vehicles and the automakers that continue to churn them out knowing full well the dangers they pose. He doesn't equivocate in his feeling that driving an SUV is a deeply immoral act that places the driver's own ego above the health and safety of those around him, not to mention the health of the environment. Ironically, and though most supposedly safety-conscious owners don't realize it, SUVs even imperil those who drive them.

Road Rodeo

Ask a typical SUV driver why he drives such a formidable vehicle, and he'll invariably insist that it's for safety reasons--the kids, you know--not because he's too vain to get behind the wheel of a sissy Ford Windstar. Automakers themselves know otherwise--their own market research tells them so. But Bradsher makes painfully clear that the belief in SUV safety is a delusion. For decades, automakers seeking to avoid tougher fuel economy standards have invoked the fiction that the bigger the car, the safer the passenger. As a result, most Americans take it on faith that the only way to be safe on the highway is to be driving a tank (or the next best thing--a Hummer). Bradsher shatters this myth and highlights the strange disconnect between the perception and the reality of SUVs.

The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars--8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don't handle well, so drivers can't respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or "trips" by scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an SUV traveling at high speed. On top of that, SUV roofs are not reinforced to protect the occupants against rollover; nor does the government require them to be.

Because of their vehicles' size and four-wheel drive capability, SUV drivers tend to overestimate their own security, which prompts many to drive like maniacs, particularly in inclement weather. And SUV drivers--ever image-conscious and overconfident--seem to hate seat belts as much as they love talking on their cell phones while driving. Bradsher reports that four-fifths of those killed in roll-overs were not belted in, even though 75 percent of the general driving population now buckles up regularly.

While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads more dangerous for others. The "kill rate," as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe.

Part of the reason for the high kill rate is that cars offer very little protection against an SUV hitting them from the side--not because of the weight, but because of the design. When a car is hit from the side by another car, the victim is 6.6 times as likely to die as the aggressor. But if the aggressor is an SUV, the car driver's relative chance of dying rises to 30 to 1, because the hood of an SUV is so high off the ground. Rather than hitting the reinforced doors of a car with its bumper, an SUV will slam into more vulnerable areas and strike a car driver in the head or chest, where injuries are more life-threatening. But before you get an SUV just for defensive purposes, think again. Any safety gains that might accrue are cancelled out by the high risk of rollover deaths, which usually don't involve other cars.

Ironically, SUVs are particularly dangerous for children, whose safety is often the rationale for buying them in the first place. Because these beasts are so big and hard to see around (and often equipped with dark-tinted glass that's illegal in cars), SUV drivers have a troubling tendency to run over their own kids. Just recently, in October, a wealthy Long Island doctor made headlines after he ran over and killed his two-year-old in the driveway with his BMW X5. He told police he thought he'd hit the curb.

To illustrate the kind of selfishness that marks some SUV drivers, Bradsher finds people who rave about how they've survived accidents with barely a scratch, yet neglected to mention that the people in the other car were all killed. (One such woman confesses rather chillingly to Bradsher that her first response after killing another driver was to go out and get an even bigger SUV.) The tragedy of SUVs is that highway fatalities were actually in decline before SUVs came into vogue, even though Americans were driving farther. This is true largely for one simple reason: the seatbelt. Seatbelt usage rose from 14 percent in 1984 to 73 percent in 2001. But seatbelts aren't much help if you're sideswiped by an Escalade, a prospect that looms yet more ominously as SUVs enter the used-car market. Not surprisingly, last year, for the first time in a decade, the number of highway deaths actually rose.

No Roads Scholars Here

Bradsher blames government for failing to adequately regulate SUVs, but doesn't fully acknowledge the degree to which it has encouraged SUV production by becoming a major consumer of them. Law enforcement and public safety agencies in particular seem enamored of the menacing vehicles, a fact on proud display when officers finally apprehended the alleged snipers in the Washington, D.C., area and transported them to the federal courthouse in a parade of black Ford Explorers and Expeditions. Judging from the number of official SUVs on the road today, law enforcement officials--those most likely to know firsthand the grisly effects of a rollover--are enthusiastic customers. Like the rest of America, police departments seem to believe that replacing safe, sturdy cars with SUVs is a good idea, though it's hard to imagine a more dangerous vehicle for an officer conducting a high-speed chase.

Government's taste for SUVs isn't limited to cops and firemen. There's hardly a city in America where the mayor's chauffeured Lincoln Town Car hasn't been replaced by an SUV. In Virginia, where state officials recently discovered that SUVs were wrecking their efforts to meet clean-air regulations, a few noted sheepishly that perhaps local governments should sell their own fleets, which had ballooned to 250 in Fairfax County alone. (A Fairfax County official told The Washington Post that public safety officials needed four-wheel drive and large cargo spaces to transport extra people and emergency equipment through snow or heavy rain--proof that even law enforcement officials misunderstand SUV safety records.)

