Gas Mileage
How’d you like an S-U-V that gets 40 miles to the gallon? Engineers are working on it. We’ll take a look. Today. On Engineering Works!
Everybody’s thinking about gas mileage these days. Especially those of us who drive pickups and S-U-Vs. Gas prices spiked in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast oil refineries and production rigs. They’re coming back down, but you can bet they’ll go up again.
Some engineers are working on new engines that use fuel cells to power electric motors. Or run on hydrogen. But what if we could get better gas mileage out of the engines we already have? Other engineers say we already have technology that could help a 16-miles-per-gallon S-U-V get 40-miles-a-gallon. Without losing anything in performance. At least in theory.
None of it’s particularly complicated. The short explanation is to stop doing things that rob power from the engine. Run the valves with electricity and control them with computers instead of gears that use power that could be turning the wheels. Make carburetors and transmissions more efficient and vehicles more streamlined. Engineers know how to do these things. But nobody’s been interested in putting them into real vehicles.
If we could improve average gas mileage to 40-miles-per-gallon, we’d save two-million-gallons of oil. A day. That’s three-quarters of all the oil we import from the Middle East. Plus cutting greenhouse gases by almost a third.
Our truck is gassed up and ready to go. See you next time.
