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ultra lean combustion, rotor-on-demand, magic and horcruxes
Originally Posted by Valkyrie
What you are referring to is cheating the emissions test, not passing it...
It would be the first ever ground-up redesign of the rotary by Mazda (all previous rotaries carried over several basic dimensions dating back to the 1967 10A), as well as the first ever rotary completely designed with the assistence of computer simulations. Plus the possible employment of HCCI.
Also, I read somewhere that if one is willing to increase the precious metal loading of the catalyst, then it's possible to get practically anything to pass emissions.
I don't know if it's true, but even if it is, it obviously gets too expensive past a certain point... which depends on the car price
I can't comment on "magic and horcruxes", but ultra lean combustion and rotor-on-demand are not cheating in my book. If the test procedure only checks the low end portion of the engine performance envelope, then these techniques can indeed improve the emissions of the engine in the tested situations.
If these test procedures do not check all relevant aspects of the engine emissions, it's not a fault of the engine. It's the test procedure that needs improving. But here we're entering the VW dieselgate area...
the 13B-MSP was in prototype form in 1994, the long wait was because Ford took over 1/1/1996. the Ford guy is also responsible for the Rx8 being such a mixed bag, the Mazda guys had a 2400lbs/220hp 2 seater, and a show car with the Rx8 style doors.
the Ford guy put the two together, and you ended up with something that nobody was that jazzed about and it was 600lbs heavier than it was really supposed to be.
More confirmation on Mazda reveal of RX-9? at the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show.
1,300Kg, 2 rotor 1.6L rotary
In other news, Techno Buffalo revealed one of the anticipated models that would be featured during the said event. The rumored Mazda RX-9 was said to reveal itself at the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show as the carmaker's flagship model, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the company's first rotary model.
The car was said to be lighter for next year with only 1,300 kg and will feature a 1.6-liter SKYACTIV-R engine that features 800cc rotors.
More confirmation on Mazda reveal of RX-9? at the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show.
1,300Kg, 2 rotor 1.6L rotary
In other news, Techno Buffalo revealed one of the anticipated models that would be featured during the said event. The rumored Mazda RX-9 was said to reveal itself at the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show as the carmaker's flagship model, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the company's first rotary model.
The car was said to be lighter for next year with only 1,300 kg and will feature a 1.6-liter SKYACTIV-R engine that features 800cc rotors.
What about the Ford Tempo?!
"Ford have made a commitment to quality I find very impressive!"
they did sell 2.7 million of those between 1984 and 1994.
i think its not popular as a ford because its not the center of some P.R. debacle, like the Pinto, or the F150, which has that recall to make it pass a crash test, or the Edsel, or the Five Hundred, or the early explorer, or the non ST focus, or the 6 liter diesel engine...
It would be the first ever ground-up redesign of the rotary by Mazda (all previous rotaries carried over several basic dimensions dating back to the 1967 10A), as well as the first ever rotary completely designed with the assistence of computer simulations. Plus the possible employment of HCCI.
Also, I read somewhere that if one is willing to increase the precious metal loading of the catalyst, then it's possible to get practically anything to pass emissions.
I don't know if it's true, but even if it is, it obviously gets too expensive past a certain point... which depends on the car price
I can't comment on "magic and horcruxes", but ultra lean combustion and rotor-on-demand are not cheating in my book. If the test procedure only checks the low end portion of the engine performance envelope, then these techniques can indeed improve the emissions of the engine in the tested situations.
If these test procedures do not check all relevant aspects of the engine emissions, it's not a fault of the engine. It's the test procedure that needs improving. But here we're entering the VW dieselgate area...
Anything that would blow the engine during normal driving = cheating, technically, but there are so few multi-rotor RX-7s, or tuner cars in general, on the road to really have much of an impact on the environment.
lol, Dodge will sell you a 700hp v8 Charger that is EPA rated at 13/22 mpg.
A four-rotor with a big turbo would make that much horsepower without even trying... but the small-block OHV V8 has had, what, 50 years and billions of dollars worth of R&D? Also, piston engine. 'nuff said. But good luck getting more than 7 mpg with the 26B...
Anything that would blow the engine during normal driving = cheating, technically
How would rotor on demand and ultra lean burn "blow an engine during normal driving"?
We're not talking about a lean run at high boost and high load. Only in off-boost situations and at very low loads. In these situations it's perfectly safe.
As for rotor on demand, I fail to see how this could damage the engine at all, provided the engineers don't screw up and implement it properly.
