"Fuel Efficiency Standards Are Dead"
- Thread starter buster
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Non answer.
Good luck with that. My 02 wrangler has several computers on it. So unless you are driving a 72 nova computers will be in your car.
Chevys 2.2 found in Cobalt’s were “mostly reliable “ if you kept up on timing chains. Quite a few in the 400,000 and 500,000 mile marks despite the bad reputation early on.
Move past 2010 to the 2.4 with DI and a few minor changes to enhance power and most are garbage instead of most being ok.
I could care less about power and DI if it makes an OK engine into garbage.
This is a similar story as the 3800 engine kept downsizing into the terrible crap in there now.
Given all the changes fuel economy does not appear to have been affected much as we went from throttle body 3800’s to whatever garbage ended up taking the v6 slot
edyvw
$50 site donor 2025
It is not non-answer. They lost every segment that wasn’t protected. The only segment that they are having control of is the one with huge protectionist tax.
I wonder had we let them fail... would that have propelled TESLA and more EV adoption earlier on? Wonder what the market would look like now had it we let it self-correct. Or would the negative impact on workers/unemployment etc be too much to bear short term.
Is a GM or Ford product really any worse than any other brand? To me it seems all brands have at least one, maybe two, solid engines that are problem free, with the rest being average with some unreliable. Reliability data is really hard to gauge, especially when you see it change so dramatically year to year.
Is a GM or Ford product really any worse than any other brand? To me it seems all brands have at least one, maybe two, solid engines that are problem free, with the rest being average with some unreliable. Reliability data is really hard to gauge, especially when you see it change so dramatically year to year.
and 179.
Yes
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Ford has had some really good engines over the years, as has GM. Their current joint 10spd transmission has been a sore spot. I would say Ford has more than one or two solid engines, I'd argue that the 3.5 ecoboost (in truck/SUV trim) is very good, the 5.0L Coyote is very good, the 2.7 ecoboost is also very good. The 3.5EB in an F-150 is certainly arguably a safer choice than the current Toyota 1/2 ton engine with its recent history of engine failures.
Ford's interiors tend to be a bit more "utilitarian" that a similar trim GM offering, but no worse than Toyota.
And yes, real reliability data is indeed hard to gauge. Despite the valvetrain issues with the GM V8's, they are still a strong engine family with a history of reliability for example.
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I have long thought CAFE was a fool’s errand. If a consumer wants a vehicle that gets mid teens to fill, they can pay that cost. If other consumers want something more efficient because they live where fuel is expensive, or they have a long commute, same principle applies. Problem we have however is that business needs some consistency of standards - rule of law and reliable commercial courts and regulation is a prerequisite for a stable growing economy. One side wants to get rid of the standard, the other wants to make it unreasonably high or outlaw the gasoline engine outright. Are there any adults around?
Final thought is one of the reasons I really became anti CAFE is because we are long past the point where actual improvements are being made that benefit the customer. What happens now is that the manufacturers arbitrage the rules to get to the standard, and wind up saddling the consumer with features that add almost nothing to the economy of the vehicle, but are often annoying (eg auto stop start) and can be very expensive to fix when they break or cause other problems ( eg Honda VCM, Hemi exhaust headers cracking due to temp imbalances when MDS activates).
Final thought is one of the reasons I really became anti CAFE is because we are long past the point where actual improvements are being made that benefit the customer. What happens now is that the manufacturers arbitrage the rules to get to the standard, and wind up saddling the consumer with features that add almost nothing to the economy of the vehicle, but are often annoying (eg auto stop start) and can be very expensive to fix when they break or cause other problems ( eg Honda VCM, Hemi exhaust headers cracking due to temp imbalances when MDS activates).
Please define American car company?
Toyota's largest market is USA. Same for Mazda, Subaru, and Nissan. Ditto for everyone really unless China is, which there on-shoring their Auto Industry so its not the largest market anymore. BMW is the only one I know of headquartered outside of China where China is still there largest market.
If your talking GM and Ford, well there really only light truck producers at this point, IMHO.
Anyway I agree with @eljefino . At best it keeps some old models in production longer.
Just becuase the politics might swing doesn’t mean the auto industry will follow suit. They know the trend is for ever increasing efficiency, and they know that if they don’t innovate and develop technology they’ll be left behind by someone that does. I would advise not getting too rattled by short term swings. The long game wins.
Who knows? I doubt it because everything can change in 4 yrs and businesses need stability. Also, the Munson's of the world will of course lose their minds the next time the price of gas spikes and it costs $200 to fill their vehicle which they're upside down on for the next 10 yrs.
As happy as I am about this, manufacturers have a problem. It takes 3-5 years to get a new engine (or resurrect an old one ), so what happens if this changes again in the next election. Tough problem.
After watching the YT video with that drive line engineer from GM I don't know why anyone would buy their product. ZF designs an AT, GM redesigns using worse metallurgy with certain parts in order to save money. Transmissions fail.
I think the main thing that this will change in the short term is that manufactures will be freer to make the mix of vehicles in their lineup that matches sales demands without regard of the mix of small to large vehicles. Maybe more N/A engines vs turbos, more V8's vs boosted small displacement engines, more SUVs and trucks vs compact cars, etc. Maybe even more manual transmission cars, though I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
if we are being honest, GM hasn't had the best track record with transmissions for many decades. At least Chrysler figured this out on their own during the Daimler years and started using Daimler, then ZF. Somehow, Ford managed to partner with GM and actually end up with a worse version of the co-developed transmission than GM did, and this is from a company that brought us the 5R110/5R120, 4R70W/4R75W and the 4R100.
I agree that Ford has some really good engine tech. That is why Toyota agreed to swap their hybrid research, undipsutedly the best at the time, for Ford's engine research.
Unfortunately Ford is plagued by the thing that has always plagued Ford - QC and other cheeping out - like refusing to spend the extra money to cross drill their 4 cylinder eco-boosts until they burnt up enough head gaskets under warranty to finally convince the bean counters. Read Iococca's book and you will realize this has always been their problem.
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Several years ago I read some commercial vehicle owners were paying to have scrapyard engines rebuilt and installed, so as to keep going with the existing chassis/engine MY emissions restrictions.
It seems there’s this narrow window for manufacturers to sell new engines to these guys, with old style emissions. It’d be very quick to retool for, and not cost much to do so only to abandon the effort again potentially in 2028.
In fact, build 10x what they can sell in 3 years, because, if built now they’ll be marked for this year’s emissions regulations. You can sell them into the market until your stock runs out.
It seems there’s this narrow window for manufacturers to sell new engines to these guys, with old style emissions. It’d be very quick to retool for, and not cost much to do so only to abandon the effort again potentially in 2028.
In fact, build 10x what they can sell in 3 years, because, if built now they’ll be marked for this year’s emissions regulations. You can sell them into the market until your stock runs out.
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