The big news in the EV world is the announcement of a new hybrid car from Chinese automaker BYD. They claim it has a range of 1,300 miles, but that may be conservative. A couple of Chinese journalists took one out for a test and drove it until it literally coughed and died. It lasted 1,497 miles.
Now, the journalists were driving slowly and carefully, so maybe 1,300 miles is really more plausible. Either way, I want to know how it managed this. It turns out the battery only provides 50-70 miles of range, so the car's impressive performance is almost entirely due to its gasoline engine, which has a mileage rating of 81 mpg.
81 mpg! Yes, that's highway driving, but no gasoline car in the US gets more than about 40 mpg on the highway. So forget about the car's "AI-enabled energy consumption management system." I want to know how they get 81 mpg from the gasoline engine. It's only 99 horsepower, but so was the old Chevy Spark, and it didn't get even half of 81 mpg. What kind of witchcraft are we dealing with here?
Since buying an EV, I have met numerous people in person and online, who have 600-mile commutes. To extrapolate my sample, I would estimate that 20 million Americans commute 500 or more miles to work each morning.
A 1300-mile-range vehicle should be a mandatory purchase for these consumers. It is a godsend for them.
500 mile commute each morning? By car? I think you forgot the ever helpful "/s" at the end.
Clearly you haven't experienced comments on an EV media piece.
Everybody is a traveling trombone repairperson these days.
it's a hybrid, so it's not just an ICE. My Prius gets about 60 mpg on the highway under favorable conditions (warm weather, no strong headwind).
Regular Prius, or the ‘C’? Iirc the C has an even higher rating.
2023 Prius Prime. Day to day, the ICE never runs, and most days I charge it overnight at home. Electric energy consumption is about 3.8 miles/kWh (again, warm weather and no headwind; winter average is about 2.7 miles/kWh). After a long trip (700 miles), which I take once or twice a month, the net fuel economy ends up at around 75-80 mpg before I recharge (the car's computer apparently considers electric mode to have infinite fuel economy).
What is your average speed?
Typical cruising speed is 73 mph. Average is obviously lower, but I've never calculated it.
I should also mention that the new car seems to do a much better job with regeneration on downhill runs than my previous Prius (2007). Case in point: I live at an elevation about 150 ft above town, and I can drive from home to the CVS in town, just under three miles, and arrive with 100% charge.
If you are willing to accept a diesel, some web searching is in order.
And as for the claim, I’d like to see it reproduced a few times.
I have a ratty old 2003 (thus dirty) VW Jetta manual shift diesel. I bought it in 2005 with 11K on the clock, have put 300,000+ miles since. Dependable as a hammer. I get 45MPG on an aggressively driven every 2 weeks 90 mile drive south to NYC, around home 50-70 mpg. Sensibly driven lower speed interurban driving is more efficient than at-speed highway: wind resistance goes up by the cube of the speed. That's why Ferrarris have all that HP.
Horsepower and weight. Back in the 80s, we had cars that hit the mid 40s easily. Every advance in engine tech has focused on heavier cars going faster, not farther. A 1985 Mustang GT made 165 hp. That’s less than a Corolla now.
Last 2 decades: I have had a couple midsized, manual transmission sedans that regularly got 40 mpg or more on highway, if I did not go too fast. The VW diesel (from the cheat years) would regularly get 50.
I totally agree with you that the technology has largely gone into keeping the mpg about constant while increasing car HP and size.
I totally agree with you that the technology has largely gone into keeping the mpg about constant while increasing car HP and size.
I totally agree with you that the technology pushed by automakers trying to drive profits in the United States has largely gone into keeping the mpg about constant while increasing car HP and size.
Fixed!
It's hard to entirely blame the automakers. They offer small cars that get great mileage, but people don't buy them. It's true that the small cars aren't advertised with the same vigor as the bigger more expensive ones, and it's also true that when you visit your local dealer the sales person is pretty much certain to try to upsell you if you're looking at something small and cheap, but the willingness of buyers to buy cars (and trucks and SUVs) that are bigger and more expensive than the buyers have any real use for is a huge factor.
