Gasoline heading to $3 and more

Quote from MRWSM:

Little cars are not making enough MPG. Not enough effort has been made in the past to improve them. Something is wrong with this picture when a monster GMC Yukon at 5600 pounds can get 21 MPG Hwy, yet a 2600 pound Mini Cooper gets only 32 MPG Hwy. The Yukon is still more earth friendly because it can use E85 ethanol instead of gas.
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It has to do with the idea that you lose gas mileage to get a vehicle moving from a stand still. Once it is moving, you don't need to give it much more. The city driving comparison is more representative of the size of the two cars. Mini Cooper weight is a bit more than half of the Yukon. City MPG of Mini is about 26, whereas the Yukon only gets 15.

Not that I am against earth friendly technology, but I think that E85 ethanol is completely overhyped. If you do enough background research on it, you realize that it really isn't a viable alternative. I think that GM is just scrambling for additional incentives for people to buy their cars. Some good PR could really help them right now. But when it comes down to it, there are only a couple long term viable alternatives for auto power, and E85 isn't one of them.
 
Yukon versus Mini, 2006 model year.


GMC 2WD, smaller engine: 16/20

GMC 2WD, flexfuel (uses E85) 15/20, 11/15 on E85.

GMC 4WD, flexfuel 14/18; 11/14 on E85

(all automatic transmission)

Mini Cooper: 28/36 manual, 26/34 auto
Mini Cooper supercharged: 25/32 manual, 23/32

(Toyota corolla, manual: 32/41)

Probably Mini Cooper non-supercharged gets the same acceleration as the GMC---at least after 15 or 20 MPH or so, and certainly will go faster (high speed limits).

The EPA fuel economy test is known to not be very good; in particular it tests vehicles at 55 MPH or thereabouts as "highway" which is a whole lot slower than most people drive them. They then apply an arbitrary percentage correction downward for highway.

But that isn't fair---because of the much larger frontal area on a huge ass truck (not to mention how much worse it gets if you lift it and add off-road tires) the penalty going from 55 MPH to 75 MPH will be much more compared to a small car.
 
Quote from JayS:

Gas down the street at Exxon is 2.59. But I'm also in Houston, the center of the energy universe.
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Im in Houston too and down the corner it is 2.69
 
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