Fuel economy tags on new private vehicles for sale

[Bitulo]

Mga Katsikots:
Because of the high cost of fuels like gasoline and diesel and the need to economize, IMHO, it is about time that our government will impose a requirement that all new private vehicles for sale should bear a tag or sticker indicating their certified kilometer per liter consumption or fuel economy (FE) both for city and highway driving. This will give buyers like you and me additional information that should guide us in deciding which units to buy.

This is similar to the US EPA stickers required to be posted on all new vehicles in the US for sale. This will give us an idea how the vehicles compare with each other on fuel consumption based on standardized and comparable criteria. As it is, every car company claims its own FE determined based on their own method of testing. Some even go to the extent of sponsoring caravans or actual road driving test, which in the end is meaningless because of the uncontrolled test variables. This situation just contributes to the confusion of everybody except the confusers – hehehe!!!

Ano sa tingin niyo? Siguro kalampagin natin para gumalaw dito ang DTI, LTO at DOE.

[ghosthunter]

Mga Katsikots:
Because of the high cost of fuels like gasoline and diesel and the need to economize, IMHO, it is about time that our government will impose a requirement that all new private vehicles for sale should bear a tag or sticker indicating their certified kilometer per liter consumption or fuel economy (FE) both for city and highway driving. This will give buyers like you and me additional information that should guide us in deciding which units to buy.

This is similar to the US EPA stickers required to be posted on all new vehicles in the US for sale. This will give us an idea how the vehicles compare with each other on fuel consumption based on standardized and comparable criteria. As it is, every car company claims its own FE determined based on their own method of testing. Some even go to the extent of sponsoring caravans or actual road driving test, which in the end is meaningless because of the uncontrolled test variables. This situation just contributes to the confusion of everybody except the confusers – hehehe!!!

Ano sa tingin niyo? Siguro kalampagin natin para gumalaw dito ang DTI, LTO at DOE.

First thing first... who's fuel economy figures would you want posted on the car? From the DTI? From the car maker? from the DOE? from the US EPA?

[slapz]

The ones posted here in Tsikot.

[Bin Diesel]

The ones posted here in Tsikot.

+1 paps.

seriously i don't care where they get the figures as long as the reference is standard across all manufacturers and dealers.

[niky]

This would require the DOE to buy a dynamometer and a rig for testing fuel economy, and to develop standards.

Our problem is we have vehicles built in Japan/Korea that are not sold in the US, vehicles from the US that are not sold in Japan, and vehicles from the ASEAN that not sold anywhere else.

So we have cars that only have Japan 10/15 ratings, cars that only have US EPA ratings, and cars that have not been officially rated by anybody, or which only carry the Indian economy ratings. These ratings are all based on completely different standards.

To rate these cars, the DOE will have to set up a testing center and will need to train drivers to perform economy tests set to very strict standards. Then you'd have to come up with a way to calculate economy loss due to wind resistance. In other words... we need a small wind tunnel or a place to do coast-down testing.

That'd be a full-time job, as there are sixty or so new cars and variants that come out every year in the Philippines, and over two hundred distinct variants of all cars on the road today.

Give me a dynamometer (has to be rolling road, can't be the Dynapack Speedlab uses), an operator and a clean room with a controlled environment, and I could probably test four cars a week, and have the official results by June of next year. But I'd need an operational budget in the millions to get it done. Just constructing the testing facility alone would probably require twenty or thirty million bucks.

[JohnM]

+1 paps.

seriously i don't care where they get the figures as long as the reference is standard across all manufacturers and dealers.

It will open the dealers up to lawsuits. Lawsuits cost money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/au...eage.html?_r=1
Are Mileage Lawsuits Picking Up Speed? - US Business News Blogs - CNBC
Honda hybrid lawsuit: Are new mileage labels misleading? - CSMonitor.com

[niky]

Those lawsuits are frivolous. EPA mileage is understood to be a reference point only, and not a promise. As the saying goes, YMMV. The only one with merit is the Honda Hybrid one, because the fuel economy DID change after the reflash, and the official EPA ratings changed to reflect this.

The ones posted here in Tsikot.

That won't work.

Real-life economy is never exactly the same from person to person. You have people driving in different traffic situations, with different quality fuels, non-standard tire pressures and with different driving styles.

Even driving the same cars on the same route with the same starting and ending time, as we do in eco-runs, the spread can be 5-10 km/l.

Tessa Salazar's run through Divisoria-level traffic with superminis got her 6 km/l.

I drive the same cars in regular urban traffic and got 10-15 km/l.

Fuel economy can only be measured comparably in controlled conditions. Ergo: Climate controlled dyno, with wind resistance and weight factored into the calculations. The US EPA test is annoyingly precise about this, but we'd have to develop our own regimen, and we'd need help from mathematicians and physicists to develop conversion factors for the resistance used on the dyno, otherwise our numbers would be useless.

Me, I'd measure spot fuel consumption at 40 km/h, 60 km/h and 80 km/h. Then measure fuel consumption during acceleration separately. Then measure spot consumption at idle with the AC running full blast.

Put all of these figures in a graph, for easy reference. Much more useful than the US two-number system.

[yapoy86]

source lang ng corruption yan..

hindi kasi focus ang pinoy sa objective ng mga programs..

tingnan nyo lang yung DTI sticker requirement sa mga helmet?? kalokohan yung bibili ka ng sticker ng DTI without the DTI really certifying the product thru proper testing.. so kahit peke helmet mo basta may DTI sticker ok na.. so ano pa silbi nun

same lang sa tagging na yan...

