I'm a fuel economy junkie

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Loved my tuned diesel smart for fuel economy. Best full tank was 2.9 L/100, which is 81 MPG.

Hybrids just seem silly to me, why drive around with two power trains. Go full electric or just stay gas.
 
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"Nor had I ever heard of NUMMI. So that's where he makes his cars & gets properly stoned before logging into Twitter!!"

A little history...
Our 1965 Olds 4-4-2 was made in Fremont, CA at the old GM plant. They made El Caminos and other A bodies as well.
After they closed, Toyota and GM reopened it as "New United Motors something" or NUMMI.
The made Corollas, Prisms (same car, different badges), etc. My old 1993 Toyota 4WD pickup was built there. That old truck has well over 300K miles and is still in service.
It was very automated; I toured the plant twice. The PU beds were made and painted nearby; they trucked in the beds in the proper order (by color) and installed them right off the truck.
22RE engines were assembled near by as well. NUMMI was the biggest employer in Fremont.
GM pulled out and so did Toyota soon after. Lotsa unemployment soon after. Imagine all the support of the plant that was lost.
Toyota was building a Tundra line at the time of closing.

Elon Musk was gonna build his Tesla Model S plant in North San Jose; it was a pretty much done deal.
Fremont wanted Tesla; the tax base, employment, etc. They offered Musk incentives, but the plant was far larger than Musk needed.
Ultimately, the incentives and the pool of experienced automobile labor won. I remember the adds asking for ex NUMMI workers to apply.
Only a portion of the huge plant was opened; other buildings lay dormant.

Our Model 3 was built there, in the parking lot, in a huge tent.
So I have 3 vehicles from the Fremont plant. Thinking about another...

You might remember the Solyndra fiasco; I saw Gov. Romney in front of the empty headquarters making an ad.
That is also a Tesla building now.
 
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NUMMI was well known for drug and alcohol use during production. GM couldn't get a hold on the problem. Toyota tried but they failed as well.

I'd suspect the same atmosphere still exists there.
 
Originally Posted by mightymousetech
Loved my tuned diesel smart for fuel economy. Best full tank was 2.9 L/100, which is 81 MPG.

Hybrids just seem silly to me, why drive around with two power trains. Go full electric or just stay gas.



I much prefer small, efficient cars but have never been tempted to buy a Smart.

Although it's just me & the wife these days, we still occasionally need to ferry the grandkids around or drive to the airport loaded up with suitcases. Simply put, the Celerio is the far more practical proposition in terms of space.

Also, I don't know what it's like in Canada but over here in the UK, Smarts aren't exactly cheap. The range kicks off at around £11.6k. That's about £4k more than the Suzuki. You don't tend to see a lot of them on our roads.

When they sell an electric Celerio for say £10k with a 300 mile range I might buy one. However I'm sort of hoping by the time I need to replace the car, autonomous cars will be a reality. Although I probably still could, I'd prefer not to be driving in my seventies. Given that our cars sit idly on the drive for 97% of their life, giving up the cars won't be a great hardship.
 
Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
"Nor had I ever heard of NUMMI. So that's where he makes his cars & gets properly stoned before logging into Twitter!!"

A little history...
Our 1965 Olds 4-4-2 was made in Fremont, CA at the old GM plant. They made El Caminos and other A bodies as well.
After they closed, Toyota and GM reopened it as "New United Motors something" or NUMMI.
The made Corollas, Prisms (same car, different badges), etc. My old 1993 Toyota 4WD pickup was built there. That old truck has well over 300K miles and is still in service.
It was very automated; I toured the plant twice. The PU beds were made and painted nearby; they trucked in the beds in the proper order (by color) and installed them right off the truck.
22RE engines were assembled near by as well. NUMMI was the biggest employer in Fremont.
GM pulled out and so did Toyota soon after. Lotsa unemployment soon after. Imagine all the support of the plant that was lost.
Toyota was building a Tundra line at the time of closing.

Elon Musk was gonna build his Tesla Model S plant in North San Jose; it was a pretty much done deal.
Fremont wanted Tesla; the tax base, employment, etc. They offered Musk incentives, but the plant was far larger than Musk needed.
Ultimately, the incentives and the pool of experienced automobile labor won. I remember the adds asking for ex NUMMI workers to apply.
Only a portion of the huge plant was opened; other buildings lay dormant.