How would rotor on demand and ultra lean burn "blow an engine during normal driving"?
We're not talking about a lean run at high boost and high load. Only in off-boost situations and at very low loads. In these situations it's perfectly safe.
As for rotor on demand, I fail to see how this could damage the engine at all, provided the engineers don't screw up and implement it properly.
I think the hardest thing about rotor on demand would be keeping the apex seals lubed on the rotors that are turned off. If you keep injecting oil into that rotor, it could load up on oil, and if you dont inject anything, you could run out, and damage the housings, unless they alternated, and fired each working chamber every other time.
Piston engines that have the cylinder on demand keep the valves closed, or partially open when they are disabled so there are no pumping losses in the engine, hard to do that on a rotary.
How would rotor on demand and ultra lean burn "blow an engine during normal driving"?
We're not talking about a lean run at high boost and high load. Only in off-boost situations and at very low loads. In these situations it's perfectly safe.
As for rotor on demand, I fail to see how this could damage the engine at all, provided the engineers don't screw up and implement it properly.
If you let someone who didn't know it was tuned to pass emissions take it for a drive, would the engine survive? If the answer is no, you're cheating emissions. This isn't a value judgment, I'm just pointing out a fact.
I have no problem with rotors on demand. It sounds like a good way to improve cruising fuel efficiency. You would probably want the engine to switch up which rotors get fuel to keep wear even and to keep oil from the OMP from collecting in the chamber.
I think the hardest thing about rotor on demand would be keeping the apex seals lubed on the rotors that are turned off. If you keep injecting oil into that rotor, it could load up on oil, and if you dont inject anything, you could run out, and damage the housings, unless they alternated, and fired each working chamber every other time.
Piston engines that have the cylinder on demand keep the valves closed, or partially open when they are disabled so there are no pumping losses in the engine, hard to do that on a rotary.
This is easy! I had an idea about this years ago for 3 and 4 rotors. In low loads, engine could switch to run in 4stroke mode. Typically rotarys inject fuel and spark the leading every rotation of the e-shaft. 3 rotations = 3 fuel injections and 3 ignition events per rotor. 4stroke pistons engines do this every other rotation of the crank. If done on a fuel injected rotary, you would get fuel and spark every other face of the rotor times 3 of 4 rotors. Doing this cuts fuel and spark delivery 50% and also 1/2's the engine displacement. So instead of having any given rotor go cold, all rotors receive fuel and spark and stay heated for emissions. All this takes is ecu programing to switch to a 720 degree trigger angle under certain loads. I've actually been thinking about experimenting with a v6 mode on my own 20b to see how it runs on the highway.
This is easy! I had an idea about this years ago for 3 and 4 rotors. In low loads, engine could switch to run in 4stroke mode. Typically rotarys inject fuel and spark the leading every rotation of the e-shaft. 3 rotations = 3 fuel injections and 3 ignition events per rotor. 4stroke pistons engines do this every other rotation of the crank. If done on a fuel injected rotary, you would get fuel and spark every other face of the rotor times 3 of 4 rotors. Doing this cuts fuel and spark delivery 50% and also 1/2's the engine displacement. So instead of having any given rotor go cold, all rotors receive fuel and spark and stay heated for emissions. All this takes is ecu programing to switch to a 720 degree trigger angle under certain loads. I've actually been thinking about experimenting with a v6 mode on my own 20b to see how it runs on the highway.
Warning, long post ahead
The main problem with "4 stroke mode" is that it would dump a whole lot of oxygen in the exhaust, thus disrupting the operation of the catalyst. The cat needs an almost perfectly stoich exhaust to operate at peak efficiency. Any deviation and its conversion efficiency for some pollutants falls off dramatically. See the picture for some numbers (it's a conversion efficiency vs air/fuel ratio chart for several pollutants. The text is in Italian, but I think that the main concepts should still be understandable ).
If one runs in the mode described above, the average lambda value would jump up, yielding a very good conversion rate for HC and CO, but a very poor conversion for NOx. Not to mention that the catalyst needs to be at a certain minimum temperature to work. The cold air dumped in the exhaust by the non-firing faces would not help here.
With one (or more) rotor(s) being completely shut off, it's possible to arrange the exhaust so that the firing and non-firing rotor exhaust streams do not mix before the catalysts. With two independent cats it's then possible to keep one catalyst operating at peak efficiency for the firing rotors while the other one is not needed. By keeping the two catalysts closely coupled together, it's also possible to keep the other catalyst fairly warm, thus ready to resume operation.