[niky]

source lang ng corruption yan..

hindi kasi focus ang pinoy sa objective ng mga programs..

tingnan nyo lang yung DTI sticker requirement sa mga helmet?? kalokohan yung bibili ka ng sticker ng DTI without the DTI really certifying the product thru proper testing.. so kahit peke helmet mo basta may DTI sticker ok na.. so ano pa silbi nun

same lang sa tagging na yan...

Isn't DTI certification merely to show that the product is safe to use and contains no harmful chemicals? It's not a crash-standards certification.

[uls]

diba si Mr. Nuvi-Nuvi nagpapatesting sa UP?

can the govt use that as the testing facility?

[valacirca]

With all the fuel consumption/effiency talk surrounding discussions about cars, I've realized that a lot of figures I see are not taken within the context of the traffic conditions they were measured in.

Kunwari may magsasabi na nakakuha siya ng 5km/L using a Hyundai Accent driving 10km for 2 hours from point A to point B in bumper-to-bumper traffic... the kneejerk reaction of people is usually "OMGWTFBBQ 5km/L LANG?!?!?! Ang panget ng fc ng Accent!!!!" And then they will ignore the fact that the measurement was taken driving for 2 hours with an average speed of 5 kph.

So my question is this:

1) What average speed would constitute driving in heavy traffic? What about moderate traffic? Eh light traffic and highway driving?

2) For your typical line of sub-compact sedans (Vios, City, Rio, Accent, Fiesta) --- what km/L should one expect to get when driving them in different traffic conditions (heavy/moderate/light)?

Just asking this so that everytime I see fc figures and measure fc of my own, I can take them in the proper context. Thanks!

[niky]

diba si Mr. Nuvi-Nuvi nagpapatesting sa UP?

can the govt use that as the testing facility?

Hahaha... what testing facility? UP has no dyno and no climate-controlled testing chamber. All they've got is a simple gas analyzer. The only advantage over an emissions testing facility is that it records NOx.

Testing at UP or at the DTI or DOE involves going out to the road, driving back and forth, and measuring the fuel used. It's so ridiculously easy to game that test that Khaos used that trick on the DOE when they did the "certification" that it saved fuel.

[uniport]

ill try to answer your questions
1. average traffic speed - heavy 0-20 kph moderate 20-60kph
anything consistently above 60kph is light na for me
2. in my 03 vios 1.3 m/t im getting roughly 13 plus km per liter on mixed heavy, moderate and light traffic. i actually refuel every sunday so i get to measure it with regular frequency. id probably get better fc if i ditched my sub box, any well maintained 1200 to 1500cc car would get roughly 13-15kpl


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[uls]

Hahaha... what testing facility? UP has no dyno and no climate-controlled testing chamber. All they've got is a simple gas analyzer. The only advantage over an emissions testing facility is that it records NOx.

really?

and i thought meron dyno yung UP VTRL

ang fancy pa naman ng name -- Vehicle Testing Research Laboratory

charging P25,000 daw per session sabi ni Mr. Nuvi

[niky]

really?

and i thought meron dyno yung UP VTRL

ang fancy pa naman ng name -- Vehicle Testing Research Laboratory

charging P25,000 daw per session sabi ni Mr. Nuvi

Oops. Meron pala.

UP Vehicle Research and Testing Laboratory - Diliman - Engineering/Construction | Facebook

I really haven't been back to UP for a while.

Mahal nga. 25k for dyno session with analyzer. A private facility could do that for just 5k per hour.

You can probably do all the tests for one vehicle within a one hour time frame. The government could force all the manufacturers to do a test for each car they sell, but they'd have to ensure the tests are affordable.

[valacirca]

ill try to answer your questions
1. average traffic speed - heavy 0-20 kph moderate 20-60kph
anything consistently above 60kph is light na for me
2. in my 03 vios 1.3 m/t im getting roughly 13 plus km per liter on mixed heavy, moderate and light traffic. i actually refuel every sunday so i get to measure it with regular frequency. id probably get better fc if i ditched my sub box, any well maintained 1200 to 1500cc car would get roughly 13-15kpl


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Thanks sir. Kasi since buying my car, 6-10kph lang ako sa sobrang traffic during morning and evening rush sa Makati, Fort and Pasig areas eh :p Kaya yung fc ko naglalaro lang sa 5km/L

[Bitulo]

It should be a government certified number. Since the investment in terms of equipment and facilities is expensive, then there is a need for a high level of technical competence and there is need for some carefully thought out test protocols, the concerned government agencies will probably have to pool their resources. But the DOE and LTO would probably be the lead agencies. All of these would be patterned after the US EPA system. Kung hindi pa kaya ng ating gobyerno ang testing na ito at this time, these tests pwede siguro econtrata sa US EPA para sila ang mag test at magbigay ng fuel economy figures ng mga bagong modelong kotse. Just my thinking.

[Bitulo]

Agree with Bin Diesel so long as standardized across all manufacturers and dealers para comparable lahat. If the test protocols can capture or even remotely approximate the driving reality sa Pilipinas so much the better. Ang importante parepareho ang basis ng comparison.

[niky]

The US EPA tests don't apply to the Philippines. The speed ranges are not realistic for our conditions.

Aaaaaand... The EPA itself doesn't test all the cars it certifies. Only a tiny fraction of US sold cars are tested by the EPA. The rest of the numbers are self-reported by the manufacturers.

Which leaves you back at square one. You can't trust the numbers.