It will also take a very public retreat from Detroit’s constant refrain that high mpg dead drivers. Since 1974, Detroit has warned that the only way to meet Congress’s CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) mandate is with “sub-Pinto-sized” cars, which would not protect passengers in crashes. just last year, this safety argument helped kill a bill to raise CAFE from the current 27.5 miles per gallon to 40 by 2000. So why do the Big Three suddenly think they can build an affordable, safe, attractive-even recyclable - 80-mpg car by 2003? “This is one vehicle,” says GM’s Patrick Morrissey. “CAFE involves the entire fleet.”
In fact, automakers already have safe (though pricey) prototypes that get 60 to 100 mpg. The bag of tricks:
Like car buffs tuning up a hot rod, engineers can tweak parts of the engine to tease out greater fuel economy. Already, many cars on the road have multipoint fuel injection, which introduces fuel to each cylinder only as required, and overhead cam engines, which replace thirstier pushrod engines. More clever still is doubling the number of valves per cylinder from the standard two. Most Hondas and Toyotas are so equipped, giving their six-cylinder engines the same muscle found in an eight-cylinder but with a 10 percent fuel cut. Honda goes one step further, saving another 10 percent of fuel by using electronic valve timing to get a “leaner” burn in its “VTEC” engine. These percentages add up, but the biggest payoffs are still to come. An engine that turns off when the car is at a red light or stuck in traffic, as does Volkswagen’s Eco-Golf diesel prototype, increases mpg by 30 percent.
Transmission technology also offers some easy winners. A continuously variable transmission, as in the Subaru Justy, better matches engine speed to gear ratio and provides fuel savings of about 5 percent. This is the only CVT car in production, perhaps for the usual sticker-shock reasons. But the electronically controlled automatic transmission, which ensures proper gearing at the proper time, is attracting more and more automakers: introduced by Toyota, it cuts fuel use by 10 percent but adds hundreds of dollars to the base price.
The car of tomorrow could be twice as slippery, aerodynamically, as today’s if the underside were as sleek as the top and the hood were shaped more like an airplane than a Lank. Weight reduction offers an even bigger mileage boost: switching from steel to aluminum would cut weight by 33 percent and increase fuel economy by 30 percent. Ford is building a no-steel car, and Honda’s all-aluminum NSX is 40 percent lighter than steel would be. The White House is offering Detroit graphite-plastic composites developed for the stealth bomber. Lighter but stronger than steel, the composites would protect passengers in a crash as reliably as iron. General Motors’ Ultralite concept car, which uses composites and weighs just 1,400 pounds, gets 62 mpg and accelerates from 0 to 60 in less than eight seconds.
Will anyone but Uncle Sugar buy these models? Detroit is right about one thing: the market for high-mpg cars stinks. “Who’s going to buy one when gasoline costs less than bottled water?” asks industry analyst Jesse Snyder of AutoFacts. Detroit could start with the First Driver. Bill Clinton owns a 1967 Mustang convertible. It gets less than 14 mpg.
