Not everyone wants a large diesel engine

[Draigflag]

Or just stick with the current system, but take away 14% off the final figures. The industry average is 86% by that I mean on average, cars get 86% of the official figures, some less some more. Tends to be the modern cars with the bigger discrepancies, with all the fuel saving tech that works wonders in the lab.

[SteveMak]

A Much Improved Fuel Economy Test Cycle

In my view, if we had fuel economy tests performed by a separate agency, rather than by the manufacturer on "the honor system" (trust me, I'm doing it exactly like everyone else), we'd at least have more comparable numbers.

And as trollbait said, getting everyone to agree to the same methodology is the hard part.

[trollbait]

Government tests are better than reviews and user reports for comparing different models' fuel economy. The others simply have too much variance in the road and weather conditions to be of value.

Having an actual neutral party do the testing would be nice, but the people wouldn't want to pay for it. The EPA only tests about 10% of the models available, because that is all they can do with the resources they get.

[SteveMak]

Originally Posted by trollbait

...Having an actual neutral party do the testing would be nice, but the people wouldn't want to pay for it. The EPA only tests about 10% of the models available, because that is all they can do with the resources they get.

My thought is that the manufacturer would pay the independent agency to do all the tests required for certification. Their certification would include an agreement that the testing facility will at some future date pick a car at random (e.g., demo car from dealership) and retest it. This would help ensure that the manufacturer is not gaming the system by providing some specially prepared car (that does not accurately reflect the average production vehicle) for testing.

There would be all sorts of methodology details to work out, but it could result in a dramatically improved system. I'm sure the manufacturers' lobbyists will oppose anything other than self-testing honor-system, which is what we have now, and why we have the scandals we have now.

[trollbait]

Originally Posted by SteveMak

My thought is that the manufacturer would pay the independent agency to do all the tests required for certification. Their certification would include an agreement that the testing facility will at some future date pick a car at random (e.g., demo car from dealership) and retest it. This would help ensure that the manufacturer is not gaming the system by providing some specially prepared car (that does not accurately reflect the average production vehicle) for testing.

There would be all sorts of methodology details to work out, but it could result in a dramatically improved system. I'm sure the manufacturers' lobbyists will oppose anything other than self-testing honor-system, which is what we have now, and why we have the scandals we have now.

VW actually did use an outside test company in Europe.

What you propose is close to how meat inspections are handled in the US. The inspecting is handled by the USDA, but the cost doesn't come out of the general tax revenue of the government, but by fees paid for by the meat plant. There is enough layers between what they pay, and the meat inspector, that there shouldn't be any conflict of interest.

The issue applying that to the EPA for car testing is in the needed facilities. It was years before the EPA got a 4 wheel test dynamometer. Before that, they had to physically disconnect one set of wheels on AWD cars for testing.

The EPA has some pretty strict rules, that were recently clarified, for the condition of the test car, including the amount of wear on the tires. Much of what NEDC allows isn't under those rules. Then the EPA does spot testing of a sample of models available, and reviews the data submitted by the manufacturer.

The only shady bit is that the EPA allows a hand built car to be tested. The reasoning is to allow testing to be done before production gets under way. The cars can't be sold without the window sticker.

[dimonic]

Originally Posted by Dieselmech2

Don't get too excited, the 1/2ton dodge gets good milage when driving around empty but don't fall for the "tows great" or "will tow 9000lb's" cause that's plain bs. The truck is too big/heavy/too many options to drive/haul in traffic here with that little power. Like I said, a buddy traded his 6 month old 1/2 ton dodge in on a 3/4ton just so he could get the bigger cummins. He loved the cruising around milage but really, it's a big car with an open trunk. He almost bought an ecoboost f-150 like my others friends after hearing their towing stories but wanted diesel and the ford dealership wouldn't give him as much for a trade in as the dodge dealership would. So he bought a diesel that will pull, from the dodge dealership. Check out the payload..then figure in 4 people at say 200lb's each...then any other crap you have laying around in a truck, say a total of 1000lb's..what's the payload again?....1800lb's or something like that....uh that leaves 800lb's you can put in the back??? Yeah, that's a car with an open trunk.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud dodge for building a smaller diesel and sticking it in a 1/2ton, that's awesome. But when a trucks "raison d'etre" is hauling stuff and that's exactly where this truck falls short..that's a fail in my book.

What you say doesn't quite jive with the manufacturer's definitions. Their definition says "carried in the bed of the vehicle". Granted, in my truck that is only 1240 lbs, but that is enough for most of the uses I might put it to - such as a dozen sheets of ply, or drywall, or a half ton of triple mix.

[LDB]

At least here in the states the term 1/2 ton or 1 ton doesn't really mean a lot. The one ton van I had with Fedex would actually carry about 3,500 pounds. A fair bit of that was used up by a full tank of fuel and my overweight but even all in and ready to go to work I could still carry 2,900 plus pounds legally.

I never carried more than about 2,250 except for one time I took 3,142 pounds 11 miles when the shipper claimed it was 1,800 pounds. I knew it was more than that but without a scale I didn't know just how much until I got to Fedex and they weighed it.

[R.I.D.E.]

I just measured the distance from the rear axle housing to the bump stops to determine how much weight I was carrying, after being on the county's scales with myself and 6 gallons of gas and being within 50 pounds of max gvw. It came to 1.5 inches on my 99 F150 (v6 manual stripper work truck, bought new for $13.5k).