David's response was timely as tonight I saw a TV ad for a 108 mpg Ford
pih. Now what does that 108 really mean to the person still thinking old
school? That if they pump 1 gallon of chemical-fuel into their tank they
will get 108 miles ... no.
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20121011/carnews/121019975
Ford is used the 108 rating in the TV ad to boost sales but, its all
funny numbers when used that way (and not funny hah, hah. Funny as in
totally bogus-dude!).
I feel confident we all know the original intent of the mpge ratings,
and that the rating is actually a combination of both electric and
chemical-fuel mileage. But when a company's marketing dept. is allowed
to use numbers in a manipulative way, to compete, their competitors will
do same (also puff themselves up real big, to look like the consumer is
getting more. Like the large economy-sized box of cereal, only to find a
third of it is air, 'Where's the beef?!').
Perhaps instead of modifying the Electric-miles to look like
chemical-fuel mileage, there should have been a rating that makes it
easy to see what range you are really getting:
20 e-miles + 41mpg = 620 miles total range.
Then the layman would concisely know
-they only have ~20 electric miles
-when driving on chemical fuel, they would get 41 miles @ highway speeds
for every gallon of chemical-fuel burnt.
-And the farthest between chemical-fuel fill-ups is 620 miles.
But that would not work, it tells the truth, marketing would never go
for that!
{brucedp.150m.com}
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where%27s_the_beef%3F
-
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014, at 01:05 AM, EVDL Administrator wrote:
> On 14 Jan 2014 at 15:18, Cor van de Water wrote:
>
> > this is really a dumb move from EPA (who triggered this?)
>
> Real world speaking : You can't have a law or rule that never has any
> unintended consequences. If you're going to do some good for some
> people,
> you have to accept the negatives for others. And in this case, I suspect
> that for MOST vehicle buyers, the rule makes sense.
>
> A little history here.
>
> Plenty of folks have clobbered the EPA over the years for MPG ratings
> that
> were either way higher than the real world, or in a few cases, lower.
>
> But if you're old enough to recall the wild west days before EPA MPG
> estimates, you may remember that advertised MPG for ICEs was pretty
> useless.
> Nobody EVER got what was advertised.
>
> None of the advertised numbers was comparable to any others, too, because
> every manufacturer used their own method to measure MPG (and some didn't
> bother measuring it at all). So if MPG mattered to you as a vehicle
> buyer,
> you had no real way of comparing one car to another.
>
> That's what the EPA set out to fix. Over the years, they've refined
> their
> methods. Today I think they probably come closer to what average drivers
> typically get, though they'll never be perfect.
>
> I would have to assume that part of the effort that got them here was
> figuring in an allowance for any adjustments or settings that might
> change
> the MPG of a vehicle.
>
> Suppose the car has a performance/economy switch. The Leaf at least has
> something of the sort, no? (Do any ICEVs have this? Theoretically they
> could). If EPA test with the switch on Economy, some owner is going to
> gripe that he didn't get that range (or MPG) with the switch set on
> Performance, and vice versa. So they have to make allowance for it
> somehow,
> no?
>
> Maybe they should publish different figures for different switch
> positions
> or configuration options. After all, they do that for different engine
> and
> transmission combinations in ICEVs. I don't know how far they should go
> with that, though. The tables could get pretty confusing after a while.
>
> The way they do it now does have unintended consequences, as we're seeing
> here.
>
> This is not the first time. Remember when Toyota left the "EV" button
> off
> their US-market 2005-2009 Prius models? That was because it would have
> caused problems with the EPA MPG tests.
>
> Who was to blame for that, Toyota or the EPA? Both equally? That
> depends
> on how you view it.
>
> The same is true here. However, from what I can tell, Nissan did this
> solely to get better range numbers. You may disagree, and I would never
> say
> the EPA is perfect or blameless, but here I'm more inclined to lay the
> cause
> mostly at Nissan's feet rather than the EPAs.
>
> David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
> EVDL Administrator
-
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