Honda loses court case on Hybrid mileage

[Giaka]

This shit matters to real people working real jobs and spending real, hard-earned money on what the MFGs tell us they can deliver.

Fiesta was purchased as a commuter. Advertised to get 39 mpg. It gets 39 mpg like clock work. If it only got 35 would it bug me? No, if it only got 25 mpg would it bug me, hell yes.

[KenH]

The EPA mileage tests used to be run on a chassis dyno and the tires pull against a set loads according to vehicle weight. Don't know if that has changed. Aerodynamic drag is not a test factor.

No, automakers did not tune cars to excell at the EPA test cycles at the expense of real world performance and mileage. The tuned cars for minimum emissions during the emissions tests. At least, that's the way it was at first. After the first gas crisis in the early '70s and the government began requiring mileage to be posted, the automakers changed ring and pinion sets in an effort to do better with mileage ratings as a selling point. It was not unusual to see 2.73:1 axle ratios. Net effect was that Granny's 4500 pound station wagon was geared to run 160mph at 5000rpm. In the real world, at the then mandated 55mph speed limit, the engine was turning a pokey 1700rpm or so. This actually worked pretty well with 400+ cubic inch engines that made gobs of torque, but the next development in low emissions and fuel efficiency on the EPA tests was smaller displacement engines, some below 300 cubic inches, in the same 4500 pound cars. Such engines labored hard in the real world at 55mph, and it was not unusual for cars thus equipped to return 3-4mpg more at 90mph than at 55mph due to running in a more efficient portion of their torque curves.

For instance, I had a 1979 Catalina wagon with a 301, TH350, 2.73:1 axle, and 29-inch tires. 15-16mpg at 55mph, 18-19mpg at 90mph. A swap to 4.56 gears yielded  a bit slower engine rpm at 55 as the original ratio did at 90, and mileage at 55 jumped to 22-23mpg with no other changes. Other benefits of the gearing change were much improved acceleration, much improved highway passing performance, especially when pulling a 4000-pound camper, and a 40*F drop in transmission temperature in town. True 2.5-inch duals with a crossover in front of a pair of universal catalytic convertors, no mufflers (the convertors alone were fairly quiet), and swapping an electric fan for the stock engine driven fan bumped 55mph mileage to 26-27mpg. City driving increased from 12-13 to 16-17 mpg. Sure the car redlined at 95mph, but I never drove it that fast, anyway.

It's all about driveline set-up for a specific engine in a specific state of tune running on a specific fuel on a specific test that has little in common with real world driving. Don't even pretend that the engineers could not make these simple changes to improve real-world efficiency. Government mandates aren't about real world anything, they are about power and profit.

Another little known reason for inflated efficiency claims is that the automakers are very, very picky about what fuel is used for testing. No way they use E10 from the local station. The buy fuel from specific suppliers at specific geographic locations at specific times of the year to obtain the formulas that will provide the best test results, or they use a custom formula. For the most part, if the rest of us could run the same fuels, we'd see several mpg improvements in real world driving. For instance, my Olds returns 22-23mpg highway on E10, and 34-36mpg on E0 from adjacent pumps at the same station. The only reason I run E10 is they are occasionally out of E0, I fill up at about 1/4 tank, so even the E10 is really about E7.5.

[darkstarmoto]

^^good points.

An EPA official did testify that the car originally did get the rating that Honda published but also stated that manufactures are not required to use those numbers, they are just not allowed to publish anything higher. Therefore Honda could have used 45 or something to cover their butts, instead of course to make the car more attractive to consumers looking for the best mileage they went with the max.

Honda had just been sued for the exact same thing in 2005, apparently lesson not learned.

Also...hindsight being 20/20 I wonder if Honda is now feeling dumb for not just taking care of this themselves after paying out $8.5 million to lawyers who settled the class action suit and now their settlement to customers and all the potential small claims cases? They are of course planing to appeal the courts decision which will allow them to bring their super high dollar lawyers to defend their position. I wish I had that much money to throw away.

[atadaskew]

I too would be upset if my crap to drive Civic Hybrid got worse mpg than the much cheaper, much more fun, much longer lasting regular Civic.

[antvq]

So the plaintiff claims Honda “was aware” that her hybrid could not achieve the claimed 51 mpg.

Honda releases a statement saying it can achieve the rated mpg.  Is this after the S/W upgrade?  I don’t know.  Only Honda knows.  The EPA says it can so…..

Who are we to believe?  

Believe the lady that won.  She presented sufficient evidence to the courts to prove that the car did not come close to meeting the fuel economy she was promised.  

[Giaka]

They seemed to have figured it out with the abysmal numbers for the VFR1200. 

Come on now, they at least put a bigger gas tank on newest model year.


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[OmegaSix]

Look...

Hybrids are basically a marketing device.

They're environmental disaster areas in and of themselves.

There's a little thing out there - something EVERYONE has been ignoring - called physics.

You move, accelerate, and decelerate X tons - you use Y energy.  

