I guess this is their punishment for foolishly rushing into electric cars with wads of money - which they lost. Toyota was the only smart company who went part way with hybrids which are very successful. I expect other companies to be cutting back on design effort as they try to stay afloat.

https://www.autonews.com/honda/an-ho...articleGifting

 

I don't know if they were rushing, woofy. We have a climate crisis on our hands. It's not a climate let's-take-our-time-about-it.

The mistake by all manufacturers was as follows:

Question: Fossil fuels are contributing to climate change.

Wrong Answer: Get rid of your ICE vehicle and buy an electric/EV car.

Correct Answer: It's the fuel, stupid. Get rid of fossil fuels, and develop an alternative fuel. Everybody keeps their car. Nobody buys a new car. Everybody keeps their fuel stations. Nobody builds charging stations.

 

These cars might have a second wind because of the current high gas prices.

 

This. It doesn't even need to be something exotic that requires engine re-design. It just needs to come from renewables instead of pumping it out of the ground. Bio-ethanol (something like E85) is an option, though corn ethanol is a terrible source. To convert a gasoline car, you need fuel injectors with about 50% more flow rate, maybe replace some hoses or seals. An alcohol content sensor lets you switch back and forth, but isn't required if you stick to one fuel or the other.

 

correctest answer: while figuring out how to make cars workable prioritize minimizing their usage.

the amount to which we drive cars at the expense of everything else is also a huge issue.

 

Wrong answer again. It's a fuel question, not a car question.

 

I’m not about to get i to the whole climate crap other than to say the amount of pollution enthusiasts cars and motorcycles contribute is beyond insignificant, and diminishing returns are a real thing that trying to go far beyond becomes increasingly dumb.

That said, while I couldn’t care less about EV’s it’s mostly due to the lack of battery capacity, combined with their short life span, massive weight for the energy density they have, and cost. Battery tech has advanced a lot since the 90s I’ll grant that, but not THAT much, it needs a quantum leap, and while graphene looks promising, until batteries can be mass produced with it, might as well not exist.

for the above reasons I still don’t care for hybrids, again short battery life’s and high cost to replace make them a non-starter. Otherwise I might would drive a Honda Insight or something similar as a daily…. Kind of thought about getting one and tearing all the crap out of it for the body and chassis and turning it into a high mpg ICE project vehicle… something like the L15A in it with a manual would likely get insane mileage especially with all the junk torn out.

annnd that’s why I feel like so much of this crap is scammy and no one can deny there hasn’t been billions to make in the field, especially when the government was handing out cash like it was candy at a parade for tech that’s been all losses and negative returns, hell the most efficient solar power plant can’t even do much but break even and that’s still with government subsidies and as I understand recently the funding was going to be cut off…

Am I sayin only take a greedy capitalistic view on it, no. Am I saying just throwing billions at the problems without much thought (as it seems that way anyway) is dumb, yes.

I’m also saying, if automotive manufacturers didn’t have their hands tied by so many BS government regulations on vehicles pertaining to safety like back up cameras mandatory, air bags, mandatory, bumper height for pedestrian safety mandatory.. cars would be much MUCH less expensive to manufacture and people would drive the market based on their buying needs and interest, also that then, a light weight WAY high mpg ICE vehicle would be easy…

remember the Geo metro from GM… 50mpg all day even beating the hell out of it everywhere you went… now imagine modern tech applied to the ICE engine, like pre-combustion chambers, lean burning modes with OEM wide band O2 sensors, and in general just better engineering, maybe as much as I hate them a CVT as an auto option if you didn’t want a manual.

the “Blue Motion” as I recall a 3cyl diesel in Europe wa getting like 69mpg like a decade ago… and you’re telling me that’s not as good as or better than a lithium mined, child labor sourced, land all around the mine dead, with locals having chemical burns BS junk EV /hybrid that takes a ton of energy to build and then has a shorter life span, I believe it.

Gasoline/Diesel vehicles are able to be built that would far exceed the typical mpg seen today, if 1. Government got out of the way and the market wanted them.

As efficiency went up in ICE vehicles through the 90s though notice things also got bigger and heavier with more features as a sales gimmicky strategy… and it works. But they can’t even build cars like were built then now, they legally can’t, due to above reasons. If the mean average ICE eco box was getting 50mpg though, you could also argue for the hand full of enthusiast vehicles not being so laden down by emissions crap, making their (manufacturers) efforts to produce powerful fun cheap and affordable vehicles easier as well.


