300 mpg Volkswagen

[Irving]

So is this the real deal? This article is saturated with anti-oil profits BS. I didn't bother to find a better article. I'm just interested if anyone knows more about the car.

http://thespiritscience.net/2014/05/25/volkswagens-new-300-mpg-car-not-allowed-in-america-because-it-is-too-efficient/


You won’t find the 300 MPG Volkswagen XL1 in an American showroom, in fact it has even been denied a tour of America because it is too efficient for the American public to be made widely aware of, and oil profits are too high in America with the status quo in place. No tour has been allowed for this car because the myth that 50 mpg is virtually impossible to obtain from even a stripped down econobox is too profitable to let go of, and when it comes to corporate oil profits, ignorance is bliss.

[Justin]

Snopes has a takedown.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/xl1.asp

Long story short, the XL1 is a highly limited production car that VW is opting to sell in Europe because it doesn't make economic sense to seek regulatory certification to sell such a limited run of vehicles in the US.

[Irving]

Saw that in the comments. I'm curious about the mileage though. Is it legit?

[bogie]

The inventor will be assassinated in short order.

[vossman]

Yup.

[ray1970]

I'm holding out for something that runs off water.

[sniper7]

How sweet would that be!

[TheBelly]

Ever want to wonder why we're not doing better as far as MPG and why we're not actively getting away from fossil fuels? Here's two reasons:

1).gov taxes on a gallon of gas are quite high when you compare them to how much an oil company would make it profit. IIRC, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 cents/gallon of tax and 4 cents/gallon of profit.

2) Americans love our SUVs. We love our huge trucks. They don't get great mileage.

with Americans consuming roughly 368 million gallons of gas every day, that comes out to over $66million EVERY DAY for the US government. There's no way they're going to stop that flow of cash.

[Bailey Guns]

I think it boils down to your answer #2 above, more than anything else. Frankly, I think automakers are doing an excellent job of walking the line between producing what the consumer wants and what the .gov will let them do. If the government regulators would get out of the way I think you'd see a lot more innovation from automakers in terms of capability and efficiency. I know that's the case with the light/medium duty diesel engines that are made for pickups so I'd guess it's probably the case for the rest of the industry.

I don't see efficient cars as a threat to "big oil" and I doubt "big oil" sees them as a threat to their profits, either. Every ounce of oil they can extract and refine will be sold and they know it. The whole process to design, manufacture, distribute and sell efficient cars will take years and years. In the meantime there are plenty of other vehicles on the road that will need fuel.

People like to talk about "big oil" companies as if they're the enemy. They're not. They also aren't the reason gas prices are high. The government at various levels and just the cost of purchasing the oil that's fresh out of the ground are responsible for the bulk of the cost. Profits to oil companies probably account for the smallest percentage of the price of a gallon of gas.

Americans like their cars and trucks. Period.

[RblDiver]

Don't know about this car in particular, but there's also the issue of safety. It would be possible to build cars that get better MPG if you made them lighter, but that'd mean you'd have a much higher chance of dying in any form of accident. Also, there are other ways to get great MPG but you may end up sacrificing other aspects of driving (I remember in my business class, we watched a video about changing your paradigms. In it, there was a car built by fluid engineers that got something like 1000MPG, but there were things like it had very little acceleration, could get to a max of 30MPH, etc).

[68Charger]

So is this the real deal? This article is saturated with anti-oil profits BS. I didn't bother to find a better article. I'm just interested if anyone knows more about the car.

http://thespiritscience.net/2014/05/25/volkswagens-new-300-mpg-car-not-allowed-in-america-because-it-is-too-efficient/

[/FONT][/COLOR]

I'm just not going to take an automobile article seriously that is written by somebody named "Steven Bancarz (http://thespiritscience.net/author/stevenbancarz/)"

[TheBelly]

People like to talk about "big oil" companies as if they're the enemy. They're not. They also aren't the reason gas prices are high. The government at various levels and just the cost of purchasing the oil that's fresh out of the ground are responsible for the bulk of the cost. Profits to oil companies probably account for the smallest percentage of the price of a gallon of gas.

**COUGH** MY NUMBER 1 **COUGH**

[Justin]

Saw that in the comments. I'm curious about the mileage though. Is it legit?

So far as I can tell, it is, but remember it's a diesel-electric hybrid, so it's bound to get good mileage, especially if you include mileage for the car being run in electric-only mode.

Depending on how you run the stats, even the Chevy Volt gets something like 200 mpg.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Remember too it has like 31 hp. In that aspect, it's much like the Post-War mini/micro car designs that resulted in low double digit hp lightweight designs like the Deuxcheveaux (9-17), just with updated materials and new hybrid/battery technologies to draw from.

Bottom line, it's a pig with lipstick but the leftists are hoping they can use enough lipstick to keep pushing the Europeanization of America.

[Justin]

Ever want to wonder why we're not doing better as far as MPG and why we're not actively getting away from fossil fuels? Here's two reasons:

1).gov taxes on a gallon of gas are quite high when you compare them to how much an oil company would make it profit. IIRC, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 cents/gallon of tax and 4 cents/gallon of profit.

2) Americans love our SUVs. We love our huge trucks. They don't get great mileage.

with Americans consuming roughly 368 million gallons of gas every day, that comes out to over $66million EVERY DAY for the US government. There's no way they're going to stop that flow of cash.

For what it's worth, the gas tax is a pretty reasonable thing, at least in theory.

Money from the gas tax is supposed to go to construction and maintenance of transportation infrastructure, and there's a pretty reasonable case to be made that the more fuel you use, the more you're probably driving, the more wear and tear you're causing to the roads.

If you drive very little, you pay very little in taxes. Drive a lot, pay more. As far as taxes go, it seems more equitable than most.

[sellersm]

Even if it were to make it here, it'd end up crushed like all those Honda electric vehicles in the 80's... Who killed the electric car?

[cofi]

300mpg vw

why because most of its time is spent on the back of a tow truck

[CO Retriever]

It's a cool concept. My wife has had three VWs over the years and her current version is a VW Sportwagen TDI. It gets 33mpg around town and upwards of 40+ on the highway. It replaced a 3/4 suburban that got 10mpg downhill. While we loved the sub, what we were paying in gas was more than a new car payment and fuel every month plus it's got 100% covered maintenance.

While I like trucks and SUVs there is some practicality with the small diesels. Kicking around the idea of replacing my daily driver with a Ram 1500 Eco Diesel next year.

The other argument is that hybrids get better mileage than diesels and are pretty reliable to boot.

[ZERO THEORY]

The inventor will be assassinated in short order.


I'm holding out for something that runs off water.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82206qlXrzs

[Gman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Meyer's_water_fuel_cell