Re: 600 mile range Federal law needed

It is interesting. You have a number of 'non-friends' in this (Chrysler) NG and yet you manage to start very long threads...

:-) DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

Reply to
Dori A Schmetterling
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You're right - I assumed 200 miles on a typical intermediate car gas tank of 11 or 12 gallons, so to get 600 mile range, I tripled the gas tank size. That works out to about 18 mpg - today's car doesn't get much better than that in city driving - but that also was part of your point.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

R Steeners> Interesting point. I think that the goal of having a 600 mile range on

Reply to
Bill Putney

And how much more fuel will the nation consume while hauling the extra (He said triple the size)= 24 gallons = 91 liters = 90 Kg = about 200 lb..

Sorry I should have read the previous post! (same point, different numbers)

Reply to
Albert Finley

Of course 175 pounds of weight makes a difference to a vehicle. Every extra pound takes energy to accelerate, decelerate and haul up hills.

Matt

Reply to
Matt Whiting

Well, I am writing from Minnesota. We don't have many hills here. But, the 175 lbs is total weight for a 25 gallon gas tank, the incremental difference from say 12 gallons is not 175, but would be about 90 pounds. For better, gas mileage people are encouraged to not carry around a lot of stuff in their trunks and their is value in that but, if 90 pounds or 200 pounds affects mileage more than .3 or .5 miles per gallon I would be disappointed with my car. My basic point, is that I like the idea or having a range of 600 miles for a vehicle. Of course not all vehicles are equal either but, for cars it would be nice if they could get 25 mpg or so. However, it might be impossible to have a V-8 SUV or pickup truck with a lot of towing capacity be able to get

25 or even 20 mpg. Maybe the max there would be 16 mpg in which case the gas tank might need to be 40 gallons. For a 12,000 lb truck with 6 or 7 mpg maybe a 100 gallon tank would be unreasonable and maybe some classes of vehicles would be excluded but, I still like being able to go along way without stopping for gas a lot.

"Matt Whiting" wrote in message news:0UjXe.851$ snipped-for-privacy@news1.epix.net...

Reply to
R Steenerson

Like I already posted to this thread

My 2005 Ford F-450 4x4 Crew Cab (10,000 pounds full of fuel and unloaded)

6.0L Power Stroke Diesel carries 59 gallons of diesel (Just shy of 420 pounds of diesel fuel). (Diesel weighs about 7.1 pounds per US gallon) (Gasoline weighs about 6.2 pounds per US gallon) This truck Gets 14.5 miles per gallon. That equals 855 miles per fill up. :-) At over $3.00 per gallon, that's over $185 to fill up. :-(

Reply to
351CJ

Why not add hurricane testing to federl crash standards too? Then you don;'t have to worry about the vehicles range. It's makes just as much sense as your suggestion.

------------- Alex

Reply to
Alex Rodriguez

All politics aside . . . if a new car has (and will get) 30mph EPA highway fuel ecomony and has a (typically) 16 gallon fuel tank (of which only about 14 can reasonably be used without harming the electric fuel pump in the tank), then that's a total theoretical 480 mile highway cruising range. Up from the former 20 gallons and 20 EPA Highway (i.e.,

400 miles) situation in the later 1970s.

If a new Dodge pickup is rated at 21mpg EPA Highway with a 26 gallon fuel tank (possibly), might the way to get to the 600 mile range be to add a few more gallons' capacity to the fuel tank?

By observation, once you spend 400 miles behind the wheel of anything, you NEED to get out and walk around a little. A fuel stop is a good way to do that! Might be one reason that smaller and more fuel efficient cars have smaller fuel tanks? A build-in "safety" situation?

A high level Ford Motor Company operative was quoted as commenting (re: federal CAFE fuel ecomony standards) that it was NOT the way to get people into more fuel efficient vehicles, when compared to normal market issues and fuel costs. When fuel costs go up, sales of smaller vehicles trend upward too, typically.

Yet CAFE mandates those things for us rather than US making that choice ourselves. Protecting us from ourselves? Possibly. Maybe not. Depends upon which economist and prognosticator you desire to listen to--of which there are MANY these days that ALL have the answer.

Some might claim it was the drive to higher CAFE and resultantly smaller cars that fueled the trend toward truck-based vehicles in the first place. Families have NOT shrunk and they now have more and larger things to carry around with them (high tech and larger baby strollers, for example). The small cars of the 1980s would not do those things and still get 30mpg, unless it was a Chevette diesel at 50mpg with no factory a/c available. Much less haul 5 people in relative comfort AND safety!!

One reason the Chevy Suburban became "The National Car of Texas" was not that a big state needs big vehicles for the citizenry to drive around in, but because of "safety" issues for the occupants. "Texas Monthly" magazine did an article on that back in the later 1980s. It also mentioned how a dual-a/c Suburban just didn't cut it when compared to the import minivans of the era too, in use/utility/people and family haul and the "safety in a crash" issue in the pre-air bag days. And the

1/2 ton models would generally get mid to high teens fuel economy on the highway and in normal use . . . plus haul the bass boat on weekends, or the travel trailer. This was in the 1985 era time frame.

With the optional 40 gallon fuel tank and 16mpg highway, over 600 miles range.

In modern times, it's not specifically how big the tank is, it's how much it costs to fill it and how THAT fits into the budget. For example, the Avalanche owners that moved into Pontiac G6 or Chevy Malibu vehicles are now glad they did it.

Granted, many people really don't need a truck-based vehicle to just drive around in--but they buy them for that. Kind of like the executive that drives a 4 door 4wd diesel pickup to work. Heck of a price of admission for the diesel engine option over a gas motor, plus the significantly higher cost of oil changes, but the engine costs will be usually returned at trade-in time, so the real costs are the 10-17 quart oil changes and the more expensive oil filter that are not compensated for with the up to 20mpg+ (unloaded average fuel economy. If you've got the price of admission for a $50K diesel pickup rig and can not flinch at the oil change costs (some people even want Mobil 1 synthetic oil in them!!!), then our generally strong economy can help them support that habit--whether we like it or not.

Almost everything the government has tried to legislate us into, the enterprising people that we are has generally found a way around it (the legal stuff, that is!). If people want rwd V-8 vehicles and truck chassis vehicles can and do have that, they'll buy them over a fwd car they don't like. No musclecars as such, but we've got factory 150mph+ SRT-10 Ram 1500s to compensate. But then we've now got 14.0 second 1/4 mile times from a 4000lb production sedan that will get about 25mpg+ on the highway too.

We've been into truck chassis vehicles for too long, but that's what the public has been buying due to need or just desires. Now it's time for some neat cars again (i.e., new Mustang) AND for Chrysler to stop side-stepping things and get us a new CHARGER COUPE and a companion CHALLENGER/CUDA car that's WORTHY of the name!!!!! Just like the prior B-car chassis was the basis for the E-body chassis/platform!!! They need to get there BEFORE GM does!!! WE know they can do it, if they just would!!!!!

Ford seems to hit all of the right buttons in the "retro" Mustang and seems to have a monopoly in doing that sort of thing. And Mr. Creed desires to push his agenda of having just a 4-door Charger, when it's highly obvious that there needs to be a CHARGER COUPE that is WORTHY of the name in style and performance and IMAGE.

(remaining soap box time relinquished . . .)

Enjoy!

C-BODY

Reply to
C-BODY

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