New 2008 Fuel Economy Stickers

  • A look at the new window sticker that will be seen on all 2008 models. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)

Starting this year you’ll see new fuel economy window stickers on cars and trucks. And as Mark Brush reports – the gas mileage displayed on these stickers will be closer to the actual mileage you’ll experience:

Transcript

Starting this year you’ll see new fuel economy window stickers on cars and trucks. And as Mark Brush reports – the gas mileage displayed on these stickers will be closer to the actual mileage you’ll experience:


The EPA gas mileage stickers will appear on all 2008 cars and trucks. And the Environmental Protection Agency says these stickers are more accurate. No more inflated gas mileage claims. Mileage estimates have been based on old tests that don’t reflect how we drive today.


David Friedman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says car buyers might get sticker shock:

“Well what they will see is no matter what the car or truck they get they will see lower numbers. In fact, depending on the size class they are dealing with, the new window sticker numbers are anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent lower on a combined basis than the old numbers.”


Consumers won’t just see the lower miles per gallon numbers. They’ll also see a bar graph that compares each vehicle’s gas mileage to others in its class.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Epa Reviewing Car Fuel Economy Tests

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking at whether the gas mileage estimates that appear on the window stickers of new cars are over-inflated. The agency responded to a petition from a California environmental group. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:

Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking at whether the gas
mileage estimates that appear on the window stickers of new cars are
over-inflated. The agency responded to a petition from a California
environmental group. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman
reports:


The Bluewater Network says that cars and trucks actually get as much as
twenty percent fewer miles per gallon than EPA window stickers suggest.
Spokesperson Elisa Lynch says that’s because driving patterns have changed
since the current testing system was set up in the mid ’80s.


“There’s been increased urbanization, there are higher speed limits, and more
traffic congestion, and all of these are factors that affect your fuel
economy when you’re out there driving in the real world.”


The EPA is seeking public comment on its testing procedure. EPA
spokesperson John Millet says that part of the process will wrap up in late
July.


“After that period, EPA will go through what we anticipate will be
quite a lot of information, and that’s going to take some time.”


Millet says the EPA might decide its current testing system is just fine.
But if that’s not the case, it could still be up to three years before
another system is in place.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Poorman.

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Hydraulic Hybrid Gives Fuel Economy a Boost

  • The "Hydraulic Launch Assist" system - the system pressurizes a tank when the vehicle brakes. The pressurized tank then gives the motor a boost of power when the vehicle begins to accelerate. (Photo courtesy of Eaton Fluid Power Group)

Next month, the Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a Ford Expedition that sips, not guzzles, gas. It’ll have a new type of technology that should give a huge boost to the fuel economy of big commercial trucks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert filed this report:

Transcript

Next month, the Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a Ford Expedition that sips, not guzzles,
gas. It’ll have a new type of technology that should give a huge boost to the fuel economy of big
commercial trucks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert filed this report:


(sound of garbage truck)


Every morning garbage trucks spew annoying smog and guzzle fuel. Commercial vehicles, like this
garbage truck, and delivery trucks, get only about 8 miles to the gallon. That compares to 20 miles per
gallon for an average car. But that’s about to change, if the EPA has its way.


The EPA worked with private industry to develop a new way to help launch the engine, called a hydraulic
hybrid. This new technology could double the fuel economy of big, commercial vehicles and cut
emissions in half. It could also make the trucks a lot quieter. Christopher Grundler runs the EPA division
that helped design the new hydraulic hybrid.


“We’re pretty bullish about this technology, because it’s cheap and it delivers other attributes that
American consumers want, meaning performance and the ability to tow vehicles and so on. It’s
particularly well suited for larger vehicles, so that’s why we’re excited about it.”


This hydraulic power source is expected to hike big truck costs by only a couple thousand dollars. That’s
not much, considering the cost of those trucks these days can run 40 to 45 thousand dollars.


(sound of hydraulic hybrid)


Hydraulic hybrids are different from the electric hybrids now on the road in Toyota and Honda vehicles.
Electric hybrids use a small gasoline engine along with an electric generator and use batteries to story
energy. But the hydraulic system is different. It uses a tank that stores energy as a compressed nitrogen
gas. When you want to accelerate, the high pressure gas runs a motor and the energy is used to drive the
wheels. The system uses the energy that’s generated by braking and helps keep the hydraulic system
pressurized. So for vehicles that stop and go a lot, this system is especially efficient. The holding tank can
store so much energy that there’s swift pick-up. EPA’s test vehicle starts effortlessly and lurches forward
like a race car.


Next month, at the Society of Automotive Engineers conference in Detroit, the EPA will be displaying this
technology in an Expedition, Ford’s second largest SUV.


The agency is working with Eaton Corporation. Eaton is a large worldwide industrial supplier that makes
hydraulic parts. Steve Nash is a manager with Eaton and he says hydraulic trucks could be a big market
for the company.


“We know that the greatest benefit of a regenerative braking product like a hybrid hydraulic or electric is
that you need to be doing a lot of start and stop type driving and with certain vocations, such as refuse
vehicles, such as city transit busses, such as shuttle busses and pick-up and delivery vehicles, it’s a perfect
application because they do a lot of start and stop-type driving.”


Eaton first worked with Ford Motor Company to develop the technology. Ford later dropped the project,
but Nash says Eaton forged ahead.


“We saw the opportunities as being so attractive that we decided to continue on our own and that’s where
we are today.”


