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RE: legislation is not always the answer

Comment comment by Anonymous on 09 May 2007

i wasn't saying that driving faster saves gas, just that forcing people to drive slower probably is not going to help.

not having read your article on mileage that you cite, i wouldn't put too much faith in the derived stats. keep in mind that your jeep was not designed to go fast on the highway, compared to a BMW.

and i don't want to get to work faster, i want to get home faster. =)

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RE: legislation is not always the answer by VnutZ :: NR8

not having read your article on mileage that you cite, i wouldn't put too much faith in the derived stats. keep in mind that your jeep was not designed to go fast on the highway, compared to a BMW.

Those stats are about as accurate as it gets short of having a professional dynometer - they were sampled straight from the engine computer by tying a laptop directly to the OBDII port. Using the Jeep helped to demonstrate the extreme owing to its drag coefficient.

Now like you said, a BMW is designed to go fast, as are other sports cars. That does not, however, equate to being designed to be fuel efficient. The ability to go fast means having the horsepower to push through ever increasing pressure (from the article) of built up air. This is why the Bugati Veryon (sp?) is supposed to be awesome with its 1000hp engine. The quest for speed is answered with lower coefficients of drag and ever increasing amounts of horsepower.

The pursuit of such design improvements are handy - technology to make a vehicle safe at high speed will trickle down to make low speed vehicles safer. So I don't disagree with the need to continue the pursuit of engineering performance vehicles. On the flip side ... there is even less use for owning a vehicle that goes ridiculous fast than there is for a vehicle that can haul a load or navigate off-road. :-)

I only bring this alternative up because Americans complain they want to reduce the stranglehold held on us from oil. But when an immediate remedy is at hand, that requires a little self control ... we don't want to have anything to do with it.

Posted 09 May 2007, Hide, Parent, Reply