Top 5 Fuel Saving Technologies Video

Top 5 Fuel Saving Technologies Video Transcript

-Now first, the dirty little secret of combustion engines. They're not real efficient. In fact, your car's engine is a better heater than a motor. Over 60% of the gas you buy goes on to creating heat and exhaust. Put another way next time you'd be one of those $75 fill-ups realize that about 56 box of it isn't use to move your car but to heat it. With that depressing thought in mind, let's see what's going to save fuel in cars that already burn it so inefficiently. Number five, adaptive battery charging. How about a 3% to 4% savings here? Your alternator charges your battery. It's driven by a built that drags on the engine all the time, that hasn't change in the better part of the century but today, new systems like BMW's efficient dynamics only engaged the alternator when you break or [unk] that means kinetic energy keeps the things spinning as opposed to combustion energy, very smart. Number four, electric rotating accessories. a 5% to 6% savings here, talking about your power steering and water pumps, your air-conditioning compressor, those are all little parasites driven by belts that sap the engine. Electric power steering is already taking over in cars as we speak and electric water pumps, you should start seeing those around 2014. Now, electric air-conditioning compressors have the added benefit of keeping the car cool even when the engines off. And that brings us to number three. Start/Stop technology. It can save you 6% to 10%. When you come to a stop, the engine shuts down until you left off the break to get moving again, that reduces not just fuel waste but also emissions and congested traffic. This trick used to be confined only to hybrids but now it's spreading the gas engines cars; Mercedes, BMW, Mazda, Ford just some of the car makers using it. In five years or so, I'm willing to bet it'll be as common as a parking brand. Number two, 8 and 9 speed automatic transmissions with a fuel savings of 10, maybe 15%. If you think a 7 speed automatic is overkill, you're a couple of shifts behind. The 8 speeds are here, the 9 speeds are on the way like ZF9HP transmission first adaptive by Chrysler. The idea behind all of these is simple. Internal combustion engines have a fairly narrow sweet spot for efficiency and the more gears you have to choose from the more likely you can keep the engine in that spot. Before we get to number, here's the real number one, saving weight. This isn't a one technology though. It's a combination of carbon-fiber parts, high [unk] steel, frames, aluminum body panels and suspension parts, lighter seats and plastic everywhere. When you take weight out of the car, you just improve it's fuel economy but also it's acceleration, it's breaking, it's cornering, just about everything except perhaps how it does in a collision with the Ford Expedition. The number one fuel saving tech that's out there right now and has a huge future is direct injection and force induction, a couplet here upto 20% fuel savings. Direct injection, delivers fuel directly into the cylinder where it's needed which believe it or not cars never actually did until very recently and force induction like super charging or turbo charging that does wonders when it's couple with direct injection. All of this is about getting more power out of a smaller engine using less fuel. Look at the 2013 Audi S5 for example by dropping last year's normally as rated 4.2 liter VA and going to a smaller 3 liter super charge direct injection D6. The MPG [unk] 14.22 to a pretty good 1726, the car lost it's gas [unk] tax uses some 600 bucks less fuel for year, and still gets up to 60 and a quick 4.9 seconds. For more tech top fives like there, go to cnetoncars.com. We do want and every episode of the show. I'm Brian Cooley, thanks for watching.