Equalizing wear on the rotors is simple, just alternate which rotors shut off. Say, start off with rotors 1 and 2 running and 3 and 4 shut off. Then after one minute reverse the situation. Then after one more minute reverse it again and so on.
The excessive cooling may be counteracted by adding some valves to the cooling circuit. Cut off the cooling water supply to the non-firing rotors. Or maybe route the water outlets of the firing rotors to the inlets of the non-firing ones. Or maybe even 2 completely independent cooling circuits, one for each engine half, each one with the option of bypassing the radiator when the ECU decides it's wise to do so. Again, there are many possible solutions.
Closed valves in piston engines: that's true, with a rotary that optimization would not be possible. Since "sealing off" a rotor is not possible, then the next best thing is to try and minimize pumping losses for the non-firing rotors by having their throttle valves fully open. This reduces pumping losses, still not to the level of a sealed cylinder, but it certainly is an improvement.
As a side consideration, this basically implies that any rotary with rotor deactivation must have independent throttle bodies, otherwise it would not be possible to open the throttle on the non-firing rotors while at the same time throttling the firing ones. Or at least two indepentent sets of throttle bodies. And this is yet another reason why "4 stroke mode" would be a poor choice: in such a mode you'd need to keep the throttle closed to control engine speed, thus incurring pumping losses even for the non-firing faces.
As for the oiling problem, the S2 Rx-8 already had 2 independent MOPs if I'm not mistaken. This allows Mazda to control the relative amount of oil being injected by the center injectors when compared to the side injectors.
If the new engine is designed with rotor deactivation in mind, then it would be reasonable to include either additional MOPs or some sort of solenoids to control the amount of oil being injected in the non-firing rotor(s).
Ideally having 4 MOPs would allow Mazda to independently control the oil injection volume for each half of the engine, while still retaining the ability to control the relative injection volume between the center and side injectors in each half. There are other possible ways, such as using a common MOP for all of the center injectors, plus another for all of the side injectors with the addition of some solenoids to cut off the side injectors of the non-firing rotors. This way only the center injectors would keep adding oil. Or maybe the other way around (cut the center injectors and keep the side ones going). One could also "pulse" the oil injectors if keeping them online means too much oil and shutting them off means too little.
Last edited by fmzambon; 09-19-16 at 05:05 PM.
Reason: Typos
If you let someone who didn't know it was tuned to pass emissions take it for a drive, would the engine survive? If the answer is no, you're cheating emissions. This isn't a value judgment, I'm just pointing out a fact.
I have no problem with rotors on demand. It sounds like a good way to improve cruising fuel efficiency. You would probably want the engine to switch up which rotors get fuel to keep wear even and to keep oil from the OMP from collecting in the chamber.
It would be completely automatic, controlled by the ECU. Whenever the ECU detects that the conditions are favorable, then it would switch off some rotors or engagé ultra lean burn mode or HCCI mode or some other fuel-saving strategy. As soon as the preconditions for such fuel-saving mode are no longer present, the ECU would promptly switch back to the normal full-power mode.
I don't think that anyone could be such an idiot to program the ECU to use a mode that may damage the engine. If, say, rotor deactivation is determined not to be safe for the engine above 5000rpm, then the ECU would be programmed to exit this mode before passing the 5000rpm mark. Same with all of the other parameters: do not enable rotor deactivation if the water and oil temperatures are below a certain threshold, or if the load is too high, or if the engine is in fail-safe mode and so on.
Completely transparent to the driver
The only user option that I can imagine may be a switch to disable the rotor on demand feature and always run in full-power mode. Like one can do with the start&stop systems that are now being fitted to many cars. But again, there would be no reliability issues with this switch, just higher fuel consumption.
^Wait a sec! Do the intake and exhaust valves in a piston engine that goes into cylinder deactivation, cease to operate to stop cold air pumping? If so how is this possible on a V8 that typically fires two cylinders on each bank to keep the engine from over vibrating? Active engine mounts can only do so much. Also (even if you shut down an entire bank) how would the cam lobes on the intake and exhaust line up to close the valves when cams are typically one long piece of machined metal? Either I'm confused or I just don't understand how piston cylinder deactivation works.
Edit: Are there just shutter valves upstream to cut off airflow to the cylinder? That would make more since.
