California Clean Cars Confusion

In California, an umbrella organization called the California Clean Cars Initiative is advocating ever tougher standards.  It is a coalition of various organizations, including respectable ones such as American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, and others which are more pollitlcally radical such as The Center for Auto Safety (trial lawyers) and Union of Concerned Scientists.  

And, as usual, Consumers Union joins with the lefties to advocate for unaffordable cars, in opposition to their consumer oriented mission.

One trick that the CCCI pulls is that they conflate "healthy" and "clean" air with "climate change".  I think everyone agrees that smog forming compounds such as NOx and ammonia are dangerous.  The automakers have met every LEV requirement thrown at them, drastically reducing the amount of air pollution from combustion and fuel evaporation.  

However, CO2 is not a carcinogen, and it doesn't form smog or acid rain.  It's plant food.  Hypothetically, a hydrocarbon fuelled vehicle could be designed which would combust its fuel so cleanly, and apply an effective aftertreatment, so that the exhaust would be composed only of CO2, NO2, and H20--complete combustion, with allowance for nitrogen interactions.  However, CCCI would not consider this "clean and healthy" air, because of the global warming lobby.

CCCI would be better off advocating for the removal of dirty-running old cars from California's roads, and going after non-transportation sources such as lawnmowers, boats, and airplanes, if they were serious about the health effects of real pollution.

Yaris Fail

I have not seen the new Toyota Yaris in person yet.  Maybe I'll cross paths with one on Woodward this weekend.  Anyway, looking at the photos and early impressions from other reviewers, I think I can sum it up by quoting Toyota's Yaris tagline. 

"Yaris.   It's A Car."

Or, to quote the ever snarky Car And Driver, "Yep, it's a car. There's not much else to say."

In other words, Toyota is making no effort to build an interesting small car.   They are relying on their reputation for safe, comfortable, reliable cars, and a little bit of styling upate, to try to compete against a very hot small car marketplace.  Meanwhile, Fiat 500 brings style and cute by the bucket.  Ford Fiesta and Mazda2 bring sharp styling and zippy handling.  Honda's Fit brings excellent packaging, good handling, and good fuel economy.  Chevy Rio brings interesting styling and promises strong performance.

So why the capitulation?  The b-car space is going to become more important as fuel economy targets tighten, it seems odd that Toyota would hold back.  If I had to guess, I would say that Toyota was saving its powder for its refresh of its key product, the Camry.

Goodyear's AMT Project

Goodyear is working on an R&D project to design and demonstrate truck tires which maintain their own pressure with some sort of internal pump and valve system.

Goodyear's Air Maintenance Technology (AMT) will enable tires to remain inflated at the optimum pressure without the need for any external pumps or electronics.  All components of the AMT system, including the miniaturized pump, will be fully contained within the tire.

This is an interesting idea, and not totally new, a company called CODA in the Czech Republic has been promoting a design recently which self inflates.

However, the problem with this concept is that it scavenges energy from the tire rotation to pump the air--which will increase rolling resistance.  There is huge pressure on tire makers to reduce rolling resistance as part of fuel economy improvements.  Unless the government somehow gives credit for the technology to reduce the up-front efficiency hit, I don't see automakers being enthusiastic in replacing their old fashioned tires.  That's because fuel economy tests are performed in a lab, and tires are always properly inflated.

Goodyear press release here.

The Steer Safe: Are The Joking?

There is a hilariously bad invention up on Kickstarter called Steer Safe which is supposed to help people "safely" use their smartphone while driving, by hanging it from the top of the wheel on a cradle.


Why is this so bad that it is funny?

Well, for one thing, it isn't even remotely "safe". It blocks the drivers view of the vehicles instruments. It encourages fiddling with a touch screen while driving. It may interfere with good hand-to-hand steering. And, perhaps most dangerous of all, it is close to the deployment zone of the driver's airbag.

Can you imagine the damage that thing could do, if you are in an accident with airbag activation? As your body moves forward during the crash, the airbag flap opens violently, flinging a glass and metal smartphone up towards your forehead.

