

Readily available technology can cut the fuel consumption of passenger cars as much as 50 percent without impacting performance or comfort but would add as much as $9,000 to the price of new vehicles.
Such are the trade-offs in our quest to boost efficiency while maintaining our love affair with the automobile, and they are spelled out in a report by the National Academy of Sciences. The academy asked 12 engineers, scientists and industry insiders to examine commercially available technology and its impact on fuel consumption.
“Reducing the amount of fuel we use is an important goal for the nation and for the individual consumer,” said Trevor O. Jones, chairman of the committee that wrote the report. “These technologies, whether adopted individually or in combination, offer the potential to meet that objective. Consumers will need to consider the trade-offs between higher vehicle prices and saving fuel and money at the gas pump.”
The study is significant because federal fuel economy rules require new cars and trucks to achieve a fleetwide average of 34.1 mpg within six years. Federal regulators are currently working on even tighter rules that would take effect between 2017 and 2025.
There is nothing revolutionary about any of the technology the panel examined, and all of it — gasoline engines with improvements like direct injection, so-called “clean diesel” engines and gas-electric drivetrains — are being adopted by automakers to varying degrees. Ford, for example, has tweaked the 305-horsepower V-6 engine in the 2011 Mustang to return 31 mpg on the highway. Diesels, long popular in Europe, are making inroads in North America. And hybrids like the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight, are increasingly common, even if they remain a small fraction of vehicles sold each year.
But the report, “Assessment of Technologies for Improving Light Duty Vehicle Fuel Economy,” provides a glimpse at just what those technologies add to the bottom line.
Read More http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/big-fuel-savings-are-possible-but-it-will-cost-us/#ixzz0qYDJYtf4
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