^Wait a sec! Do the intake and exhaust valves in a piston engine that goes into cylinder deactivation, cease to operate to stop cold air pumping? If so how is this possible on a V8 that typically fires two cylinders on each bank to keep the engine from over vibrating? Active engine mounts can only do so much. Also (even if you shut down an entire bank) how would the cam lobes on the intake and exhaust line up to close the valves when cams are typically one long piece of machined metal? Either I'm confused or I just don't understand how piston cylinder deactivation works.
Edit: Are there just shutter valves upstream to cut off airflow to the cylinder? That would make more since.
You could just run an individual electronic throttle body on each cylinder/rotor.
^Wait a sec! Do the intake and exhaust valves in a piston engine that goes into cylinder deactivation, cease to operate to stop cold air pumping? If so how is this possible on a V8 that typically fires two cylinders on each bank to keep the engine from over vibrating? Active engine mounts can only do so much. Also (even if you shut down an entire bank) how would the cam lobes on the intake and exhaust line up to close the valves when cams are typically one long piece of machined metal? Either I'm confused or I just don't understand how piston cylinder deactivation works.
Edit: Are there just shutter valves upstream to cut off airflow to the cylinder? That would make more since.
From Wikipedia:
There are currently two main types of cylinder deactivation used today, depending on the type of engine. The first is for the pushrod design which uses solenoids to alter the oil pressure delivered to the lifters. In their collapsed state, the lifters are unable to elevate their companion pushrods under the valve rocker arms, resulting in valves that cannot be actuated and remain closed. The second is used for overhead cam engines, and uses a pair of locked-together rocker arms that are employed for each valve. One rocker follows the cam profile, while the other actuates the valve. When a cylinder is deactivated, solenoid-controlled oil pressure releases a locking pin between the two rocker arms. While one arm still follows the camshaft, the unlocked arm remains motionless and unable to activate the valve.
I thought they held the exhaust valves open, but looks like all valves stay closed.
I just found out another couple of Mazda patents concerning the cooling system of the new rotary while checking the japanese patent office: 2016 - 108973 and 2016 - 118115
Description:
1 Rotary piston engine (engine part)
11 Rotor housing (engine housing)
11a Exhaust port
11b Inlet port Outline
12 Water jacket
12a The 1st course
12b The 2nd course
13 Circulating course
20A Mechanical water pump (water pump)
20B Control-of-flow valve (flow control valve)
20b, 20c, and 20d Valve
21 Radiator
22 EGR cooler
23 The condensator for turbosuperchargers
23A Turbosupercharger
24 The condensator for EGR cooler bypass valves
24A EGR cooler bypass valve
25 The thermoregulator for electronic throttle valves
25A Electronic throttle valve
26 The heater for vehicles air conditioning
27 Water-cooled oil cooler
28 The condensator for automatic gear change machine warmers
30 Distribution regulating valve (distribution regulating valve)
Some considerations: these patents were published in late june, but were filed in december 2014. If Mazda is indeed going to introduce the new car in 2019, then this means that these patents refer to designs that would be 5 years old at the time of the car introduction. I'd say that 5 years before release is still well before the "feature freeze" point, so this may not be all that relevant to the definitive design.
After all, a quick search for rotary patents around the Rx-8 launch revealed that there was a "burst" of patents concerning features that were found in the Renesis filed in late 2002 and published in 2004, so we may not see patents regarding definive design features until the car is already on sale.
Anyway, it seems like Mazda decided to partition the cooling jacket into a cold part and a hot part with the new "upside down" engine layout. The text of the patents seems to indicate that during the warmup period, coolant flow to the hot part would be cut off to promote faster heating. This goes back to the emissions and fuel consumption problem, as cold start is when most engines suffer due to low catalyst efficiency and the need to run a richer fuel mixture.
Another observation: the water flow control valve assembly 20B and the outlet valve 30 seem to be both mounted to the front plate. If so, what exactly is the water flow inside the engine? Does it start at the front, run all the way back to the back and then come back to the front? I would have guessed that the optimum placement for both the inlet and the outlet would have been at the center plate, to provide simmetrical cooling to both rotors.
Now, looking at the cooling system schematic, I'm somewhat baffled by item 27, which should be an oil cooler. Does it mean that Mazda plans not to have a standard oil cooler and instead rely on the water cooling system to cool the oil as well? That doesn't sound good to me, as this would basically mean that the oil would never be allowed to be cooler than the water temp. If I'm not mistaken, the Nissan 370Z uses a similar design and indeed suffers from high oil temperatures under some circumstances.
