So Why Can It Be So Difficult To Build A Fuel-Efficient Vehicle?
Around one third of new car customers in America thought of fuel economy an important factor.. Back in 1992 already General Motors built a vehicle that got 100 miles to the gallon – and all these years later one of people’s major concerns on top of global warming and pollution is dependence on foreign oil. Another vehicle, the GM TPC, which looked a lot like the Geo Metro, weighed only 1000 pounds and could get 75 miles per gallon. Unfortunately, to be able to meet American safety regulations, the 3-cylinder vehicle required reinforcement weighing 200 pounds, which resulted in further development being discarded.
It’s quite shocking that this was not the only GM prototype that was built, only to be thrown out later. A number of these were the 1982 GM Lean Machine which made 80 miles per gallon, and the GM Ultralite which managed to do 100 mpg. Once Honda in 1992 achieved 50 mpg with the Civic VX, GM was offering cars that got 20 mpg, while in the background they had vehicles capable of 100 mpg. Clearly this begs the question that explains why these cars that are proficient at 100 mpg are not available to the public.
An additional perplexing thing is that a lot of companies, while selling fuel-eficient vehicles in foreign countries, are selling traditional gas guzzlers in the US. Automobiles that achieve more than 70 mpg have been purchased in Europe and Japan for several years. A case in point of a car / truck never marketed inside the US and capable of 78 mpg, is the Lupo by Volkswagen. A vehicle called the Jazz elsewhere in the world was unveiled in the States in 2007 as the Fit. You can get economy-boosting features with the Jazz in Japan, say for example a smaller engine and other ways to reduce consumption, but not so with the Fit in the US.
In America the manufacturers say they have to build big cars because that is what the American public wants. Building a small commuter type vehicle doesn’t make the manfacturer big money, unlike with a large SUV. A Tank on Wheels is the thing to have – that’s the message that the commercials beguile the American public with. Fuel-saving alternatives from the giant companies are uncommon, so it’s pretty easy to deduce where their preferences lay. Instead of being synonymous with SUVs, GM today could have been known as a leader in fuel-economic vehicles. A number of other manufacturers also have developed fuel-efficient cars, but they’ve all ended up the same as GM by not offering them to Americans.
Even with climate change and the incredible pollution of the world environment, US car makers have yet to act in response positively and at least give Americans the option of a fuel-efficient car. The question comes up: how many Americans would’ve been thankful for the option of acquiring a car with good gas mileage but weren’t ever offered it? Maybe the instant has come to restart building those cars that were developed only to be abandoned all those years ago.
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