bhtooefr said:
Give me a 2.0L CR170 TDI in that A8, and then it'll be very fuel efficient.
Engine downsizing can only be but a part of the overall strategy to reduce fuel consumption. Overall vehicle mass, drag coefficient and frontal area must also be reduced. The last of the three cannot be significantly reduced without impact to passenger space and space utility. Drag coefficients, although as an overall trend has been coming down, has not done so very quickly. Today's "state-of-the-art" is considered around 0.25, and this value existed in production cars dating to the 1970s and 80s.
That leaves vehicle mass as the single thing that OEMs can and must work toward not only "optimizing" but rather reversing the trend of increasingly heavier cars, making cars significantly lighter rather than just maintaining the status quo. It is unbelievable that a compact car of the size of a VW Polo is pushing 2500 lbs, and mid-sized car is considered a lightweight if it tips the scales under 3500 lbs. Of course, safety regulations and market demands for more gadgets have been the cause behind most of the weight increases, but in this automotive landscape, some automakers like Lotus have been able to buck the trend of porkier cars while meeting crash standards through intelligent engineering. Of course, lightweight engineering currently costs more, so until automakers can look beyond strictly Dollars and cents, and actually consider other metrics like resource consumption, waste generation, lifecycle energy consumption, etc. in their bean counting, the status quo will only continue.
First, make driving an automatic something that is completely and totally undesirable. I'm thinking, give a discount on licensing for a manual transmission car?
Second, make engines smaller, now that you're not having to fight a torque converter.
Third, teach people the art of conserving momentum, and also the fact that their go pedal goes to WOT, and their tach goes past half travel for a reason.
Engine downsizing goes without saying. Teaching a generation of consumers and drivers that you don't need a 300 HP car to go from A to B is the bigger challenge. As we can appreciate, even a 90 HP car can be moderately fun and give perfectly adequate pace for the overwhelming number of drivers.
Torque converters when in lock-up mode (in transmissions so equipped, and most modern automatic transmissions do) experience little losses. The problem is not due to having a TC in-and-of-itself. Increasing the ratio spread, increasing the number of gears, and optimizing all of the energy losses in the drivetrain, can result in ATXs with little efficiency penalty over manuals. The percentage of non-manual-shifting transmissions will only increase over time. If you can't beat em, join 'em, making them as efficient as possible.
I agree with #3 totally. In North America at least, driver education to obtain a drivers licence is a total joke. Looking back, I am embarassed that I was able to obtain a full drivers licence 4 weeks after my 16th birthday. I had some "unofficial" training on non-public roads well before I turned 16, but still... Extensive safety training; evasive and emergency driving manoeuvres; thorough winter-driving training (if one lives in such climes); high-performance driving; basic vehicle mechanics; maintenance; changing a flat tire on side of the road; anti-drunk driving lessons; road etiquette; and driver psychology should all be absolute minimum examined requirements before letting new drivers loose on the streets.
Edit: One thing I should add regarding the suggestion to separate manual- and automatic car drivers: In Europe, automatic-only drivers have a specific restricted class in their drivers licence. And in some countries, drivers of such cars must have a prominent sticker on the car with a big letter 'A' ... I leave it up to you to find some creative ideas as to what this could be made to mean to other drivers: "Watch out! 'A...' driver".
