Fuel price discussion thread (was ‘chaos’)
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Soldato
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No they shouldn’t. Good luck getting anything to land unless all cameras are calibrated and checked out every week!
Does 65 make much difference to fuel consumption over 70? I assumed you would have to drop the speed right down to 50 ish.
google tells me French have 5% margin, personally only had a ticket there.
He's not far off to be honest. My 41kwh Zoe was quoted as 186 miles range. In reality you would never get that on the motorway, best I ever managed was 150 and most of that journey was sat in temporary 50mph roadworks. More realistic was around 120-130 miles which is about 65% of the stated range.
Whilst I accept that the stated range is supposed to be "mixed driving", for an EV that's not really a useful figure, because in reality the actual range only really becomes relevant when you're doing a long motorway journey. If I was doing typical "mixed driving" (e.g. commuting every day), it wouldn't matter whether the range was 30 miles or 3,000 miles since I could charge at home after every journey.
But that's your specific use case. What do you do when you go camping for 3 days with nowhere to charge your phone and have no power bank? If like @robj20 you frequently take long journeys into the middle of nowhere then having a car which will only get you there, and not back is useless.
I've never found it bares out in reality - in many cases I've seen pretty much no fuel economy differences from simple speed changes and generally optimal comes from keeping momentum up where you aren't rinsing the engine to do so - which is often more in the 70-80 MPH range than the 55-65 often talked about depending on vehicle.
Maybe if roads were perfectly ideal conditions and dead flat it might be different.
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Yes, it does. It obviously varies by car and traffic load but in my experience it’s 5-10%. If you are doing 75-80 then you’ll see much bigger increases in savings.
The heavier the traffic, the more you save as your not constantly running up behind slower cars. Loosing momentum and having to build it back up again massively harms efficiency.
Well there are many factors you need to take into account really, drag coefficient of the vehicle, friction or the road surface, air resistance (drag), engine efficeincy at certain revs/speed, the likelihood of slowing down and speeding up again. Knocking 5mph off one vehicle may be all it need to hit the optimal of all the above, where for others it may be 50 or slightly above. There is no one size fits all.
Any input to confirm, but wasn't the reason for Nixon announcing enacting the US reducing its speed during the (Korean?) war down to 55mph to conserve fuel?
Soldato
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life ran by Google. You are in our thoughts jpaul. Maybe they have different cameras to justify that margin also accounting of an already higher speed limit.
are you incapable of applying logic to anything?
Away from jpaul: remember when people complained about EVs and how they recover the lost revenue… bet you all didn’t think it would be the VAT increase on road fuel from wholesale prices increasing!
Soldato
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I think you misread - I’m saying that for me, electric cars aren’t viable, given their current lack of range.
Using your example, if you had a phone which could last a few days on battery, it would be better than something which charges more quickly.
Arguably more important though - a longer range means better longevity (of the battery) and better for the environment, assuming it has the same size battery.
Diesel is consistently £1.75+ a litre here now
You would be surprised. Never going over 70mph saves 6% in fuel and adds only one minute per hour to your journey time.
60mph would save you 10% of your fuel and add only 2 minutes per hour travelled.
https://www.licencebureau.co.uk/reducing-maximum-speed-to-60mph-reduces-fuel-consumption-by-10/
Going to 50mph only saves another 5%. The big savings are to be had by keeping at 70mph max or lower.
For my car it does but it is a small engine with less than ideal motorway gearing (Abarth Punto) I used to commute Bristol to Maidenhead and I'd get ~50mpg not crossing 65 and ~42mpg if my limit was 75. Speedo indicated so less actual speed no doubt. Obviously I was often capped by the speed of traffic generally but did notice the change to that speed did not really impact my journey time at all despite being 85miles.
I was travelling on the M1 South last Tuesday night and there was an enforced 60mph speed restriction in place with the electronic signs labelled : 'Speed restriction to reduce pollution'. I was like - But i'm driving an EV !!
Thanks all interesting, not something I've really bothered about before. Obviously my car being an 4wd brick won't be helping matters!
Any thoughts on adaptive cruise impacting fuel consumption? I assume it will as I know it will accelerate my car quite hard on occasion to get back up to speed.
Any thoughts on adaptive cruise impacting fuel consumption? I assume it will as I know it will accelerate my car quite hard on occasion to get back up to speed.
whenever I see a CLA mercedes, I'm envious of the aerodynamics it provides for higher speed economy (even if the fwd and shooting break space is not so great)
Soldato
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Should look at my car then.
Even then you couldnt measure anything repeatedly without any tolerance, as everything measurable has tolerances due to environmental conditions, manufacturing variances etc.