Most American cars that got good mileage were little tin can POS. The Prius was way better, and Toyota wanted to sell it to you. Look how well it did. So yes, you can blame the carmakers. The dealers, too.
Crash standards and market requirements for more "standard" features have increased the weight of new vehicles compared to 1980's vehicles. I remain skeptical till we get more details, particularly about the average speed.
"...but no car in the US gets more than about 40 mpg on the highway. .."
The EPA lists quite a few hybrids that do better. See here . The Camry hybrid is listed at 53.
Listing mpg is myth, in my experience. My RAV4 hybrid was listed by Toyota at 41 mpg but has always gotten 36 in the 28 months I’ve had it (25K miles).
Interestingly enough, I tend do as well as EPA or a little better.
Those are all hybrids. The actual quote you are responding to is: “no GASOLINE car”.
The mpg being referenced is ONLY for the gasoline engine, not the combined mpg that includes miles driven under electric power.
"Those are all hybrids. The actual quote you are responding to is: “no GASOLINE car”."
It appears Drum edited his post after I quoted it in my comment. But it doesn't matter, hybrids are gasoline cars. I excluded plugin hybrids so all the energy to power the car is coming from burning gasoline whether directly or by first charging the battery.
We needed to have pushed up mileage requirements a lot many years ago, but Detroit was to busy making money off big cars and weren't in a position to compete. The window of opportunity for hybrids has mainly passed. Not to mention--oil companies were dead set against raising mileage standards too. Of course, it was Tesla who made a killing on selling mileage credits back in the day.
I've often wondered if Big Oil was hiding better MPG breakthroughs.
You want to engineer a 900- HP engine to power TruckZilla- I'll bet big oil will assign you a personal rep to engineer the burn just right. Ask them for help on the burn for a thrifty engine- Don't hold your breath.
Given the potential revenue (or loss) I wonder if fuel thrifty engineers are living in extravagant luxury somewhere . . . or buried closer to home
Maybe it took someone like China to break through
Everyone has good points, but here's a counterpoint. The Mitsubishi Mirage has a 78 hp engine and weighs about 2100 pounds. Its highway mileage is around 42 mpg.
Why not 81 mpg? If BYD can build an 81 mpg ICE engine, why don't we have 81 mpg gasoline cars?
I don't know, but the rules of thermodymics are cruel limits on the efficiency of heat engines.
It’s all in how you drive. Back in 2013 people were able to squeeze 77mpg out of a VW Passat.
https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-hypermilers-world-record-20130624-story.html
The numbers were startling, but hypermiling, iirc, relied on tricks nobody would put up with in real life, like running tires at 70 psi, keeping windows closed at all times, no accessories or a/c. The most striking thing I remember reading about was using the accelerator as if there was an egg between your foot and the pedal. Maybe the "AI-enabled" miracle-maker system has duplicated this effect.
Really, though, J. Frank has me wondering whether 81 mpg is even theoretically possible under anything like normal conditions, unless maybe they're generating electricity from excess heat or something Rube Goldberg-ish like that (but clever, I'd say, if it could really be done economically).
Smarts routinely get 80 mpg with the diesel engine.
Well, but that's maybe not so surprising for a car you can put in your pocket
Right but we have the absolute minimum of information about this claim. This is obviously a plugin hybrid so if for example they stopped regularly to plugin and recharge the electric battery I’m sure you could get similar results with a plugin Prius.
It is not yet demonstrated that they have indeed produced an 81 MPG automobile. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.
As others here have noted this 81 mpg might need to be diplicated in different trials. As my father the engineer used to say the easiest way to get good gas mileage is to lie about it.
