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Excerpt from Build Your Own Electric Vehicle, 2nd Edition.
Car companies are making an effort to develop or provide more fuel-efficient cars. The market wants green cars especially with gas prices being so unstable and car companies are doing well (Toyota and Honda) at producing fuel-efficient and hybrid electric cars. Now, Ford, GM, and the other car companies are either producing or developing these types of cars as well.
Furthermore, there are all the articles about car companies stepping up to manufacture and sell electric cars and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. These fuel efficient cars WILL be coming to market in the not so distant future.
We Already Have Fuel Efficient Cars
Much has been said about creating a new type of car that can get 35 mpg. In other countries where fuel is very expensive, such cars already exist. The cars are much smaller and have smaller engines.
In 2008, compact and hybrid-electric cars sold amazingly in the United States. Source: Compacts and Hybrid Cars Becoming More Popular in the USA That article is only one example that the greatest automotive market around (in my opinion) wants these fuel efficient cars that are already in other countries.
Be More Fuel Efficient Yourself
What has not been said is the great extent to which drivers control the range of these vehicles. In countries where fuel is expensive, drivers tend to drive at slower speeds. Driving twice as fast requires four times the energy to overcome aerodynamic losses.
To go from 50 mph to 100 mph increases the rate fuel or electrical energy is used almost by a factor of eight. (Since you get there in half the time, total energy used is increased by a factor of four.) It is the driver?s right foot that more than anything else controls mpg or miles/kW-hr for a particular vehicle. Even if you do not have an electric car, plan on converting a car, or plan on buying a hybrid-electric car, one thing to take away from this post is that driving more efficiently will reduce your carbon footprint!
Source: Build Your Own Electric Vehicle, 2nd Edition, Seth Leitman and Bob Brant.
