fuel injection atomizes fuel like a bauce. Heating it up would be counter productive. What other cons did your dad fall for. Radon water? Magnet shoes?
Poor DaDa.. LOL One other thing to think of, dude, when fantasizing about the big evil oil company profits keeping us in the black poisonous oil-belching internal-combustion age, because of their insanely high profits.. Who makes more *profit* from a gallon of gasoline as a single entity? The oil company? Or the federal and state governments? Oh, and does aluminum foil work as well as actual tinfoil when you are making your hats?
With CAFE requirements set to hit the mid 50mpg range by 2025, and subsidies being given to advance research on high MPG and alternative fuel vehicles, I call complete BS on the article.
Snopes seems to focus more on denying the conspiracy than the output of the car They states that it is not reaching the 276 MPG that VW Claims but says "According to the on-board computer, we are fuel hogs. Having started with a full tank (2.6 gallons) and fully charged batteries, we ended our trip after 67 miles; fuel consumption plummeted at one point to a dismal 128 mpg. Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/xl1.asp#FmArDMuQ3cyRsVg8.99" 128 MPG is not bad this is of course because the car would never pass the safty requirements here So BIG SAFETY is the issue not BIG OIL Rocket River
DD Jr over here. The problem is the car weighs 1800 pounds because it uses carbon fiber and specialized techniques to get the weight low. That makes the cost high. The engine is cool though, it works like a diesel-electric locomotive.
The 150k price tag wouldn't keep it off the streets altogether, the fact that it can't pass the safety requirements would though.
Gonna go out on a limb and say VW is taking a loss at that price. Thus they are only making 250 of them. You have to remember GM only leased the EV-1 cars. People wanted to buy them but GM crushed them. It was just an experiment that they spent money on. The price of the car was irrelevant. Plus these things would be a bear to drive. Plastic windows, no insulation, no power steering. The list goes on. Why are you guys so sure it couldn't pass safety standards?
Well, according to snopes, they didn't try to pass US requirements, so who knows if they could. I think the red flag goes up on the range. If its the claimed 700 miles, that's great. But, if it's 67 miles like the tester said, that's basically untenable. Tesla does 200+ without any gasoline at all. Plus it looks great, seats more than 2 people, accelerates more quickly, and has a higher top speed. I'm still scratching my head about why you'd build a big oil conspiracy theory around this VW when you have Teslas in production now, selling like hotcakes, and doesn't use gasoline at all. Shouldn't Big Oil be shutting those guys down?
This VW ****s all over Tesla. Tesla is a complete POS subsidized by the government. The VW is a diesel electric. You could go across the country in this thing. Where is your top speed now.
Btw, I find this a little too good to be true, but: http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=50294 [rquoter] NTU develops ultra-fast charging batteries that last 20 years Singapore | Posted on October 14th, 2014 The new generation batteries also have a long lifespan of over 20 years, more than 10 times compared to existing lithium-ion batteries. This breakthrough has a wide-ranging impact on all industries, especially for electric vehicles, where consumers are put off by the long recharge times and its limited battery life. With this new technology by NTU, drivers of electric vehicles could save tens of thousands on battery replacement costs and can recharge their cars in just a matter of minutes. Commonly used in mobile phones, tablets, and in electric vehicles, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries usually last about 500 recharge cycles. This is equivalent to two to three years of typical use, with each cycle taking about two hours for the battery to be fully charged. In the new NTU-developed battery, the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries is replaced with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide is an abundant, cheap and safe material found in soil. It is commonly used as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays. Naturally found in spherical shape, the NTU team has found a way to transform the titanium dioxide into tiny nanotubes, which is a thousand times thinner than the diameter of a human hair. This speeds up the chemical reactions taking place in the new battery, allowing for superfast charging. Invented by Associate Professor Chen Xiaodong from NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering, the science behind the formation of the new titanium dioxide gel was published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials, a leading international scientific journal in materials science. Prof Chen and his team will be applying for a Proof-of-Concept grant to build a large-scale battery prototype. With the help of NTUitive, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTU set up to support NTU start-ups, the patented technology has already attracted interest from the industry. The technology is currently being licensed by a company for eventual production. Prof Chen expects that the new generation of fast-charging batteries will hit the market in the next two years. It also has the potential to be a key solution in overcoming longstanding power issues related to electro-mobility. "Electric cars will be able to increase their range dramatically, with just five minutes of charging, which is on par with the time needed to pump petrol for current cars," added Prof Chen. "Equally important, we can now drastically cut down the toxic waste generated by disposed batteries, since our batteries last ten times longer than the current generation of lithium-ion batteries." The 10,000-cycle life of the new battery also mean that drivers of electric vehicles would save on the cost of battery replacements, which could cost over US$5,000 each. Easy to manufacture According to Frost & Sullivan, a leading growth-consulting firm, the global market of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries is projected to be worth US$23.4 billion in 2016. Lithium-ion batteries usually use additives to bind the electrodes to the anode, which affects the speed in which electrons and ions can transfer in and out of the batteries. However, Prof Chen's new cross-linked titanium dioxide nanotube-based electrodes eliminates the need for these additives and can pack more energy into the same amount of space. Manufacturing this new nanotube gel is very easy. Titanium dioxide and sodium hydroxide are mixed together and stirred under a certain temperature so battery manufacturers will find it easy to integrate the new gel into their current production processes. Recognised as the next big thing by co-inventor of today's lithium-ion batteries NTU professor Rachid Yazami, the co-inventor of the lithium-graphite anode 30 years ago that is used in today's lithium-ion batteries, said Prof Chen's invention is the next big leap in battery technology. "While the cost of lithium-ion batteries has been significantly reduced and its performance improved since Sony commercialised it in 1991, the market is fast expanding towards new applications in electric mobility and energy storage," said Prof Yazami, who is not involved in Prof Chen's research project. Last year, Prof Yazami was awarded the prestigious Draper Prize by The National Academy of Engineering for his ground-breaking work in developing the lithium-ion battery with three other scientists. "However, there is still room for improvement and one such key area is the power density - how much power can be stored in a certain amount of space - which directly relates to the fast charge ability. Ideally, the charge time for batteries in electric vehicles should be less than 15 minutes, which Prof Chen's nanostructured anode has proven to do so." Prof Yazami is now developing new types of batteries for electric vehicle applications at the Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N). This battery research project took the team of four scientists three years to complete. It is funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF), Prime Minister's Office, Singapore, under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) Programme of Nanomaterials for Energy and Water Management.[/rquoter]
A couple of writers from jalopnik took it for a short spin in NYC. As is, the car is missing things that make it illegal to drive in the US like no side view mirrors for example. http://jalopnik.com/we-drove-the-261-mpg-volkswagen-xl1-in-manhattan-becaus-1482688104