Well, in 2011, VW produced a 261 MPG diesel-electric concept car.....
https://www.wired.com/2011/01/vw-xl1-concept-car/
What is the Mirage's coefficient of drag?
From the second link:
"Granted, these impressive figures are based on the relatively new CLTL testing procedure (China Light Duty Vehicle Test Cycle) which is apparently a bit more generous and optimistic with its figures than that of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), which tends to better reflect "real-world" driving conditions. CLTL is the Chinese standard for testing whereas the EPA is the standard in the US. CLTL testing figures can be as much as 30% higher than that of the EPA. Even so, 70% of 1,300 miles (2,092 km) is still a pretty impressive 910 miles (1,465 km) of "real-world" range, if the trend holds true."
Of course, this only (possibly) explains the rating, not the real world test mentioned.
Yeah, their 'highway' is our city speeds - without starts and stops.
The Geo Metro did pretty well. 50, not 81, as I recall but that was with 1980's tech. It used a three cylinder engine so it was little more than a souped up riding lawnmower.
Why put an 18+ gallon tank in a car which ostensibly achieves 81 MPG?
I have a 2017 Prius Prime. I routinely get 60+ mpg on the flat at ~ 60 mph after running the battery flat. My average with the battery boost (~ 22 miles) is > 80 mpg. If I rember properly, my mpg dropped to ~ 45 at 70 driving across Montana some years ago.
I used to get ~45 mpg in a diesel rabbit in the mid 80's. I have never tried to see how my prius prime would do at 45 on the flat. I am in too much of a hurry and the other drivers would not be happy with me. They already aren't happy with me driving 65 in a 60 mile an hour zone. My son says that I am a stereotype prius driver.
They likely chose to optimize the ICE to charge the EV battery at the same time as the ICE's primary battery, but at the expense of the life of the EV battery.
The single most important factor in highway fuel consumption is aerodynamic drag. It's hard to estimate drag from a picture, but the car shown looks like it should be aerodynamically efficient, with both fairly small frontal area and a low coefficient of drag.
There's also hypermiling. There are cars sold in the US that can get 80 mpg on the highway if driven for maximum economy, but almost nobody does.
My beloved Honda Civic CRX HF from 1988 was rated at 50-ish MPG. I calculated my mileage at every full up and almost always achieved a value in the mid-60s. A handful of times it dipped below 60, but was balanced by an even greater number of times above 70. Really, it’s all in the way you drive it.
That car looked sharp, was rock-solid reliable in the six years I owned it, and even allowed me to sell her at a profit (in Denmark). My first new car, my last car, and the best car I ever owned,
It was only a few years ago (2015/2016) where the brand- new, most efficient full EV car had roughly 3x the range of the second longest range EV car. This long range EV was also the highly regarded as a sports car.
Not exactly apples to apples and the Tesla fandom hasn't aged very well.... but at the time it was a revolutionary for the car world and few would have believed the claims just a year prior to the release.
The BYD cars have American auto execs pooping their pants. Maybe it's all hype.... but based on the US auto industries reaction, i bet there's more than just smoke here.
81 mpg? Based on what's the Chinese government says and what some Chinese journalists have (been compelled to) confirmed?
Classic case of too good to be true!
And BTW: My 2005 Prius made more than 40 mpg on the highway, provided I stayed roughly within the speed limits (the official highway efficiency was 55 mpg--also a classic case of too good to be true! But I got close to 50 mpg in mixed driving, about 50% highway).
Hand built wonder car, met by a team of mechanics every thirty miles.
My 2014 Ford plug-in Fusion is still getting 62.4 mpg lifetime average. Yes, E only runs out in about 15-20 miles, and we don't do many long trips, but it has been back-forth the length of California repeatedly over the years. As a gas-powered car it will outlive it's battery: what is really bothersome is why car makers didn't seem to think that thru. What to do when people like me rebel against scrapping an otherwise lovely car after 5-6 years for yet another chance at better mileage?