Planning academic Paul Mees has been a tireless advocate for Melbourne’s public transport system for a long time. And, while his views on various topics are often disputed by other experts, they’re always worth a read. Ditto his latest research, which makes the observation that the average fuel economy of the Australian vehicle fleet has essentially stayed the same for 45 years:
In research for the Garnaut Climate Change Review, Melbourne University’s Dr Paul Mees has used Australian Bureau of Statistics figures to show that fuel efficiency has remained practically unchanged since 1963.
In that year — the first date efficiency was recorded by the Federal Government — the average Australian car used 11.4 litres of petrol to travel 100 kilometres.
In 2006, according to the ABS’s Survey of Motor Vehicle Use, it remained identical.
Why is this the case? Remarkably enough, Tim Blair gets this mostly right - essentially, modern vehicles are much bigger, heavier, and faster than the vehicles of 1963. The 1963 EH Holden weighed around 1100 kilograms. Its modern equivalent, the Commodore Omega, weighs 1700 kilograms. It is much longer and wider - in fact, as Blair points out, today’s Toyota Corolla is about the same size (and much faster) than the EH was.
So where has all this extra mass gone? Passenger crumple zones are a biggie. The profusion of airbags - the current Commodore has six of them. Bigger wheels and tyres, which grip far, far better than the rubber bands fitted to the EH. Big disc brakes on all four wheels, complete with anti-lock braking systems. Chassis stability control - probably as big an improvement in car safety as the seat belt, something the EH was also not fitted with by default. The Commodore seat belts, aside from being on rollers, also feature pre-tensioners which actively pull you back in the seat in the instants before a crash, giving you and the airbags more chance for a gradual stop when the crash actually occurs. The environment does get looked after with the catalytic converters and other pollution control gear on the Commodore - the levels of lethal carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and whatnot are a tiny fraction of what the EH emits.
And that’s even before we get to the various bits of passenger comfort gear. Those bloggers of my age or younger, particularly if they’re not into cars, may never have driven a vehicle without power-assisted steering and brakes. The sheer physical effort required to drive a vehicle without them can be quite a shock! Then there’s automatic transmissions. I personally prefer a manual transmission myself, but a large fraction of the population simply won’t change gear themselves. Aside from the resultant extra weight, the hydraulic couplings introduce another layer of inefficiency. Beyond that, there’s air conditioning. Six-speaker CD players. Power windows. Electric mirrors. Not to mention, of course, all the extra space in the Commodore’s immensely more comfortable seats.
And, yet, the VE Commodore and the EH Holden use pretty much the same amount of fuel. So Mees is right, and wrong, at the same time. Car technology has become much, much more efficient over the past 45 years. It’s just that we’ve chosen to use that improved technology to haul around bigger, heavier, faster cars with power-sapping environmental, safety, and convenience features. We could all choose to drive around in Corollas (still bigger and more comfortable inside, much safer, and faster than the EH), and use around 25-30% less fuel. But, collectively, we don’t.
Mees and Blair, amusingly, seem to interpret the statistics in the same, incorrect way. Both seem to assume that because people have, historically, preferred to use the efficiency dividend from improved technology to drive a heavier car, that this trend will continue on forever, dooming us to a fleet fuel efficiency average of 11.4 liters per 100 kilometers travelled until the car is replaced by personal teleportation devices. Both are flat wrong.
The reason why people haven’t wanted more fuel-efficient cars is because fuel has, historically, represented a relatively small portion of people’s total expenditure. Where fuel is more expensive, people change their car-buying preferences, and car makers respond. Europeans drive small cars largely because they pay more for fuel than we do. The current fuel price surge is killing the market for large sedans. Every car maker in Australia is scrambling to offer a turbo diesel model. Even amongst the behemoths, the trend is towards absolute reductions in fuel consumption; the latest Falcon uses somewhere around 2% less fuel than its predecessor (and the performance variants use around 5% less than before).
We can reduce the amount of fuel our cars use, and by a very considerable amount. But the historical record is quite clear; it takes a hit to the hip pocket to do so, whether its via OPEC or, in the future, through a carbon tax. Technology alone won’t save us.
Minor quibble on automatic transmissions Robert - lock up torque converters, 4 and 6 speed transmissions and computer control make automatic transmissions more efficient than manuals - you don’t get the inefficiency of the nut behind the wheel picking the wrong gear, changing gear too slowly or the emissions and fuel wasted on the overrun when the engine isn’t engaged to the gearbox when the clutch is used.