Eaton’s now working with Workhouse Custom Chasses. That’s a truck manufacturer in Indiana. They
plan to bring out roughly 150 hydraulic delivery trucks within the next year. And that’s just a start.


Christopher Grundler says that commercial trucks burn a huge amount of fuel, so cutting fuel costs in half
makes them a perfect target market.


“Those customers care a lot more about fuel economy than the average American driver. It’s a significant
business cost to them so there is a market for fuel economy in these segments, much more so than in the
car and light truck segments.”


An industry observer says that might be true. Bill Viznik is an automotive journalist who covers
technology for Wards Communications. But he says the systems are really heavy. So they have limited
use and don’t make sense for smaller, personal vehicles.


“SUVs already are large, bulky and heavy and certainly don’t need a lot of extra weight added to them, so
I think at this point to look at adding a system like this to a conventional SUV, like a Ford Explorer,
something like that, you reach a point of quickly diminishing return. If you add a lot of weight to the
vehicle then it makes everything ratchet up from there.”

Viznik says hydraulics can actually make fuel economy worse for small vehicles. But the Environmental
Protection Agency is more optimistic. Christopher Grundler thinks hydraulic SUVs are possible.


“It depends on the SUV. I think for smaller SUVs, it does provide a packaging challenge for the hydraulic
technology, but I think for larger SUVs, the medium to large SUVs, this technology is well-suited as well
as the larger urban delivery trucks.”


EPA plans to announce partnerships with private companies later this year to begin testing the hydraulic
hybrid engines in delivery trucks like those Fed Ex uses. The final determination will depend on how well
they fare on the street.


For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Halpert.

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Traffic Jams Waste Billions of Gallons of Fuel

Drivers are spending more time and burning more fuel stuck in traffic. An annual study found the upward trend of more traffic congestion continues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Drivers are spending more time and burning more fuel stuck in traffic. An annual study found the
upward trend of more traffic congestion continues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


The latest report looks at 2001. It found that about half of the time we spend in traffic jams is due
to delays caused by accidents, vehicle breakdowns, weather and construction. But researchers at
the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A and M University found that people are driving
farther to work and they’re also making more trips. Instead of combining trips to the bank, the
grocery store and the cleaners, more and more drivers tend to make separate trips, putting more
cars on the road at a time. David Schrank is one of the researchers. He says it ends up being a
huge waste of fuel.


“In 2001, almost five-point-seven billion gallons of fuel — that’s with a ‘b’– were wasted in
traffic congestion in 75 urban areas in the United States.”


And the study estimates we all spent more time, three-and-a-half billion hours, stuck in traffic
during the year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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‘Greener’ Cars Won’t Save Us From Sprawl

Many feel that cars powered by fuel cells will save us from a future of pollution and rising oil prices. But Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator James Howard Kunstler says there’s more to think about… he says it’s time to reconsider not just WHAT we drive but HOW we live:

Transcript

Many feel that cars powered by fuel cells will save us from a future of pollution and rising oil
prices. But Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator James Howard Kunstler says there’s
more to think about and that it’s time to reconsider not just what we drive but how we live:


For quite a while now it’s been fashionable among the environmentally-minded to decry the
ownership of SUVs. This says a lot about what’s wrong with the conventional thinking of the
progressive / green crowd.


Would the everyday environment in America be any better if it were full of compact cars instead
of giant gas-guzzling Chevy Denalis and Ford Expeditions? I don’t think it would make a bit of
difference, really. We’d still be a car-dependent society stuck in a national automobile slum. The
problem with America is not big cars, it’s the fact that cars of all sizes have such an
overwhelming presence in our lives, and that driving is virtually mandatory for the ordinary
business of daily life.


Many in the anti-SUV crowd assume that we will solve our car problem with new technology,
like hydrogen fuel cells. Or that low-emission, environmentally-friendly hybrid cars will help to
usher in a sustainable way of life in America.


In fact, cleaner-running, higher mileage cars would do nothing to mitigate the degraded public
realm of a nation that has become a strip mall from sea to shining sea. They would not lessen
commuting distances or times. They would not reduce the number of car trips per day per
household. If anything, they would only promote the idea that we should continue living this way
– that suburban sprawl is normal and desirable, instead of what it is: the most destructive
development pattern the world has ever seen, and a living arrangement with poor prospects for
the future.


Why do we believe that better-running cars will save us? Because environmentalists are stuck in
a culture of quantification, just like their corporate bean-counter adversaries. It’s easy to count up
the number of carbon dioxide molecules in a cubic foot of air, and reduce the whole car issue to
good air or bad air. But air pollution or miles-per-gallon are hardly the only problems with car
dependency. The degradation of the everyday environment in general and of public space in
particular is at least as important, and is not subject to statistical analysis. It’s a question of
quality, not numbers.


In the age of austerity and global strife that is coming down the pike at us, we are going to need
walkable neighborhoods, towns and villages and public transit systems that are a pleasure to use.
Many of us pay premium prices to vacation in European cities precisely because they offer this
way of living, with great railroad and streetcar systems. Europeans still have cars, but they’re not
sentenced to own one per family member or spend two or three hours every day in them. It
would be nice to have these options here in the USA.


In the meantime, I really don’t care whether Americans drive Humvees or Toyota Priuses. Both
big and small cars are cluttering up our everyday world and wasting our lives.


James Howard Kunstler is the author of ‘The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition’ and
other books. He comes to us by way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.