Also, it seems like this oil cooler is intended to be "cooled" by the hot water discharged by the engine water outlet, further increasing its temperature. It's almost as if the oil cooler is intended to warm up the oil at startup rather than cool it. If a separate oil cooler is indeed included, then this setup may make sense.
Also, looking at the perspective drawings, look at the intake and exhaust ports. The center exhaust port does not seem to be split, thus it would be another case of "siamese exhaust port", as it is on the Renesis. The intake, though, is more interesting: it seems like the engine is a 6 port engine, while if I recall correctly Mazda has never done a 6 port turbo engine. And also it seems like the secondary ports were moved from the outer plates to the center plate, while at the same time the primary port runners look really tiny.
Why is it so? Is it really necessary to have 6 ports with a turbo engine? Perhaps emissions and fuel consumption reasons dictate the use of the tiny primary ports, and so it was necessary to have 6 ports not to have a huge jump in intake effectiveness when opening the secondary ports.
And what's that thing on top of the engine? The oil filler? If so why have a "box" like that instead of putting the cap straight on top of the left side of the engine in the pictures? The placement depicted here would move that cap closer to the hot turbo, so there has to be a reason if it's like that.
I just found out another couple of Mazda patents concerning the cooling system of the new rotary while checking the japanese patent office: 2016 - 108973 and 2016 - 118115
And what's that thing on top of the engine? The oil filler? If so why have a "box" like that instead of putting the cap straight on top of the left side of the engine in the pictures? The placement depicted here would move that cap closer to the hot turbo, so there has to be a reason if it's like that.
Mazda has liked to use a chamber on the top of the oil filler for a while now, think of it like a vapor separator, or like a pre-catch can or something. they use it on the racing engines in the 70's and it gets adopted for street use with the FD, i guess the FD finally made enough power...
i think i see that there are TWO possible coolant routes, and it looks like it comes in by the spark plugs and goes around the engine, and either exits the top, or the side between the ports, depending.
i also see an EGR cooler, the Ford trucks use these, they use the cooled exhaust gasses as a chamber filler, as they are basically inert.
it does look like the oil cooler is water to oil, the 12A used these. its good because in normal driving the oil comes up to temp faster, and stays there. the bad part is when you drive hard your eggs are all in one basket, the older Rx7's would usually have plugged radiators and then the engine is just running mildly too hot for a long time.
i wouldn't really use the Z as a good example of anything, those things can barely make it 2 laps before they are fried.
in all very interesting, Mazda appears to have addressed a lot of the fundamentals
The round ports "above" the main intake ports on the center housing are actually below the ports relative to the rotor movement- so they couldn't add intake duration.
They are in the position that the air control valve passages were on older rotaries.
The round ports "above" the main intake ports on the center housing are actually below the ports relative to the rotor movement- so they couldn't add intake duration.
They are in the position that the air control valve passages were on older rotaries.
I was thinking the other way round, that the small round holes may be the primaries and the elongated ones beneath may be the secondaries.
But still, air control valve passages is another possibility.
As for the coolers, let's at least hope that Mazda uses the space freed by not having to mount one or more dedicated air-cooled oil coolers to make the water cooler(s) bigger, to make sure that the new engine does not suffer from overheating problems.
The Z will move if Nissan starts offering two engine choices going forward. They should definitely stick the new VR 400hp turbo engine from the Infiniti G50 and G60 in that thing. As long as they don't have any direct completion from Mazda or Toyota, they'll probably leave the car as is until the Rx9 and Supra comes out. This is why you need completion so manufacturers get off their asses to make them build exciting things to stay competitive.
I wouldn't pay $40k for a 400z that's still basically a 370z. When you said other options, I thought you meant like a cheaper 250hp one. Lol.
I don't like how the car drives. I don't like how cramped it is. I'd prefer a 2+2. I don't like that it's trunk is the size of the FD's while weighing almost 1000lb more. Etc. I just don't think it's a good car. I'd rather have a Mustang which has more power, around the same weight, 2 more seats, more trunk space, and is pretty decent handling, and has pretty nice visibility and such.
And as far as the RX-8 being used to test, the RX-Vision did have nearly exactly the same wheelbase. The concept is just 0.5" longer wheelbase or something. But yeah, interior and everything looks intact like it's an RX-8 and not an RX-8 body on another chassis. The firewall is also way further back on the VX-Vision, but it could be moved up in a production version to make more room for 2+2 seating.
