the new small hatch skoda diesel

If it's a properly derived urban or extra urban figure, I'm going to say yes.

I can drive a tankful carefully and beat the figures. I can also completely blow the figures, sometimes averaging only about 30mpg. But it would be possible (and boring) to beat the figures all the time.

You can reach the published urban and extra urban figures, if there was no cheating when they were recorded, and your usual routes aren't awful for mpg.
 
if I drive normal I actually beat the published combined mpg for my car by like 2-3mpg average over the 25 mile journey I do to work, which is a mixture of single lane A roads and dual carriageway, but the times I drive normal are few and far between.

A lot of people just don't know how to feather the throttle, when you put the computer on real time mpg you can see the difference between feathering and staying a little on positive all the time - makes a huge difference, especially with a turbo where staying off boost means much mpg.

As for "green" cars, pish.
 
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People really are that stupid. My father in law almost bought himself a brand new Polo BlueMotion for about £14k IIRC because, and I quote, 'The road tax is so cheap!'.

It wasn't i told him, in not so many words, to stop being a **** he went and looked elsewhere. Next thing I know he went and bought a Kangoo van *face/palm*
 
My shagged old 1.9 N/A ZX managed just short of 60mpg yesterday on the commute to nottingham.

It was because i was stuck behind artics all the way and was only doing 45mph but its as valid a proclamation as the sack of crap in the op.

Its also more than ten times cheapeer to buy.
 
BigglesPiP said:
If it's a properly derived urban or extra urban figure, I'm going to say yes.

I can drive a tankful carefully and beat the figures.
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no, thats not the point

You dont drive everywhere in 5th, coasting up to junctions, finding other cars to slipsteam off etc..

We all know if you go on an absolute mission you can get, or beat the book figure. But nobody drives like that, so they dont represent real world economy

Do you actually own and drive a car everyday ?
 
MrLOL said:
no, thats not the point

You dont drive everywhere in 5th, coasting up to junctions, finding other cars to slipsteam off etc..

We all know if you go on an absolute mission you can get, or beat the book figure. But nobody drives like that, so they dont represent real world economy

Do you actually own and drive a car everyday ?
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I equal my published figures regularly doing 60/70 on A roads and 70/80 on Dual carriageways then sitting in heavy traffic entering the city...

that even includes the occasional foot down overtake.
 
the best big about these "green" cars is the overall effect of producing them vs sticking with an existing car....

I'd be interested to see the total environmental impact of producing and running a "green" car vs running an existing average family car. The point where the new car overtakes the old car in total impact would no doubt be years upon years down the line.

Granted new cars should be made to have lower overall impact however getting everyone to change over is just as bad, if not worse, than using old cars till they die...
 
Energy used in production is about 10% of the total energy used in the car's lifetime assuming a 100,000 mile lifecycle. For an improvement of about 3mpg for the 'green' car it doesn't take long to catch up. I did a lifecycle analysis for someone recently to prove a point about the Prius and it swung very heavily in favour of the Prius no matter what way you looked at it or fiddled the figures in the favour of the other car. Increasing the lifecycle from 100K miles to 150K miles or more swings the figures further in favour of the greener car.
 
My mums got a 1.4 TDI Fabia estate with the throbbing 80bhp TDI version. It does average 61mpg day in day out in her hands. Sitting at 65mph the journey trip will nudge over 70mpg. I had it when they were on holiday and I thrashed the living daylights out of it and it still returned 56mpg, I tried my best to lower this even flat out which is the redline in 5th and not a pretty sound from a 3 cylinder PD diesel it was still showing 43mpg on the instant mpg.

Before we hit the Fabia bashing I had to drive it to Manchester and back not something I was looking forward to and was surprised how comfy it was on the motorway, its a got a good stereo and aircon. Its some funny special edition which also has very comfortable sports (lol in 80bhp diesel) seats and a nice 3 spoke leather steering wheel which looks like a Audi S line one with a Skoda badge on it and the indicator/wiper stalks straight from the Audi parts bin so the main driver controls feel good to use. The actual dash isn't that well made or nice to look at but this has no effect on the comfort added to the soft suspension it soaks up all the bumps well and makes it a good mile muncher.
 
Jonny69 said:
Energy used in production is about 10% of the total energy used in the car's lifetime assuming a 100,000 mile lifecycle. For an improvement of about 3mpg for the 'green' car it doesn't take long to catch up. I did a lifecycle analysis for someone recently to prove a point about the Prius and it swung very heavily in favour of the Prius no matter what way you looked at it or fiddled the figures in the favour of the other car. Increasing the lifecycle from 100K miles to 150K miles or more swings the figures further in favour of the greener car.
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i stand corrected :-)

although does that take into account the destruction of the old car before its time as such?
 
Siliconslave said:
i stand corrected :-)

although does that take into account the destruction of the old car before its time as such?
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I'd think that when people buy a new car the other one tends to be bought by someone else rather than just destroyed. Although if you take both cars to the end of their natural life then yes you can include this figure. Also do cars like the prius last as long? Do the batteries need replacing? If so that makes a huge impact as they are horrible to dispose of and don't compare to a normal cars servicing environmental costs.

I'm guessing that a modern car will cost more and have a greater environmental impact to dispose of eventually. Far more icky fluids and odd substances to get rid of than say a 90's non-aircon' car.
 
Dureth said:
I'd think that when people buy a new car the other one tends to be bought by someone else rather than just destroyed.
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thats the most likely outcome, however i was working on the worst case where people stop modern petrol cars and swapping them in for the new "super green" equivalents...
 
Siliconslave said:
although does that take into account the destruction of the old car before its time as such?
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Destruction is between 5 and 10% of the total energy across the lifetime, again relative to a 100K mile lifetime. That's if you were to dispose of it. Realistically there's a lot of re-use and recycling going on which can offset that figure slightly.

Dureth said:
I'm guessing that a modern car will cost more and have a greater environmental impact to dispose of eventually. Far more icky fluids and odd substances to get rid of than say a 90's non-aircon' car.
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You'd be surprised how little of that there is relative to the total weight of the car and they do go further these days to prevent cross contamination of materials to make recycling easier.

They say that about the Prius batteries but the 'huge weight' of batteries it carries actually only weigh about 53Kg so compared to the millions of mobile phones that get thrown away every year it doesn't even register on the scale.

Edit: it helps if I read your post... the batteries are supposed to last for 10 years or 200K miles but I can't remember where I read that. Wikipedia has a good two-sided article about the Prius covering claims made by the manufacturer vs real life results from owners.
 
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