«
»

Why are hybrid cars not able to get better gas mileage than some cars from the early 90s?

hybrid cars


Some cars in the early 90s like the civic, geo metro, etc got 50mpg or more. Howcome almost 20 years later, our hybrid technology is not able to significantly outperform these vehicles?

Renewable Energy Videos
Share It!: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Webnews
  • MisterWong
  • Y!GG
  • Bloglines
  • Furl
  • TwitThis
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • Technorati

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Hybrid Cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Why are hybrid cars not able to get better gas mileage than some cars from the early 90s?”

  1. Lover not a Fighter on January 29th, 2007 at 4:10 pm

    Mainly those cars were very light.
    ===
    My 94 Civic gets 41 mpg (or better). It is only 2300 pounds. The newer Civic is about 400 pounds more. That’s like dragging around a full size motorcycle in the trunk.

    Good luck….

  2. Yeah, I wonder the same thing. Had a 90 Ford Festiva that got 42 mpg – consistantly. . .city, hwy, air, no air, didn’t matter. Of course it was a lot like driving a coke can!

  3. three words, big oil companies

  4. Take a look at the curb weights.

    A Civic 4-door from 1984 had a curb weight of 918 kg.

    A 2008 Civic 4-door LX has a curb weight of 1194 kg.

    Over the years, the cars have grown heavier– They have become bigger and included a lot more safety features.

    The 2008 Civic LX is lugging 276 kg of extra weight above the 1984 model (a difference of almost 600 pounds), so gas mileage is going to suffer. Putting in a more efficient hybrid powertrain in the 2008 Civic simply gains back some of that gas mileage lost due to the weight gain.

    That’s why you can’t really compare the hybrids today to the cars from 15 years ago– The cars are built to different structural and safety standards.

  5. Great question. Cars today are much heavier (about 1000 pounds, typically) and also have 3 times the horsepower. I’m not kidding.

    In 1980, a typical car had 100 hp. Today they have 300. It’s still going up. I read car and driver and autoweek and road and track. HP is still going up on everything, across the board.

    So – Hybrids are nothing special in this regard, they’re just on top of the heap. You could just as easily compare non-hybrid Honda Civics from 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005.

    P.S. The Geo metro weighed 1600 lb and had 50 hp.

  6. uncertain
    but it seems date coincident with the advent of computer sensors which have been installed in all vehicles since 1995

    these sensors are there to peg your mpg at whatever the oil companies want to allow you to have. it is criminal.

    i would suggest that you might want to take a look at the featured videos at this page
    because there is a way around those sensors and to get better mpg on cars and trucks and SUVs new or old.
    Best
    GARKO

Leave a Reply