The old Borg Warner 35/TorqueFlite/Traumatic days are long gone. Even my ancient Jeep has a lock-up torque converter and it was made in 1983.
As you’ve pointed out, weight is the biggest killer and it feeds off itself, a heavier car needs better brakes (which are heavier) and a bigger engine (which is heavier) and bigger wheels (which are heavier) etc. I’d like to see the average fuel economy figures from 1983, when the Mitsubishi Sigma and Datsun 200B were almost common family cars due to fuel prices.
The price of petrol is in my view the one thing that will change our buying preferences. I’m not sure that we’re at that point yet but if you do the sums for petrol at $2 per litre, a car that uses 6l/100km vs one that uses 12l/100km starts to look attractive if you are driving 20,000km per year. Trouble is, most of the cars that use 6l are small Euro diesels which have a price premium and, as we have learned on an earlier post, some Aussies are just too big to squeeze themselves into anything less than a falcodore.
When we buy our next car fuel efficiency will be a big(ger) factor than previously. It still has to fit 3 growing kids in though. Some days I feel guilty driving around in our Prado but hey, we live in the bush and we don’t do that many kms per year!
Do you care to comment on the use of compressed natural gas as a petrol alternative? - intriguing story on the 7.30 report earlier in the week.
David, if you look at the fuel economy statistics, manuals still generally beat autos.
For instance, the Honda Accord Euro. 7.4 1/100km manual, 7.7 l/100km auto.
I inherited a late model auto XD Falcon some years ago, which has served me well, but I’m very wary of letting other people drive it, particularly those younger than me (mid-20s). Though it looks a little tired on the outside, and has the odd rust spot in the usual places, it’s mechanically in good nick. That said the combination of: manual steering, “adequate” brakes, comparatively poor handling in general - especially in the wet when braking and corning goes out the window - is a recipe for disaster when combined with those used to more modern vehicles. Anyone my age or younger gets interrogated fairly thoroughly as to their driving history before they take the wheel.
On the upside the steering means you can get quite a workout when city driving, you learn to judge your parallel parks well, and service/repair is straight forward.
I was discussing that by email this morning. Short version: it has potential, but don’t get too excited. the cost differences are exaggerated. There’s a lot less energy per liter of natural gas than there is in petrol, still less diesel. Furthermore, a lot of the cost differential is due to differential tax treatment of transport and non-transport fuels. Thirdly, the domestic price of natural gas, particularly on the Australian east coast, doesn’t yet reflect global prices because the export facilities don’t exist. That will change over the next few years.
It also has some environmental benefits; the levels of non-greenhouse pollutants are low, and it’s less co2-intensive than liquid fossil fuels.
Furthermore, the long-term supply of gas, particularly if we’re going to use it to phase out coal and replace oil at the same time, is not exactly assured.
Technology alone “won’t save us” - but the technology to build safe, lighter, smaller cars is available right now: unlike unproven “carbon capture for coal-fired power stations” (one topical example).
And car-pooling can be implemented immediately, with existing cars.
vroom
Robert Merkel wrote:
That’s an efficiency gain (by the manufacturer) of about 5%? I wonder what the margin of error is (my guess: more than that for a normal consumer). Given the vastly longer service life of a modern auto (EL Falcon 4 speed auto service interval in 1998? Never! unless it springs a leak.) it’s actually far more rational to drive an auto for most people. Efficiency isn’t just about fuel consumption.
Besides which, user-choosers are increasingly turning away from Falcons and Commodores in favour of things like the Honda. It would seem that import protection laws for the auto industry were counter productive in lots of ways.
I’m not sure how much of a impact the financial issues have on a car selection. The difference in fuel costs is only about $2.5k/year, probably much less that the difference in the car repayments (or effective investment loss) of choosing the bigger car in the first place. People have already shown that they deem such expenditure on cars as the best way to use their money. I think its how fashionable it is to buy an environmentally friendly car these days and the emotional perception of wasteful spending on fuel that will/is driving the change.
Re: CNG for cars
You only have to look to NZ for a case-study. CNG was widely used for vehicle transport (as is LPG — what is currently referred to in Aus as “gas”). Largely as a result of the oil-shock. NZ had some natural gas reserves, but no oil to speak of.