Or in a rear-end accident, your iPhone becomes a projectile, snapping out of its holder and flying towards your face.

This thing is so poorly thought out, I have to believe that they guy posting it is joking. Right?

Review: id America Gasket iPhone Case

id America, a maker of iPhone cases and covers, sent me their Gasket iPhone case to review.

The case is made of brushed aluminum, and is designed to look like an engine block, with cut0uts reminiscent of cylinder bores and cooling passages. In addition to the aluminum shell, the case comes with two clear protectors, for the back and for the front screen. The aluminum shell has a suede inner lining to cushion the phone.

I found the case to fit the phone snugly, and the screen protectors did their job without ruining the usability or feel of the touch screen. Installation was not too hard, though it does take some practice to attach the clear protective film (using the supplied squeegee) without leaving any dreaded air bubbles. Once I had it together, the case felt sturdy and substantial.

Overall, I found the case attractive and effective. I like the automotive inspired design. I would definitely buy one for myself, or as a gift for a fellow gear-head.

The Gasket case can be purchasd from id America here for $30.

CAFE: Rise Of The Turbo

One way that automakers will meet the new CAFE standards will be to downsize engines and add turbocharging, as a relatively inexpensive and proven way to get variable displacement. And with direct injection and EGR, the ignition charge can be kept cool, allowing the engine to run highly efficiently on regular octane rating gasoline.

This won't be entirely popular, because even today's low mass, twinned turbos do have some power lag, and they do make different and more annoying noises than a traditional big bore motor. Personally, I would drive a 2.0L gasoline or diesel turbo over a 3.0L naturally aspirated engine, if it would save me 20% or more on fuel, whatever noises it makes.

Another concern about turbos is their durability. I think that Audi, Volvo, Saab, and most recently Ford have proven that modern turbos are robust and can last for the design life of the engine. Ford's "torture test" YouTube series is entertaining, if you want to see a turbo engine severely abused.

The reason turbos help fuel economy is that at low engine load, say when you are cruising down the highway, your engine isn't using much of its power, the turbo isn't really running, and the engine is like a 2.0L I4. However, when you are accelerating, or otherwise making a high power demand, the turbo spools up and allows the engine to consume more air (and fuel), temporarily making it more like the 3.0L V6 you used to drive. Because the EPA fuel economy tests have a good bit of steady state driving, and idling, this variable displacement effect of the turbo really helps the MPG rating.

A smaller turbo engine, all else being equal, will also tend to be lighter weight than a comparable larger engine, which is another source of fuel economy gain.

Since turbos are cheaper than batteries and electric motors, the early CAFE gains are likely to happen through engine downsizing rather than hybridization. The next steps will probably be mild hybrids (start/stop, launch torque) coupled with downsized turbocharged engines.

Engineers: CAFE Won't Be Easy

Wards has published a survey of 1,100 automotive engineers (I am sure I was one respondent) which highlights the trade-offs required to meet the new high CAFE standards.

The best part of the article is some of the comments left in the open ended comment box:

In all, survey respondents left 100 pages worth of comments.

"Consumers don't understand what this will cost, and environmental groups don't care," is a typical comment.

"Aerodynamic blobs on the way," another quips.

The Mighty Have Fallen

Wow.

Consumer Reports, formerly certified fanboys of Honda, have utterly dogged the 2012 Civic. 

It isn't recommended.   Too boring, too plasticky.  

Honda had better be careful.. if they stray too far from their zippy heritage, they are going to get eaten by the very aggressive new up and comers such as Elantra and Focus.

The Truth About 60MPG

There is furious lobbying going on, as the automakers and the greens try to sway the Obama administration on future CAFE standards.  The greens, including Consumer Reports, NRDC, and others are claiming that not only is 60MPG feasible, but it will be good for us. Here are some of their main claims.

