Thursday, October 14, 2010

Diesel fueled car with small engine gets 119 mpg

Sometimes people don't believe me when I say that if vehicles on the US roadways could only travel at 34mph maximum speed, that it would be in a very short time that cars would be manufactured that got over 200 mpg, and I would guess, approaching 400 mpg. You see what the students get at the Shell and SAE Supermileage contests. The methodology is out there, if the top speed is reduced.

Recently it was reported that a car (shown above) built way back in 1984 achieved fuel mileage (diesel fuel) of 119.1 miles-per-gallon, while traveling North to South, border to border, Canada to Mexico. Here is the story link:
Besides the fact that this car was put together in the 1980s (the laws of Earth aerodynamics are the same now as then) notice in the article that very little horsepower is required to move this car at highway speeds. The reason we typically have 300 horsepower on tap in the typical American car, is a car without "passing power" or acceleration off the line, simply will not sell in this country.

1 comment:

taxis said...

Diesel is always considered as better energy than the other petrol.Of course,it's also a bit expensive.We would not surprise that such car can have this high speed.