We had a CNG Mk IV cortina station wagon when I was a kid. Robert is right that the energy density isn’t as high as LPG, and the tanks can’t fit as much in them as an LPG tank of the same size, so range is a little limited (200-300kms maybe, can’t recall).
In most cases cars were dual fuel, but the optimal tuning for CNG was a fair bit different to petrol (my Dad used to do something to the timing .. advance it maybe?) so it used to run a little rough on petrol. It was important to run petrol periodically however, as CNG had very lubricant action the engine would wear much more quickly, or so I was told.
The CNG network seems to have largely disappeared from New Zealand. Not sure when that happened.
I thought the market for large sedans was largely being killed by SUVs, which haven’t shown much sign of declining in popularity.
If I could pass one law regarding fuel efficiency, it would be that along with the price of a car, retailers must state, in large type, the cost of running the vehicle for 5 years based on projected petrol prices (say, averaging $2.50/L) and typical usage. I don’t doubt for a moment that would put off a considerable number of potential inefficient vehicle buyers.
A case of penny-wise pound-foolish? A big whack on a car once is relatively easy compared to the $100 fill up week to week?
The efficiency gains of diesels are being eaten up by the price differential between petrol and diesel fuel. As imported diesel cars become more common this price differential is likely only to increase. This is undesirable from the point of view of carbon dioxide emissions. DOH!
In New Zealand diesel is taxed differently to Aus, and as a result Diesel (NZ$1.39/L) is cheaper than unleaded petrol (NZ$1.80/L). The road user component (effectively a tax on big trucks) is paid separately. My brother owns a big diesel 4WD in NZ and reckons it is a relatively small charge. Perhaps Australia should look to a similar taxation regime so as not to discourage the take-up of fuel efficient diesel technology?
I’m with Ambigulous
Don’t get too excited about diesels. They may be better for the environment from a CO2 perspective, but in terms of other emissions they’re appalling, which is why they’re so heavily restricted in the USA.
Fixing the emissions also tends to push up fuel consumption.
Nice one dk.au at 12! Got a giggle out off me. I’m very happy with my corolla wagon, but the manufacturers specs state that the back middle seat is for kids only. I’ve two little kids and there is no way that you could fit three car seats in the back, unlike my friends’ commodore. When she gives me a lift I always think ‘wow you could have a party in the back there!’ I was surprised to find that there has been no improvement in fuel efficiency for 40 yrs But with Robert’s explanation of how the technological gains have been absorbed it makes sense.
“When she gives me a lift I always think ‘wow you could have a party in the back there!’”
You must be thinking of a Sandman.
Passing reference is given above to safety but the big ‘efficiency’ outcome is found in death statistics. Newer cars kill fewer people. Other factors are also at work but the biggie is safer cars. Australia’s worst year for deaths in terms of both raw numbers (3,798) and per 100k population (30.4) was 1970. 2004 (latest ABS figures I can find quickly go only to 2005) saw 1,583 deaths and 7.9 deaths/100k population. The last year before 2004 that we killed fewer than 1,583 people was 1949 - but the death rate per 100k population in 1949 was more than double (18.0). Measuring ‘efficiency’ only in terms of fuel consumption is inadequate.
CoT: good point, and one I didn’t explore adequately.
One point that is also not often grasped is how big a deal reducing smog levels has been. It probably prevents more premature death and ill-health than even the various bits of safety gear.
Rayedish wrote:
A classic case of “never mind the quality, feel the width”.
It’s the only reason we still run my wife’s EL Fairmont - you can get two big children plus a baby seat back there and still have room to swing cats. AND it gets 7l/100km on the highway. We had a much newer Ford Territory for a while and it never broke 10l/100km ever. The newer twin-cam ford engines are really powerful, but they suck for fuel economy.
Just a couple of minor technical corrections.
(1) The latest diesel engines all reach the highest standards in emissions (otherwise they would not be sold in the EU, etc).
(2) Sorry manual transmission is still more efficient, The only thing thats gets close is the ones that do not use a torque converter, basically they are power manual boxes that use a computer to control them, but they are heavier. For torque converters lock up only applies in cruising. In rapid shifting, heavy acceleration environments (ie metropolitan) they are far less efficient, basically like slipping your (manual) clutch all the time as you drive around town. Anyone who has an auto gearbox can’t drive.