1)  60MPG will increase jobs and profitability of the Big 3.  Apparently, Citibank looked into a crystal ball and decided that the Big 3 market share and margins would increase with higher fuel economy vehicles.  But the Big 3 rely on large vehicles, even today, for a lot of their profits.  And jobs?  That depends.  If free trade with China continues, I see batteries and other components coming from China, which is a powerhouse in rare earth mining and raw materials processing.  Look at it this way--in the rise of Li-Ion batteries for tools and laptop computers, where are all the parts coming from?  China and Korea.

2) 60MPG will not cost much, and will pay for itself.   True, at $4/gal, a 60MPG car will pay back a sizeable premium in 3-4 years.  However, the cost estimates of some the technology are pie-in-the-sky.  What happens to li-ion battery costs if we start making millions of relatively huge car batteries?  Are the greens ready to strip-mine China for lithium?  What about the supply of rare earth metals for the powerful magnets needed by the motor/generators?   

3) Americans want 60MPG cars.  Sure they do--but they don't want to pay much for them.  As many surveys have shown, when you attach costs to highly efficient cars, interest drops off rapidly.  Today, there are numerous highly efficient small and medium cars available.  However, trucks and SUVs are still hot sellers.   What Americans really want is free efficiency.  They want large cars and cheap gas.  They want fat free french fries.

4)  60MPG is within easy reach, with off the shelf tech.  Sure, for small and mid-sized cars.  Give me a B/C platform and let me add a couple of thousand dollars in engine upgrades, more transmission gears, aluminum and high strength steel components.  You'll have a 60MPG small car that costs $25,000.  Great.  Now, how do you do it for a mid-sized SUV or minivan?  Or the Texas workhorse, the 1-ton pickup?  Not so easy.

Here are some of my thoughts about CAFE standards.

A)  Reducing vehicle weight will reduce overall safety, or add cost due to expensive countermeasures like additional airbags.  It's physics.  In a two car crash, the heavier car does better.  Until all the old heavy vehicles are off of the road, about 10 years after the lightweight ones are introduced, the new vehicles will be at a disadvantage.

B)  High CAFE standards will increase up-front costs, and reduce sales.   Suppose CAFE adds $4,000 in today's money to a typical family vehicle.  Some people will respond by buying used, some will buy smaller or cheaper, and some will defer their purchase.   Yes, you will save money down the road.  But you have to pay the down payment and the taxes now.  I agree with the AAM that sales volumes will be decreased.  Fewer new car sales means fewer jobs in sales and manufacturing.  However, there may be a renaissance in the old car repair industry, as people keep their old beaters longer.

C) High CAFE standards will reduce consumer choice.  How do you make a pickup truck which can pull a 10,000lb trailer, or haul 2,000lbs of bricks in its bed, which gets close to 60MPG?  I don't think it is possible.  Batteries are heavy and reduce payload.  Beefy suspensions and large engines all work against efficiency.  Even with efficiency improvements, in order to be able to sell pickup trucks, the automakers will have to get people to buy smaller cars to offset them.  That's how CAFE works.  The only way to do this is through price manipulation--either lose money on small cars, or jack up margins in large trucks.  Since method one nearly killed the Big 3 once already, I suspect the answer is going to be method two.  People who want muscle cars or pickup trucks will have to pay a lot more for them or do without.  Instead, there will be strong pressure on consumers to pick small cars and range limited EVs.  Products like high-performance sports cars may be very different under a 60MPG regime--slower, more expensive.

So what is the answer?

If you want to influence consumers directly, and do it in a transparent way, you need to tax fossil fuel.  Don't specify a fleet efficiency standard, rather, increase gas taxes slowly until consumers start to respond.  You can make it revenue neutral by rebating the taxes, or offsetting somewhere else.  But there isn't political will to do that.  It's easier to hide behind CAFE.  

Eventually, though, people will notice that CAFE is just another tax, just applied in a more complicated, hidden way.  Unfortunately, it may be too late, after the industry has changed in drastic ways.

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Tuesday Night Cruisers

A few pics from Woodward Ave as the sun was setting.

The Ritchie Boys At Holocaust Memorial Center

One of the Detroit area's hidden gems (well, it isn't that hidden) is the Holocaust Memorial Center. A fascinating, if grim, museum of Holocaust history with stunning architecture.

