Serious fuel mileage -- 8000 mpg

If there is a patent on it than it's public record. I'd like to see that patent so I could build one for myself. If there's no patent than there's nothing to buy out as anyone could patent it.

If all these fuel saving devices are patented than why doesn't someone put together a book of them like they did with solar so everyone can see them. If they aren't patented than anyone can build as many of them as they wanted and sell them for lots of money.

But alass no patents to be found. So maybe we all write this up as an urban legend and get on with business.

Didn't the 1975 Honda Civic get about 40 mpg?

Have we been de-evolving since?

My '85 Toyota Camry got 40 mpg. Wish I still had it.

There are plenty of vehicles on the market that get 50 mpg routinely. I've seen over 60 mpg in a four-seater regular gas-engine car that I rented in England without trying hard. None of these cars are offered for sale in America because no one will buy them.

Over half of all new vehicles pruchased in th US are SUVs and trucks. I have no problem with people who need truck driving them, but 99% of all trips made in SUVs and trucks could be done just as well in a car that gets three times the fuel economy.

So why do Americans drive big fuel hogs? Because Reagan told you it wasn't safe to drive a small car. Just by coincidence, American car makers can't make a decent small car (they can, and do, actually, but they sell them in Europe, not in the US.)

So, because GM, Ford etc can only make a profit on SUVs, the government stampeded Americans into buying SUVs. Meanwhile European governments encouraged small vehicles with gas taxes, and they pay less per mile than Americans, even though they pay well north of $5/gal. I think it's around $8/gal in England now. And guess what: highway death rates are lower in Europe. So much for being safer.

Make excuses, but the fact is that Americans have been played for fools, AGAIN.

Of course, it's all the government's fault that americans like to drive SUVs.

Hey, don't you see all those people with broken arms from the goverment twisting them so hard?

Laugh all you want guys, the facts are there for anybody to see. I didn't make this story up, plenty of journalists have reported it over the years. Exemptions from fuel econmomy standards for "light trucks," tax credits for vehicles above a certain weight, all moves by the government to encourage Americans to buy American vehicles.

The high mpg vehicles don't have sufficient "image", power and speed to appeal to American buyers. Will $10 a gallon gasoline make a difference? Possibly.

I'd bet that $20 a gallon gas would (or will?) change some priorities. A few more unwise wars and diplomatic blunders plus increased competition from China and India should test what effect high fuel prices have on vehicle priorities.

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This does not include flying or moving mountains unassisted or attempting to prove the existence of an “afterlife”.

Sorry but I call a real big BS on this act. I have a friend who builds hydrogen refueling stations for a living. They are worth several hundred thousand each. A lot of the cost is in the technology is to address the serious safety issues involved. Hydrogen can be exceptionally dangerous. Now we are supposed to believe that this outfit is building a separator out of of the shelf plumbing parts and other junk, for a few bucks, and everything is safe and legitimate? Sorry but this one spikes the BS meter.... The technology to vastly improve our average economy is here and now. Three years ago a scientific think tank released info on a current model year Explorer with 77% better economy. It involved lighter weight composite construction and proven technology to increase the efficiency of the engine (not a hybrid). This would run less that $4K. The bottom line is that this will become more widespread when the public demands it. $3/gallon seems to do very little to curb the public's appetite. If it isn't required by the govt. and the public isn't showing interest, it isn't going to happen.

Agreed on the hydrogen story. Storing hydrogen is a difficult engineering problem: the hydrogen migrates into steel making it brittle and weak. Essentially you have to make a double layer tank with an inert gas between the two layers at the same pressure as the hydrogen. That relieves all the stress from the tank holding the hydrogen. Expensive.

As long as we wink-wink, nod-nod at speeders and tailgaters, few are crazy enough to drive a 1000pound car with a small engine and have semis and big SUVs driving 90mph and playing bumper tag. Thats good way to end up as a grease spot. Small well designed cars with sufficient roll cage protection can safely share highway with big vehicles but only at slower speeds. And all this still ignores that most efficient transportation is rail, not individual hiway vehicle, at least for longer distances. Private vehicles in a high population desity society only make sense for local deliveries and in rural areas. Course we as a greedy stupid society now have built so much residential sprawl that I am not sure how you make it transportation efficient. I suspect eventually it will be big bucks to reclaim some of the best farmland that has been "sprawled" on. Oh well since we are exporting jobs by the boatload, maybe nobody will have to go to work...

With our bought and paid for congress, we as a society will be stupid and footdrag and gas will be $20 per gallon before we do anything. It will then be super high priced to get off our private car fixation. Course maybe we can get Haliburton to run our railroads....

And dont get me wrong, I personally like private individual car/truck, but it only works in lower population society. We decided to open the borders and invite millions of people in that will work cheaper than those here, so now we must pay the price and run our country more on behive principle. Sorry those cheap goods and cheap labor changed your life but __it happens when you arent paying attention.

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"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

There are foreign cars that get over 40mpg and there are foreign cars that get more and use diesel fuel. Those cars can't be sold in the US because of safety regs and environmental regs. The auto industry has been regulated into a corner.

Create a demand (and $10-$20 fuel will no doubt do that) and watch the Japanese and others put the engineering effort into meeting those regulations. Our big 3 in 70s kept complaining about fuel economy and emmissions regulations and wanted reprieves while the Japanese were meeting those regs without special exemptions.

Our car companies were thinking of big hit to short term profit. Engineering and retooling costs lots of money short term and they didnt want to spend it. The Japanese were thinking about how to grab bigger market share longterm. Guess who turned out to be smarter?

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"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman