Originally Posted By: kschachn
And if you believe there is a conspiracy out there to suppress adding oil to your gasoline to increase your fuel economy (by a massive amount of 2%-5%) then you are crazy.
Conspiracy?
Originally Posted By: Kestas
I see a lot of engineering programs in Detroit aimed specifically at reducing fuel usage. You'd be surprised at what lengths they go to to reduce a bit of friction here anad there, and gain just a miniscule increase in fuel economy. This is significant, because in this cut-throat business of building automobiles where not only are the car companies barely hanging on, especially with competition from overseas, they have little money to waste. They wouldn't ignore a 2-5% increase in fuel economy if it was truly as simple as adding a bit of oil to gasoline.
If one does it, they will all do it. There nothing patentable about ashless 2-stroke oil or modifying the composition of fuel to gain an FE "edge" on the other guy. In fact, to accept the liability of having to guarantee those results would be a dangerous business move. It is also dubious that the oil companies are even competing at all wrt fuel sales. Fuel price variations are determined by location more than brand name, and by market events more than location. One intersection of 4 different gas stations will sell at the same price, and another intersection set-up the same way will have a different price. They even share refinery capacity quite often, anyway. What realistically deters "changes" to the network is more than likely economic factors and standards issues. But even beyond economic factors (incurring additional production costs), they would rather market "inherent" features of their fuels (ie Nitrogen Enriched, Detergents) without changing anything, rather than incur a real increase in production cost and then have to market and guarantee that. The auto industry is very concerned about FE improvements (oil companies, not so much), but those improvement must be realised on
any blend.
If an automaker would even consider requiring a special lube, Mazda would have, and should have done it for their rotary engines, instead they opted for the out-of-sight approach of metering dirty motor oil in to do the job. Heck even a water injection system could increase dynamic octane ratings and improve FE, but it's not an industry standard (
and it's uncharted waters,
and potentially very upsetting to some entities)
Quote:
If you have an idea that you think is worthwhile and possibly ignored by the engineering community, please contact your favorite automaker and present your idea. Each company has an office where they accept ideas from the general public for evaluation within the company to see if the idea is viable. The only exception is they won't entertain ideas of perpetual motion.
If we had a novel idea, that would be a great suggestion but this is 'old school' reasoning. Beyond that gasolines must conform to a standard (and anything above and beyond is a 'financial liability'. These standards are set out of
absolute necessity, based on the demands of automotive engineering, such as accommodations in detergency for turbo/DI engines. There is nothing catastrophic about a lower lubricity and/or higher than normal fuel surface tension than treated gas, that would leave either oil refiners or automakers with a liability to address. Therefore making any industry change, especially on such a standardized commodity will never happen just for our sake.
f benefit, yes, esp with alcohol fuels and fuel pump life.