The HMC debuted a new exhibit this last weekend, about the Ritchie Boys, a unit of soldiers who were trained in intelligence gathering and interrogation techniques at the Army's Fort Ritchie, before being sent to Europe to help with the invasion. Many of the Ritchie Boys were Jews who had German language skills.

I went to the opening and shot a few photos.

Out front, a pair of (Brits!) WWII reenactors set up a very nice mini-camp, featuring a lovingly restored Jeep, as well as some excellent replica Browning machine guns, real Garands, and some token barbed wire.

Some old timers

A member of the Jewish War Veterans honor guard

One of the Ritchie Boys, Si Lewen, was an artist and sketched what he saw during the invasion

One of the Ritchie Boys tells his story

One of their misions was propoganda. The would drive around in a truck with a huge amplifier to broadcast German language de-motivation. This was dangerous work, as the Germans would often shoot towards the sound, and they eventually learned to run wires to the speaker some distance away, to draw the fire from the truck.

Paratooper uniform

My favorite part of the exhibit... they should have had more guns. They should have had a Colt 1911 and a Garand, at least.

Infantry uniform

Guy Stern, one of the Ritchie Boys, and also a director of the HMC, speaks about his experience

Class notes from Fort Ritchie, about identifying German weapons and units.

Tools of the trade.

Memorial Flame

A few more Jeep photos

If you haven't gone to the Holocaust Memorial Center, I suggest you take half a day and visit. It is pretty heavy, depressing stuff, but it is a good experience.

The MONOTYPE Car

Designer Fernando Ocana has published a Master's of Art project for an urban vehicle he calls MONOFORM. A 3-person compact city car, his design focuses on how the exterior of the vehicle interacts with the view of the city around it, by using various glass planes to reflect images.



As a pure design project, it is pretty neat. As a vehicle, it is of course unworkable. Rear stearing has inherent stability problems at high speed. Driver visibility in this vehicle doesn't look to be good. There doesn't appear to be any suspension travel. And, probably the most severe issue, the aerodynamics of this shape are probably unworkable.

Would anyone want to drive around in something that looks like a phone booth designed by Lockheed Martin stealth engineers having a bad day?

Green Vehicles RIP

Another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust.

Green Vehicles of Salinas CA has closed its doors. They were trying to develop an electric 3-wheeler, the Triac, but after burning through nearly $700,000 in state and local taxpayer funds.

The Triac was supposed to be another one of those rule-dodging vehicles which was considered by regulators to be a motorcycle and not a passenger car, because of its 3 wheel design.

According to the article here, the president of Green Vehicles notified the city of his company's failure via email. Nice.

So whey did the fail? The same reason that Aptera failed, and the same reason that most of the electric start-ups are going to fail. Building a safe, comfortable, reliable, affordable vehicle is not easy, and people are not as willing to experiment with such an expensive purchase as you might think.

When the dust settles, in a few years, I am convinced that the electric vehicles which are successful in the marketplace will come from the established automotive companies, with perhaps a niche player like Fisker or Tesla hanging on.

Despite the arrogant "we can do better" attitude of the start-ups, they are learning that the "old dinosaurs" do know a thing or two about product development and marketing.

CR (Still) Hates American Cars

Consumer Reports, which claims to be an impartial advocate for the consumer, to my mind is really a left-leaning organization of dubious intent. CR frequently tells consumers what CR thinks is best for them, rather than primarily taking their interests into account.  Witness their love for socialized medicine and CFL bulbs.  

Today's example, this blog posting from CR on "Best Used Cars Under $20,000"

Several CR staffers submit their choices, and all of them pick Honda or Toyota vehicles, except for two.  There is 1/2 a vote for a Ford Fusion, and 1 vote for a VW.  

Really guys?  You have $20,000 to spend, which is plenty, and you don't even consider some of the better American used vehicles, such as the Ford Escape, Chevrolet Equinox/Saturn Vue, Chevrolet Malibu, Ford Taurus, Chrysler 300?   

Consider: you can get a late model used Malibu or Taurus for under $20,000 which has all the trimmings, including leather heated seats, automatic lights, back up sensors, automatic climate control, etc. 

Space Shuttle Joke

Saw this suggestion for a practical joke making the rounds.

"When the Space Shuttle lands, everyone wear ape suits!"

Heh.

Nissan Leaf vs Chevy Volt Pricing

Nissan has announced that it is increasing the price on the 2012 Leaf, by $2,400 over the 2011 model, to $36,000.   Compare that to the price of the Volt, at $40,000.  Nissan also is capped at 20,000 units/year for the U.S. market, while GM has said it plans to produce 60,000 Volts in 2012.

If the Leaf is scarce, dealer markups may continue, reducing the price advantage further.  

Personally, if I was in the market for a plug-in car, I would probably choose the Volt over the Leaf, buying the gasoline hybrid capability for an extra $4,000 or less.

Auto Alliance CAFE Web Site

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has launched a web site to promote the automaker's side of the CAFE debate.  You can find it here.  

Toyota: No Electric RAV4 For You!

According to this source, Toyota will reserve its plug-in RAV4 product (co-produced with Tesla) for fleets and government entities, and won't sell them to the general public.

The Toyota RAV4 EV will make its comeback after first being sold 15 years ago. The vehicle won't be made available to consumers, Yoza said, instead they are focusing on "very strategic applications" such as fleets and car sharing programs. Despite being a BEV that could benefit from fast charging, the RAV4 EV will not include a CHAdeMO charging port. Yoza said Toyota will not offer fast charging on any vehicles until the SAE determines a standard.

 I can hear the shrieking of the BEV boosters all the way from my perch here in Detroit.  "Toyota thinks it's the 1990's!"  Several are probably loading up their super-8 movie cameras in preparation for "Who Killed The Electric Car 2".

Why would Toyota do it this way?  Simple.  Cost.  Chances are the RAV4 EV will be so expensive that Toyota doesn't want to lose a ton of money on them.  Think about the overhead for a new small volume vehicle--dealer training, special service tools, parts distribution.  Instead, by keeping it fleet only, Toyota can keep costs down by centralizing service and support.  

The RAV4 EV is mostly a product for CARB and the "green states" who follow California mandates.  It helps get Toyota the EV points it needs in California, so it can keep selling Tundras (13/17MPG) Sequoias (13/18MPG), FJ Cruisers (15/20MPG) and 4Runners (17/22MPG).   

CNG Civic: Cheap Running But Slow

The Honda Civic GX is slated to be sold to retail customers nationally in 2012 (it was only available in four states, previously).  Since it runs on compressed natural gas, it is relatively cheap to run, with CNG fuel economy in the range of 28mpg (EPA estimate) and CNG costing around $1.70/gal.  

However, there are some big trade-offs involved in driving a Civic GX.  Acceleration is poor, with 0-60mph times coming in at 12.6s according to Edmunds.  The range is limited compared to a gasoline powered car, or a Chevy Volt, typically around 200 miles.  And if you want to fuel at home, which is likely because CNG stations are not common, you need to install a CNG compressor which will cost you around $5000, installed.  

Does the Civic GX make more sense than a Chevrolet Volt?  It's a tough call.  The Volt's price (after subsidy) is around $33,000.  The GX price is about $30,000 if you include the cost of the CNG compressor.  For the extra $3,000 you gain the ability to fuel anywhere (if you run it on gasoline or charge at 110v).  CNG miles cost about $.07, while all-electric miles will cost you about $0.06 per mile.  

But the Volt gets to 60mph in about 8.5s, and in range sustaining (gas) mode has a range of over 300 miles.  I think while the government tax credit is in place, I'd take the Volt.

A Couple Evening Car Photos

I went to Woodward to get some ice cream today before sunset. Spotted a few neat cars.

This one appears to be a GM guy driving a late pre-production Chevrolet Caprice.

And this is a tail light of a new Cadillac SRX crossover. It surprised me, the shape of it, I had not noticed it before. It's like a little throwback fin, back to the 1970's.