Michael Maskalans wrote:
> On Thu, 13 May 2004, andy levy wrote:
>
>
>>The EPA uses emissions to take a wild
>>guess at the your vehicle's estimated fuel mileage, but in reality,
>>you'll more likely only get 75 to 87 percent of that number.
>
>
>
> the EPA's milage estimates have nothing to do with emissions.
>
> They have a road course that the test vehicles on, but their testing
> practices are based on "average" driving of 30 years ago. They add some
> fudge factor from the numbers they get to bring things closer to reality
> (like +12% for city and +15% for road or something along those lines) but
> they still end up way too high.
>
> If you read Motor Trend, you'd know this. 35 seconds on Google found me
> the right article, one comparing the 4 real hybrids so far (prius, old
> insight, new insigt and civic) <http://tinyurl.com/2s2fe>
From the article I linked to:
"The 19-year-old EPA tests for city and highway mileage actually gauge
vehicle emissions and use that data to derive an estimated
fuel-efficiency rating. The EPA tests pre-production vehicles in a lab
to simulate vehicle starts and stops on crowded city streets and open
road conditions. According to the EPA website, "The tests measure the
waste substances emitted from consuming the fuel, not the actual fuel
consumed. From the measurement of emissions, EPA can estimate the miles
per gallon achieved by the vehicle on average.""
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 01 2004 - 10:59:12 EDT