(3) At constant speeds on the flat, aerodynamics dominate energy use. When you are accelerating weight is the dominant issue.
(4) Modern cars are far too heavy, compare a modern Mini to the original. The original did (depending on model) 40+mpg (some 50+). Yet the moden one has little more interior space, despite being larger overall.
Bad design, peoples’ desire to have something ‘bigger’ and to drive like idiots but still be ’safe’. 7 airbags, come on. I’ve got a 4WD, but its a real bush basher, really used for what it is designed for. Anyone, and I mean anyone who gets one of these and only uses it in the town simply demonstrates that their IQ is less than my shoe size.
A British cybernetician came up with a better idea, instead of making cars ever more ’safe’, and thus reduces their skills ever more, he suggested putting sharp spikes on the steering wheel. Now that would concentrate the mind. Not many people would use their phones, text, watch their GPS’s, and take their eyes off the road.
The fuel efficiency of bicycles has also not improved since the 1960s.
OldSkeptic, I know that in a nice testing cycle on the dyno with a skilled operator the measured fuel efficiency of manuals is usually slightly better than autos (though the gap is far smaller than it was 20 years ago). But I aint so sure about real life conditions - a lot of manual cars spend a lot of time with their engines revving at less than (and occasionally more than) optimum revs.
Mercurius, even cheap bicycles are more fuel efficient now than the boat anchors I rode in the 60s. They weigh far less (aluminium, not steel) and have more gears (typically 18 vs 10).
DD
10 speed bike in the 1960s - damn rich kids - the rest of us were content with one
Robert. Re your comment about “a hit to the hip pocket”. FYI, here’s a link to a recent article from The Guardian about upcoming changes to car tax in the UK (although it doesn’t discuss tricky biofuel problems): [link]
OldSkeptic: The Euro emissions standards for diesels are not the same as for petrol engines. Furthermore, the European diesel emissions standards are reputedly particularly susceptible to being gamed by heavily polluting engines that have special tricks in the emissions control software just to pass the tests. The US diesel standards, particularly in California, are much tougher, which is why a lot of the European manufacturers don’t sell diesels in the US, or have to add extra anti-pollution gear to do so.
In my experience with bicycles, the dominating factor is rolling resistance; it completely befuddles me why people ride massive mountain bikes with low-efficiency knobby tires on city streets. Oh (and with apologies to Phil of Spinopsys if he’s reading this) I fail to see the appeal of the single-speed bikes that are proliferating in the inner city at the moment.
Elizabeth: thanks for that.
I dislike the road tax approach, myself, because it only tackles one side of the problem - the efficiency of the cars being driven. It does nothing to tackle the amount of driving people do. Taxing the fuel used does both.
“I fail to see the appeal of the single-speed bikes that are proliferating in the inner city at the moment.”
Fashion.
I think you can explain the return of the single speed and fixe thusly: cycling is now very mainstream. It wasn’t that long ago that cycle commuting put you in a very small community, and being a hard core roadie/mountain biker even more so. Now you’re just one of the pack. Riding a single speed or fixe puts you back in the hard core niche, and - particularly in the case of fixes - one that isn’t going to be popularised any time soon.
derrida derider wrote:
Meh. Carbon fibre and 20 speeds right next to the desk and all of about 8kg. I could lose that in body fat - modern bicycles are astonishing. No safer than the 1960’s one though - cars still hurt when they hit you, although a lot of the really dangerous protrusions have been (forcibly) shaved off them.
Cycling in rural/regional Australia is a bit like surfing - there’s an element of fashion to it but with all these open spaces and quiet roads, it’s almost criminal not to take advantage of it. The fixie phenom - I blame bicycle couriers.
OldSkeptic wrote:
That’s all either outdated or just plain wrong. A modern torque converter isn’t slipping all the time and mostly acts as a torque multiplier/reduction gear which can help keep your (narrow torque band) IC engine well within more efficient revs than your ear and your left arm can. Sitting at idle (where the vast majority of urban fuel usage goes) an automatic is just as (in)efficient as a manual, and in gentle acceleration between traffic lights, the auto will kill a manual transmission in fuel usage and service life, simply due to that torque multiplication that allows your engine to be more efficient in stop/start work and the lack of a mechanical clutch requiring replacement every 70-100,000k.