Our Model 3 was built there, in the parking lot, in a huge tent.
So I have 3 vehicles from the Fremont plant. Thinking about another...

You might remember the Solyndra fiasco; I saw Gov. Romney in front of the empty headquarters making an ad.
That is also a Tesla building now.



Thanks. This is all news to me.
 
Originally Posted by PimTac
NUMMI was well known for drug and alcohol use during production. GM couldn't get a hold on the problem. Toyota tried but they failed as well.

I'd suspect the same atmosphere still exists there.



It's odd. In my entire working career, throughout the world, I never encountered anyone who I could say for sure was using drugs at work. Having had a bit of a dabble at school, I wouldn't describe myself as naive in these matters.

On the other hand, I saw so much booze throw down people's necks at & outside of work (mine included!) it's unbelievable. The lubricant industry is itself permanently lubricated with vast amounts of alcohol. One of the reasons I eager to walk away from the world of work was to escape that toxic environment & give my liver a chance to recover.
 
Tesla Fremont Plant flyover - it's big...
Tesla Fremont, CA

By the way, the Corollas built at NUMMI proved to be more reliable than the Japan cars.
Toyota did an analysis and found that the combination of the Japanese manufacturing process and American worker ingenuity was a winning combination.
 
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Originally Posted by Shannow
I've sat down as an engineer and looked critically at the HYundai Kona in Oz..EV with 64KWh battery pack, and 280 mile range....

It makes no sense...an hour at a 100KW charging station (rare), an hour and a half at the regular 50KW charging stations, and 9.5 bours with the 2 grand 7.2KW charging station at home...or 27 hours on a wall plug
It makes even less sense over here. Your wall plugs are connected to ~220-volt mains. Ours are ~110. So, possibly two days six hours.
Originally Posted by SonofJoe
Also, I don't know what it's like in Canada but over here in the UK, Smarts aren't exactly cheap. The range kicks off at around £11.6k. That's about £4k more than the Suzuki. You don't tend to see a lot of them on our roads.
Your prices of everything include the value-added tax. Not so in North America where taxes must be added to the prices listed on everything (except motor fuel; it's built into the pump price).

In this province, Manitoba, taxes hit 13 per cent — provincial sales tax and the federal. People on both sides of the ocean often forget that when comparing prices.
 
Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
By the way, the Corollas built at NUMMI proved to be more reliable than the Japan cars.
Toyota did an analysis and found that the combination of the Japanese manufacturing process and American worker ingenuity was a winning combination.

First I've heard of that. Interesting.
 
NUMMI put a then disused couple of decades old GM plant back into operation.
Its last products were the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix twins, which were considered to be very good cars by all accounts.
A guy at work just parted with an old Vibe with well over 250K of Ohio use and the car had not received enthusiast level maintenance.
Not sure what it died of, but it had gone through numerous OH winters and exhibited virtually no rust. It might have been washed a time or two in the past decade.
The world's most vociferous electric car entrepreneur came to the facility since it was available on the cheap and the City of Freemont was amenable.
That this location would also put manufacturing in the same geographic region as much of the prosperous hipster potential customer base was no doubt a consideration.
 
Originally Posted by SonofJoe
I guess you're never too old to learn something new!

Most of the 'old' pistons I had to deal with tended to have more rings rather than less. The single cylinder Cat 1MPC engine used in the old API CF spec had four rings, not three.

Given the ubiquitous nature of the three ring system, it never occurred to me that someone might go to a simple two ring system. Apparently they are popular in drag racing circles where you just want power & couldn't give a stuff about wear or emissions.

Nor had I ever heard of NUMMI. So that's where he makes his cars & gets properly stoned before logging into Twitter!!



Years ago, NMRA drag racing had a class called Pure Stock. The engines were restricted to 8.2" deck Ford small blocks with the stock 3" stroke and max bore of 4.06" (max 311ci). The engines had to run hydraulic roller lifters, carbureted cars had to add a 150 lbs weight penalty, and max compression ratio was 10:1 with any flat top or dished piston (no domes). It was meant to be a "low budget" heads-up racing class. There were two guys from the same team that were consistently outrunning everybody else. A few months into the season, somebody called a challenge on their engines to verify specs. They had to tear their engines down and they found they were using special made, flat top pistons with only 2 rings. There was nothing in the rulebook that forbid it however so they were reluctantly given the thumbs up. A month or so later, the rulebook for the following year was released that mandated the use of 3 piston rings.
 
Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
Tesla Fremont Plant flyover - it's big...
Tesla Fremont, CA

By the way, the Corollas built at NUMMI proved to be more reliable than the Japan cars.
Toyota did an analysis and found that the combination of the Japanese manufacturing process and American worker ingenuity was a winning combination.


I heard similar stories at BMW Manufacturing's Greer, SC plant; in several cases procedures created at Greer have been adopted at other BMW plants.
 
Just took Grand Caravan on a 400 mile round trip with 26 mpg average. I would not nor would I want to drive a small car on a trip like this with my wife in a wheelchair just to save 15.00. Comfort with enough space and 26 mpg doesn't get any better. A single person that is much younger with a good back then it would be a different story. Heck round trip and still enough gas until I get paid this month couldn't ask for more.
 
Originally Posted by tiger862
I was getting 50 mpg in a Datsun B210 wagon.....
Of the several small 1973 cars I researched to buy, only the Datsun 1200 turned out to be good. Of course, I DIDN'T buy the Datsun 1200, to my regret.
 
Not sure where this thread is headed (well I'm quite sure actually) but I'll toss in my few cents before the lock.

This is where I kinda like having two vehicles. One can be capable of everything except passing a gas station while the other can't do much more than that. For various reasons I hate living in a city (if I did I'd probably be carless) and wound up commuting so that I could have a quiet life at home. A commuter car is cheaper. I did out the math and while the mpg savings just pays for the extra tags & insurance, it is technically saving on a non-renewable resource. I like that idea. I can't imagine life without cheap gas and cheap plastics, and I suspect my kid's kid's kid's and so forth would all like to also have cheap crude so that they too can have a nice lifestyle. Global warming aside, as far as we know, crude oil is a limited resource.
 
I can't remember if I ever drove a Geo Metro... maybe 20 years ago in college. Few years ago I drove the Mitsu Mirage, and I kinda liked the car. Same idea. Small and underpowered but I could forgive that if I could hit 50mpg. My old TDi wagon would do 50 if I kept my foot out of it (was like 46 over its 314k lifetime that I had it) and was a car that I wish I could replace.

Right now I'd probably give more thought to getting something with more mpg if it could hold my road bicycle easily on the inside, but I know that I don't have an economic justification for changing cars -- this past winter I had my foot in all the time, and got 26-28mpg. Summer gas and setting cruise to about the speed limit gets me 32. Hard to justify a car payment in order to go from 32 to 50, not when everything is paid off and not in dire need of replacement.

Drove a couple of Prius (regular and C) and felt they were hateful. Just don't care for all those LCD's and whatnot. I like the concept but there is something about them that turns me off. Maybe I just need to rent one for a week or two and get used to it. But at this point I think I'd rather have a more simple car that uses less tricks and is a more mechanical drive than one that pulls out the stops. I live out in the country and my 48 mile commute takes 51 minutes including the city driving. A hybrid would work but so would a simple small engine with tall gearing.
 
I only ever saw a few, but I got my license in mid '90's which coincided with the rise of the SUV's and cheap gas. Friend in college had one (1997 or so, not sure how old the car was) and my roommate liked to joke that it was a Tardis, larger on the inside than it was on the outside.
 
Hybrid haters often misunderstand the fact that going fast efficiently is very possible. The savings vs a conventional vehicle are often matched at most comparable speeds.

I drive a lot, and try as I might, I can't get a rental Prius to return lower than 42mpg. Including speeds that put normal vehicles in the teens.
 
75,000 miles on my 1.0 EcoBoost Focus and it's been flawless. 50+ MPG is possible if your want it. And I tow a trailer with it that's FAR larger than a Suburban cargo area.

I love doing more with less ðŸ‘ðŸ»


I'll almost certainly buy another Ford 3-cylinder EcoBoost in the future - excellent engines!
 
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