Car Manufacturers Don’t Get It

Over the past few months, I’ve been keeping an eye on the new car market with an eye to finding a car that gets better gas mileage than what I have now.  Also, I don’t want to get a car that’s too much smaller, and proven reliability is a requirement.  Suffice it to say that my current car gets a fairly impressive 30-33 MPG (US Gallons) on my commute, and 37-40 MPG on long haul freeway/motorway trips.  Those numbers are measured, not EPA estimates.

So, given the recent trends to “go green”, the burned-in memory of gasoline at over $4 a gallon in the US (yeah, I know, we have it easy compared to Europe!), and concerns over global warming and carbon emissions, you’d think it would be easy to find at least a dozen possible candidates, especially when considering hybrids or even all-electric vehicles.

Nope.  Not even close.

It seems that car manufacturers are stuck in the rut of making vehicles bigger, faster, and more powerful.  A catalog I received in the mail from Toyota a month or two ago was full of these, with only the Corolla, the Prius, and maybe one or two much smaller sub-compacts giving fuel efficiency that I found acceptable.   Even then, I got the impression that the mileage for the Corolla had gone down, not up, over the past 4 years.

So I say this to the CEO’s of the major auto manufacturers: Stop it!  You’re doing it wrong!! Not that they’re likely to listen, but someone has to spell it out.  We need new thinking in Detroit and Tokyo:

• Oil is a finite resource; it’ll eventually run out.  Stop depending on it for fuel!
• Aim for 60MPG in commuter cars.  Or better.
• Take air resistance seriously (see below).  Eliminate it as much as you can.

For what it’s worth, there are smaller cars available  in Japan and Europe from some of the major auto makers; one does in fact get 60+ MPG (70+ in some consumer tests) but for some odd reason it doesn’t seem to be available in the US.  This makes no sense to me; I believe a car with that sort of killer fuel economy would be far more popular in the US than the auto industry executives seem to think.

After much searching, I found what I’d really like for my next car.  Unfortunately it’s not yet available, and when it does come out it’ll only be in California (for now).  You can’t argue with 100 MPG, a price tag in the $25-40k region, and an electric version that gets 100 miles on $0.50 worth of charging.  Not to mention aerodynamic drag that’s practically zero, and (to put it mildly) an appearance that is eye-catching and irresistably appealing to a geek 🙂 .

Update 2010-11-14: Not long after this post, and realising that the Aptera’s availability around here is a long ways off, I gave in and got a Prius.  So now I’m pushing 50-52 MPG on my commute most of the time, slightly more than that on long haul trips.