As Bradsher details, because of their weight, shoddy brakes, and off-road tires, SUVs handle poorly in bad weather and have trouble stopping on slick roads. What's more, they're generally so poorly designed as not to be capable of carrying much cargo, despite the space. A contributing factor in the Ford Explorer-Firestone tire debacle was that drivers weren't told that their Explorers shouldn't carry any more weight than a Ford Taurus. The extra weight routinely piled in these big cars stressed the tires in a way that made them fall apart faster and contributed to the spate of rollover deaths.

I have a hunch that government officials' justification for buying SUVs is mostly a ruse for their real motivation, which is the same as any other SUV owner's: image. Officials can safely load up their fleets with leather-seated SUVs, whereas using taxpayer dollars to buy themselves, say, a fleet of BMW coupes would get them crucified (even though Detroit considers SUVs luxury vehicles and designs them accordingly). Police departments may claim that they need an SUV to accommodate SWAT teams or canine units, but there is no reason that Sparky the drug dog wouldn't be just as comfortable in the back of a nice safe Chevy Astrovan.

The same is true for nearly everyone who drives an SUV today. Of course, not every SUV owner is gripped by insecurity and a death wish--plenty of otherwise reasonable people seem to get seduced by power and size (see sidebar). But if soccer moms and office-park dads really need to ferry a lot of people around, they could simply get a large car or a minivan, which Bradsher hails as a great innovation for its fuel efficiency, safety, and lower pollution. (And minivans don't have a disproportionately high kill rate for motorists or pedestrians when they get into accidents.) According to industry market research, minivan drivers also tend to be very nice people. Minivans are favored by senior citizens and others (male and female, equally) who volunteer for their churches and carpool with other people's kids. But that's the problem. SUV owners buy them precisely because they don't want the "soccer mom" stigma associated with minivans.

While Bradsher does a magnificent job of shattering the myths about SUVs, he has a difficult time proposing a solution. Sport utility vehicles have become like guns: Everyone knows they're dangerous, but you can't exactly force millions of Americans to give them up overnight. And because the SUV is single-handedly responsible for revitalizing the once-depressed American auto industry, the economy is now so dependent on their production that it would be nearly impossible to get them off the road. Bradsher suggests regulating SUVs like cars rather than as light trucks, so that they would be forced to comply with fuel-efficiency standards and safety regulations. He also proposes that the insurance industry stop shifting the high costs of the SUV dangers onto car owners by raising premium prices for SUVs to reflect the amount of damage they cause. But these ideas, commendable though they are, fall short of a perfect answer.

Clearly, the best solution would be for Americans to realize the danger of SUVs and simply stop buying them. Social pressure can be a powerful determinant on car choices, as seen in Japan, the one country where SUVs have not caught on because of cultural checks that emphasize the good of the community over that of the individual. There are signs that perhaps public sentiment is beginning to shift against SUV drivers here, too, as activists have begun to leave nasty flyers on SUV windshields berating drivers for fouling the environment and other offenses. But for a true reckoning to take place, image-obsessed Americans will need to fully understand the SUV's true dangers--including to themselves--before they will willingly abandon it to the junkyard. Spreading that message against the nation's biggest advertiser--the auto industry--will be tough work. Drivers can only hope that Bradsher's book will cut through the chatter.

[C5 Golfer]

I prefer a larger vehicle - I am sure given the choice again this small car owner would too. See the Motorcycle inside the car?

[kjl]

Just as with the flu vaccine arguments, individual anecdotal evidence is meaningless :)

You will find small car owners who have been horribly injured or killed in accidents who would have been saved by a larger vehicle, and you will find SUV owners who survived an accident who would have died if they had been in a smaller car. But if you choose to drive an SUV over a small, maneuverable car for your own safety, you are choosing wrong.

Look at it this way:

You have two doors: Go through Door A, and you have a 1/1000 chance of being killed. Go through Door B, and you have a 1/100 chance of being killed. A million people have gone through both doors before you, and if you look through Door A, you will see a whole bunch of dead bodies in there. Nevertheless, Door A is a better choice. Even if your good friend died in Door A, or if gruesome pictures of people who died spectacularly after going through Door A get posted all over the internet :)

[Neil Gendzwill]

Doesn't have to be an SUV. Smart car vs C-class - no surprises (to me) who loses.

[kjl]

I'm just confused as to why you are only looking at "who loses in a head on collision" to determine safety.

The thing you should be looking at is "in which car am I more likely to die?" If light trucks/SUVs are more survivable in a head on collision but more likely to be involved in a head on collision in the first place, and much more likely to roll over and kill you, or slam into a telephone pole and kill you, or drive into a ditch and kill you, then SUV's "lose" in survivability, even if they "win" in head on collisions.

My house in Richmond, CA "wins" for grizzly bear protection over somebody who lives in Tahoe. My house is NOT safer, though, since I am way more likely to get shot in Richmond than the other guy is likely to get eaten by a bear.

[martyagt4]

I chose my Honda Pilot because it met all my criteria, not because it was an SUV. I'd much rather have a wagon that met the criteria, but it didn't exist.

[negedeng]

In my opinion fuel efficiency is a combination of different things. Depending what your goal for fuel efficiency is and from which kind of a vehicle your are coming from, you can still drive a safe car and safe on gas.