(also look into the chicken tax war thing, it’s retarded and sounds made up but it’s why trucks have gotten retardedly huge) short version is big truck can have higher emissions output, so cheaper to make truck big, keep same drivetrain, no $ spent on R&D. Never mind it’s a PITA to load and unload and actually use for truck things. 🤦‍♂️

 

"All the junk" (battery, pancake motor, associated control modules) weighs somewhere in the 100-150 lb range. The battery is the size of a carry-on suitcase. The goal of the IMA system is to capture energy when braking (which would otherwise be turned into waste heat by conventional brakes) and re-use that energy to assist acceleration. It also replaces the alternator. That's it.

If I wanted another project car, I think I would build a hybrid Fit since we never got them in the US. After doing some research to make sure there's no red-flag reliability issues with them, I would use a late model Civic/Prelude hybrid drive train (provided it fits in the engine bay). 180-200 HP and 40-something MPG city sounds excellent.

Solar is cheaper (more profitable) than coal at this point. Your impressions about solar are ~20+ years old at this point. Its biggest flaw is its hour-to-hour and seasonal variability. Like solar panels, the cost of batteries has dropped incredibly over the last 20 years, especially when you're talking about stationary installations where size and weight are not especially important. Lower-cost, lower-density, longer-lived battery chemistries can be used, like sodium-ion batteries. Battery storage is a viable and cost-effective option.
France recently passed a law that all new parking lots with more than 80-something spaces should have solar panel sun shades over them. That seems like an excellent use on so many levels. It's shading the cars from the sun and weather, generating power that for the businesses and parked EVs, it's re-using land already wasted on a parking lot, so it's not replacing a food-producing farm or anything. I guess you could complain about aesthetics? But, it's a parking lot. Hiding it under sun shades is probably going to be a huge improvement.

Agreed. Fortunately, that's not happening. There were EV incentives, yes. "Throwing" money at real people who spend it on real products actually has positive economic impacts, unlike throwing money at corporations or cutting taxes on the rich.

Emissions regulations are the primary hindrance. Smog and acid-rain causing NOx from high temperature lean-burn combustion.

Honda made a few of those. Two generations of CRX HF (~50 MPG), the Civic VX (55 MPG), the first generation Insight (70 MPG). Car magazines and "average Americans" hated them. "Gutless", "underpowered", "econo-box", "grocery-getter", "boring". America doesn't get fuel efficient cars because the oil and automotive industries shit-talk them out of existence, while stupid Americans eat it up. "HUH HUH HUH I'MA RUN OVER THAT RICE BURNER WITH MY BIG TRUCK".

That production-energy-analysis meme has been debunked. It's a myth. Propaganda.
If you think you'd like one, go buy an Insight. Or at least do some reading on Insight Central - it's a very active car-hacking community. Again, the G1 Insight manual is rated 70 MPG highway, no lithium batteries to be found (maybe a key fob coin cell) unless you install an aftermarket battery pack. The G2 Insight is a larger 4-door with an L13 and the same hybrid system as the original - It can manage low 60s MPG on the highway under good conditions. The CR-Z (more or less a 2-door G2 Insight) got an L15 with the Insight hybrid system and a lithium battery after the mid-run refresh - it gets about the same highway economy as a Fit.

 

Just bought my 2nd ever Honda, a 2018 Fit Hybrid. Amazing on fuel.
Only other Hybrids I've driven were a 2021 Toyota Crown, that was quick to 180kmh, and a Yaris Hybrid which was not quick (similar to the Fit).

 

Bobski, sure you’re not thinking of the Civic HX? I had one of those which had a low load lean mode…got 40mpg out of it if you tried to get it into that lean mode and keep it there as much as possible, you could only tell from the exhaust note. (Stock exhaust)

unfortunately, messing with the radio one day on the way home, having looked up prior and seen the only car going my direction was way on down the road and there were no others, right after cresting a small “hill” on an otherwise downhill road (more of a hump just big enough to hide a small car), there it was when it was when I looked up, and it had just finished raining… a 2015ish Altima…. SOB… never in my life under stress have I lost fine motor skills, not even being shot at in Afghanistan, but in that surprised instant I was screaming at myself to lift my foot off the break more than I was…. Right before I impacted her rear end I had managed to get over enough I ALMOST missed her…. Which sort of made it worse for me as the part of the car that hit her rear passenger side corner was my drivers side fender… totally missed the front bumper crash bar… that hurt, felt my head go forward and then stretch extending in a compressing crunch that rebound.

necks never been the same sense… and that totaled the car. (1995 or 97 I forget) and it was a manual with a straight body. ☹️ to this day I’m mad at myself, if I had noticed 1second sooner, or been able to take a little breaking pressure off sooner (they locked up) almost certainly would have just been a crap my pants moment going around on the side of the road.


Anyway point being the tech needed to get high mpg ICE vehicles already exists.

p.s. Personally I’d rather see more nuclear power pants than solar farms.