Capturing some of the heat energy produced during deceleration is really, really smart.  

But that's limited in what it can do.

Bottom line - no hybrid that has all the safety devices required, has the passenger carrying capacity desired, and the performance desired  is EVER gonna get more than 30 - maybe 35 MPG...

So, let's all call it what it is - smart technology being USED in a stupid way.

[Skee]

Regardless of the ramifications for Honda, I see the real victory here is for the common man versus the class action legal firm.

Up to now, the only people who really benefited from a class action suit were the lawyers.  The claimants got gift certificates or a nominal cash award.  The manufacturers were able to minimize their liability by hiring a team of top flight lawyers to adjudicate a best case settlement.

This approach completely changes the landscape.  Manufacturers are less able to mitigate their liability by manipulating the legal system.

And the class action legal firms get left out in the cold.

I for one like it.

[JSharp]

Would remove 90% of the boring factor in motoring in America.

There will always be Corollas and minivans.

[Kootenanny]

There's a little thing out there - something EVERYONE has been ignoring - called physics.

You move, accelerate, and decelerate X tons - you use Y energy.  

Capturing some of the heat energy produced during deceleration is really, really smart.  

But that's limited in what it can do.

Basically, you're correct.  And that's why a hybrid would make no sense for me, as almost all of my driving is on a highway or backroad; there is really no "traffic" here, and I don't commute anyway.

However, for stop'n'go city traffic, a hybrid would make a lot of sense.  Yes, you need the same amount of energy to move your vehicle around--but an internal combustion engine is a very inefficient way to generate that energy, especially in a conventional vehicle where the engine is always on, idling even when the vehicle is not moving, and using only a tiny fraction of it's peak output when it is.  And even under ideal conditions, only about 30% of the chemical energy in the fuel is actually converted to movement--the rest is wasted to the atmosphere as heat.  In contrast, an electric motor only uses energy when it's actually in use, and when it does, it is very efficient about it.  When the vehicle is stopped, no energy is wasted.  And energy expended can at least partially be recaptured by generative braking.  

Now, I know that the electrical energy being used by the electric motor was generated by the "inefficient" gas engine, but...well, for stop'n'go traffic, where a large proportion of the time is spent either sitting still or decelerating, having the ICE shut off for those periods will certainly allow much better efficiencies overall.  That's where I believe a hybrid certainly should be able to get far superior mileage than a regular ICE vehicle--and the reality is, a LOT of people use their cars under those conditions.  Of course, a true "plug-in" EV would be even better for stop'n'go traffic...

[KenH]

  Of course, a true "plug-in" EV would be even better for stop'n'go traffic...

Until you factor in the enivronmental destruction of battery manufacture, remanufacture, and disposal, fuel for electrical generation, the effect of widespread use of EVs, such as power shortages for other uses, the inefficiencies inherent in any process of energy transfer and/or conversion, etc. Look at the whole picture, and the bottom line is less pollution, environmental destruction, and social sacrifice in some places, more less pollution, environmental destruction, and social sacrifice in others. Recycle and reuse are not the answer. The only significant gain is for numbers of people to home closer to work or work closer to home.

[Kootenanny]

Until you factor in the enivronmental destruction of battery manufacture, remanufacture, and disposal, fuel for electrical generation, the effect of widespread use of EVs, such as power shortages for other uses, the inefficiencies inherent in any process of energy transfer and/or conversion, etc. Look at the whole picture, and the bottom line is less pollution, environmental destruction, and social sacrifice in some places, more less pollution, environmental destruction, and social sacrifice in others. Recycle and reuse are not the answer. The only significant gain is for numbers of people to home closer to work or work closer to home.

Well, there are environmental consequences of oil production and conventional auto manufacture; with some political will, electrical production could be made much cleaner; with a gradual change, the electrical infrastructure could be developed to handle the higher demand; and if you wanna talk about "inefficiencies inherent in any process of energy transfer and/or conversion," look no further than the abysmal efficiency rates of the conventional ICE.

I'm not a fan of hybrids, and I don't really want to drive an EV--but I am willing to look at the overall picture.  In some situations, hybrids ARE going to be more efficient than conventional ICE-powered vehicles, and ditto for EVs.  Yes, our infrastructure is currently set up to serve conventional vehicles, but that shouldn't be the main reason to stick with them; infrastructure can be changed (there was a time when there wasn't a gas station on every corner, and shops installed hitching rails out front...).

BTW, the original reason for the development of large cities was specifically for people to live closer to their work--at the time, that meant the factory, so the town would build up around the factory, and if you had several factories close together, soon you'd have a city.  And the only way this could happen was to have adequate transportation, because moving into town generally meant moving farther from the source of food, so food had to be shipped.  As personal transportation developed, though, it eventually became possible to live further from one's place of work--but by that time, agriculture itself had become an industry, and people didn't move back to the farm, they moved to "suburbs" or "bedroom communities."  Of course, now the trend is swinging back again, and people are once again relocating into urban centres...