In Germany I drive a 2001 Volkswagen Passat with a 1.9 Liter turbo charged diesel (TDI) engine. On my trips to the alps I drive it on the autobahn in Germany pretty much pedal to the metal. Reaching the top speed of 200km/h (~125mph) for about 1.5h till I reach the Austrian or Swiss boarder, gas consumption goes up to about 7.5Liter/100km (~31mpg (US)). When I drove in Switzerland or Austria with speed limits close to the US with between 110-130km/h (~70-80mph) the gas consumption dropped under 5 Liter/100km (~47mpg). As an average (city, overland and autobahn) I drive it with about 6 Liter/100km (~39mpg) and still have fun with it. Means I am not only barely pushing the throttle while accelerating or overtaking others.

I would say with the Passat I do not have a unsafe car and I get relative comfortable from A to B.

But the diesel makes it possible. I think for my Passat the diesel needs about 2-3 liters less per 100km than a comparable gas engine. And the modern turbo charged diesels as well as the common rail diesel engines have nothing to do with the old diesel technology which is still used in the trucks like a F350 or similar.

The small 1.9 liter engine has still 350Nm torque and is able to run faster than you are allowed in they US anyway. The engine runs maybe slightly louder than a gas engine but really just slightly, still not that loud that I would complain about it, compared to a F350, the F350 runs more like a tractor.

So the first step to safe gas would be to downsize the engine. But you should watch out for a weight power ratio. A too small engine in a too heavy car could mean you need more rpm which has influence on the gas consumption.

For what do you need a 6 lieter diesel in a F350 with a technology which was used already decades ago? If that 6 liter diesel engine would be nicely engineered and turbo charged you would probably reach torques which blow up almost every gear box. So a nice 3 liter TDI with the same or more torque like the old fashioned 6 liter in the same car would safe already gas without reducing the trailer hook capacity.

Honestly, how many days a year do you need the trunk of a Pick-up to transport something which would not fit into a trunk of a smaller car (Mazda 6, Passat,...)?

In my Passat station wagon I get 3 people (comfortable seated) plus ski equipment and luggage for a week inclusive my Virus Undertaker (192cm). If I take a 4<SUP>th</SUP> and 5th person with me I throw a ski box on the roof.

For the other 10 – 20 days a year you can use a trailer hooked up to the “small” car which is still powerful enough to pull it. Maybe you will not win the Daytona 500 with the trailer combination, but you will get from A to B and you save a bunch of money the rest of the 335 days of the year.

So another thing after using modern engine technology and downsizing would be to reduce the car size and with that the weight of the car. You do not have to switch from a Truck to a Smart. The switch to a mid size car with the right engine technology can be already something.

An other factor would be the driving behavior. Since gas prices are “slightly” higher in Germany than in the US (one gallon regular gas is right now at about 7.55US$) a couple of driving schools offer a “How to save gas” training. Things like, watch not just till the head lights of the car in front of you, watch a couple of yards further and roll to a red traffic light, turn off the engine while standing at a traffic light, remove every unnecessary weight (snow chains in the summer time,...), etc. got taught.

In a couple of tests they proved that people save a tremendous amount of gas (I believe it was in the area of 10-15%) if they follow this rules.

So there are things which you can do to save gas with the car you already possess.

[Neil Gendzwill]

I'm just confused as to why you are only looking at "who loses in a head on collision" to determine safety.

I'm not. The last link I posted was a small car vs a big car, not an SUV. The article quoted upthread indicated that SUVs are less survivable mostly because their owners act like idiots. But even if you buy that SUVs are inherently less safe, a bigger car is safer than a smaller one, given they are designed to the same standard. This is just simple physics. I don't get why people are so resistant to this. A small car can be justified in lots of ways, but when people start saying "my Fit is just as safe as any other car" this is rationalization.

FWIW I drive a smaller car myself - a VW Golf. But I make it more dangerous by going for the performance model :)

[kjl]

I agree with you sort of, but just to play devil's advocate, I would say that the size of a car is not the only factor. A smart car I would guess is not very fast, maneuverable, and probably does not have much in the way of crumple zones, etc., so it would be akin to the ultra compacts that I vaguely, vaguely remember (from that study I mentioned in my first post) sharing the top 10 most deadly vehicles with the SUVs.

I have a Subaru Impreza sedan, which handles really well, and given the choice between my car, and my car with an extra 1000 lbs of steel bolted to the frame, I would choose my car as it is now, despite the fact that the other one would win in a head-on collision, as I think the increased maneuverability and braking performance would make me much less likely to get into an accident in the first place.

But the big car vs smartcar? Yeah, the bigger one, no doubt.

[BobD]

The next thing to get smaller, and more efficicent will be work vans. Ford are finally selling the Transit Van in the US. There have been various versions in europe since the seventies. This is the smaller version

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/19/first-drive-2010-ford-transit-connect-the-right-size-for-a-sma/

[ncermak]

Win yourself the USASA Mitshubishi Lancer Ralliart and just have fun!