And people keep mentioning 3 rotor or 4 rotor.
You know, if they could just activate the middle rotor in a 3 rotor at idle and cruising and deactivate the others like with cylinder deactivation, why not? Or use the i-ELOOP system as well.
That doesn't work with a 2 rotor, as it'd be imbalanced, but with a 3 rotor and equally spaced intermediate housings, it should work.
The problem is that one 800cc rotor probably won't make enough torque at lower RPM still, so it might not actually improve fuel economy. That's why you often see 2.0l engines give a car more fuel economy than a 1.5l.
How much money and effort has already been spent at Mazda developing the skyactiv-R in the last few years? Again, we have no idea. Perhaps most of the cost for the new car has already been paid, spread over many years.
The CEO has said that 0.5-1% of the R&D budget goes toward Rotary engines and that it's mostly to keep their engineers happy.
Actually, after my last post I got to thinking: is a sports car really more expensive to develop and put in production than a regular commuter car?
Yes. It takes a lot more testing time to refine it to drive well. More R&D for a chassis that's not just safe for crashes, but also keeps the suspension together and stiff between the wheels.
And sportscars don't sell as well, so they need to make at least 3-5x more per one that's sold. They can cost more to make due to the higher volume.
The MX-5 probably costs the same to make as the Mazda3 if not less. Lower weight = less metal = lower cost. It also probably has a much lower number of parts. Part of this is offset in there being some more steps to the assembly, like the under braces, adjustable suspension, etc. They use the same paint, and the MX-5 uses a lot less of it, and many other things like that. But the MX-5 sells for $24,915 and the Mazda3 for $17,845 so both Mazda and the dealer makes more for every one sold. Simple.
If Mazda wanted to.. they could probably make a 280hp, 2500lb, NA rear engined 2 seater rotary car like the MR2 and sell it for under $30k, sure. Call it the MX-5 or something. It would compete too much with their own MX-5, though, even if it was a hard top. It makes more sense for them to make a 2+2 that's in the $40k-$70k range to compete with the Mustang GT350, Camaro SS, or a "Cayman S with 2 extra seats and more power".
Here's an interesting bit of data regarding last year's US car sales of what might be cross shopped against the new rotary sports car.
For reference, the best selling car was the Camry 429,355.
There's something really important here I want people to notice.
All those cheaper cars, not selling well? All 2 seaters. People just don't buy 2 seaters anymore. The only one they do buy in large volume is the Corvette. But the Corvette is the Corvette.
The 370z is a 2 seater, 30k, 332hp. It sells 7,391 that year.
You know how many cars the Q60 sold? A 40k-50k 2 door, 4 seater car? 9806 in its first year, 7740 in its second year. More than the 370Z, for a car that starts at $10k higher.
If Mazda builds a car that sexy, with 2 doors and 4 seats, around the Q60 price, they could be looking at moving 10k cars a year at big margins if they can build it cheap enough. People won't care if it's 325hp, or 450hp; 2600lb or 2800lb. At that price point, MPG isn't a huge concern either.
You also can't compare to the Corvette. You pretty much can't make a cheaper car with a better power:weight ratio than the Corvette for the price because they sell 30k+ of them a year and that's how GM offers that value. Notice there ARE two seater cars with lower power:weight that still sell because GOSH, go figure, not everyone wants to buy a Corvette.
For the past few weeks I have been reading that the Alliance of Automotive Manufactures were lobbying to reduce 2025's CAFE MPG standard of 54.5MPG.
CAFE standards are meaningless.
The fine for being under is only $55 per MPG.
So for a car that gets 4.5MPG in 2025, the manufacturer would only have to pay a fine of $2750. They can just sell the car for $2750 more which isn't much at the 40k-70k range to start with.
Mazda is currently the only manufacturer to average the current standards without being all electric like Tesla, IIRC. All they get for that is a pat on the back, really. Mercedes only paid like a $30million fine last year, which is peanuts for them.
Id like to mention the Mini Cooper sales is something around 20k or more cars a year, and it has near USELESS rear seats. With my gf's front seats all the way back, not even a toddler can fit in the back.
So there might be an odd perception of just having rear seats, regardless of how usable they are, that might also affect sales. I did see a guy with a baby seat in the back of a Mini. So having partically functional rear seats is better than not having any rear seats at all.
09-16-16, 12:00 PM