Colonel of Truth@16, you have to factor in drink driving & RBT campaigns into these figures - I think you’ll find the figures for road fatalities & accidents crashed (sorry) soon as Govt got serious about drink-driving.
In the pre-RBT days, you’d see people a lot of people, literally spending two minutes trying to get the key in the driver’s dock lock, falling down, getting up again, and having finally opened the door, spending another minute or so, getting the key into the ignition…before driving off.
And lets just say, you don’t see too many cars come screaming over hills on the wrong side of the road, which again was a fairly common sight after the pubs closed back in them days.
sorry for typo city - door lock, etc….. am rushing, should be doing housework
jo #30, thanks. I agree that RBT and anti-drink driving campaigns help reduce road deaths. Other non-car factors also help (road/intersection design, roundabouts/traffic lights, rest areas on highways, emergency service response times, uniform road laws in all states, nixing the six o’clock swill through saner hotel hours, etc etc). But the biggie is safer cars. Probably the single most effective advance was compulsory fitting & wearing of seat belts (in all states by, I think, 1973). The road toll went south after that. Still has a long way to go, though.
BTW, did you know that during our involvement in the war in South Vietnam, we killed about the same number (circa 45 on average) of soldiers on Oz roads each year as died each year on operations? Appalling. And >3,000 other Australians, mainly young men, also died on the Oz roads each and every year from the mid 60s to the early 80s. That’s about the same number of deaths as the nation suffered in WWI.
Robert that may have been true in the past, but its not true now. Volkswagen will introduce a “50 state diesel” this (northern) summer that meets California’s ultra-strict LEV2 standard.
The engine produces the same power and torque as the Australian spec engine, and Wired says it returns 60mpg US on the highway. That’s 3.92L/100km, better than a Prius for a considerably bigger car.
From Green Car Congress 24.04.2008:
VW Introduces Production Version of BlueTDI Engine
“it completely befuddles me why people ride massive mountain bikes with low-efficiency knobby tires on city streets.”
I do this for two reasons - one it enables me to go over gutters and various other obstacles I would be scared to tackle on a “road bike”, two it means that I don’t get my wheels caught in tram tracks (a uniquely Melbourne danger).
Agree with you on the single gear thing though.
OK, I’m a skeptic so I go for hard numbers. Auto vs Manual.
All data courtesy of the Australian Govt.
Latest 2007 data: Matching all auto and manual vehicles, model for model (type, engine, etc) and comparing manual vs Auto:
Average (mean) Ltrs/100km: Manual 9.496, Auto: 9.894, Diff: 3.8%
The median difference is a much higher 6.7%!
Note: now they only give one number a combined cycle, instead of the old highway, metro consumptation rates they gave before.
Going back into the archives and using the pre 2004 data we have:
Highway cycle: 1999 3.2%, 2000 2% 2001 5.6%, 2002 4.8%, 2003 4.8%
Metro cycle: 1999 3%, 2000 3.5% 2001 2.9%, 2002 5%, 2003 5%
All percentages worse than manual of course.
Note that ‘modern technolois not actually going anywhere on this.
It gets worse, if we compare the average 5 speed manual cars vs matching 4&5 speed autos then the difference is (for 2007 cars) a whopping 6%.
You really canna defy the lays of physics.
Of yes their are sopme trick auto gearboxes (7, 8 speed, etc) that may be similar in efficiency, but they cost a lot more, use up more resources, are heavier and require as much computer power as the average PC to work ..and are much less reliable than the old 3-4 speeders or manuals (ref the Lemmon Guide to cars) and cost a fortune to fix.
Basicaly rubbish vs a decent 5 or even 6 speeder manual.
A few speeling mistakes there, but I should add somme notes about the the methodology.
I matched every car to every car, auto vs manual. Some cars do not match, usually, but not always, because they are auto only, especially in the prestige area.
Then I filtered according to the definitions I used, e.g. year of manufacture, 5 speed manual vs 4&5 speed auto, always on a car to car basis, so every car was compared to every car manual vs auto.
Now the weakness was that it is not weighted by sales, but that is where the median comes in. The very top, prestige cars have very small volumes, the differences between their gearboxes may be small, but for the average car, which is the large volume area, the difference is significant.
So if you are rich the difference is probabaly small, for the rest of us, learn to drive properly and get a manual.