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/...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.

[ray1970]

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

[ZERO THEORY]

The inventor will be assassinated in short order.

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

[vossman]

Yup.

[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.