Fuel Efficiency

9/30/2024

Podcast Episode: 0220
How did we get so efficient?

Mileage is king now, but it took some time to get to arrive at the party. Today we put fuel efficiency ahead of most other features for new cars, but this wasn't always the case. So, how did we make our fuel gauge the centre of attention? Listen in to find out.

Fuel efficiency, something that we talk about a lot in the past 20 years, but now we're starting to look at alternative power sources for automobiles. But fuel efficiency, where did it come from? Why did we get here and why did we start thinking about it? Was it because of the gas crisis in the 70s? Or was it because we wanted to get somewhere a lot quicker and find a faster way to make designs? Fuel efficiency is something that's plagued the automobile industry and the internal combustion engine since its inception in the 19th century, but today fuel efficiency tops the list and, with hybrid additions to its products, our fuel efficiency just got better. But how did we get here and where are we going? Well, these are questions today we're going to talk about on the AutoLooks Podcast.

Welcome back to the AutoLooks Podcast. I am your host, as always, the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay, coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there, stop by check it out, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings and go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have them all on the AutoLooks.net Corporate Links website tab right at the top of the banner as you click our home website at AutoLooks.net, the AutoLooks Podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by Podbean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email to our executive producer, owner and the host of the AutoLooks Podcast, Mr. Everett Jay, himself over at email at AutoLooks.net.

So, like I said in the beginning, fuel efficiency where did it come from and why did this idea start spawning so greatly? Well, fuel efficiency wasn't something really thought of in the early days of the automobile. Nobody ever thought about how they can go even further on less for consumption. We were all about creating the automobile, and even up until the 1930s we weren't thinking about that. Even during the dirty 30s, where people didn't have a lot of money and the Depression really took hold, people weren't trying to think of better ways to save money on gas, because fuel was still one of those things that wasn't really everywhere. But as fuel consumption and fuel became more widely available by the 1940s, the onset of World War II, car companies in North America started to take notice of how much fuel they were using because of our big, burly, heavy vehicles and powerful engines. We needed to find a way to reduce this because we were on rations of fuel consumption. The Europeans have caught on to this earlier, just because they didn't have their own supply of fuel. So, they started using smaller engines for their vehicles, understanding that smaller engines will use smaller amounts of fuel and thus you can go the same amount of distance on less fuel with a smaller engine. But that really wasn't fuel efficiency. That was just a decrease in the size and complexity of your motor, where the North Americans both Chrysler and DeSoto had created the airflow. Looking to trains and how trains were becoming more streamlined to get better fuel efficiency across the world yes, trains were the answer. Aerodynamics was starting to play a role in the creation of trains. So, Chrysler had taken notice that we were getting rationed on fuel and they needed to find a more streamlined approach to this. But using aerodynamics that they had seen enter the world of trains and a brand-new streamlined look of trains. They understood that the amount of air resistance flowing over the design of these brand-new streamlined trains was making it so they were going further on less. And Chrysler saw an idea what if we took that and added that to the automobile industry? We created the airflow concept and the DeSoto airflow Vehicles, not really widely accepted by the automobile buying industry out there due to the fact that their designs were well ahead of its time.

Streamline was not something that people were looking at. People didn't care about what they were saving on fuel because the people that owned vehicles were still able to get their amount of ration so they can go from here to there, because really you couldn't live in a world of opulence, unless you were rich and famous at this point in time during the war. So, for the average person, you were going to work and coming home. You weren't going out and doing anything else really. So, a streamlined vehicle like the Chrysler Airflow was kind of a weird look. Plus, who wants to own a vehicle that looked like a train, right? Yeah? Who wants to own a vehicle that looked like a train, right? Yeah? Not something we really thought about Before this.

Electric cars were one of our ways to save on fuel, but unfortunately, the early introduction of electric vehicles in the automobile industry wasn't due to fuel consumption. It was actually due to women. Most electric privately owned vehicles were owned by females, and you can say I'm sexist in any sense you want, but that is actually how the electric vehicle industry really blew up the North American marketplace, besides being used for cabs and delivery vehicles in town, due to the fact that it was a lot easier to just plug into a more widely available electricity source than the brand-new internal combustion engine fuel sources. Considering the fact that electricity was more widely available in the early 1900s than petroleum, you could find a plug-in a lot easier than you could find a gas pump. So, the electric car industry blew up, but with private owners taking them only for their female accomplices. That was only due to the fact that they weren't dirty. You can wear your full formal dress, get in, turn it on and away you go. A lot fewer moving parts, so a lot less things to break down, whereas our internal combustion engine vehicles we didn't have starters at that point in time, so you had to crank them to get them going. You were more likely to break something because they were still an early invention, they were dirty and not all reliable. Electricity wasn't used for fuel consumption, and people that tell you that the original electric cars were used because they were more fuel efficient than the internal combustion engine get your head out of your ass, because that's actually full, flagrant, false, 100% false. They were utilized because electricity was more widely available than a fuel pump, so fleet vehicles like taxi cabs and delivery vehicles could better use an electrical point.

Once the fuel system was completely enveloped across the North American climate and world, petroleum became just as easy to fill up and drive away than an electric car, and because batteries didn't get any better, the electric car disappeared into the backside, with only Chrysler looking at using a wind tunnel. Of all things, wind tunnels never came into the automotive industry until the Chrysler Airflow was tested. Chrysler built the wind tunnel to test the wind resistance of it, but they also used it to test the wind resistance of new streamlined trains. And they did this because they wanted to see how much they could save the average customer with a more streamlined design. But, like we said, nobody looked at them and nobody considered them. Why? Because we just didn't care about fuel consumption. Gas was everywhere. Hell, Los Angeles and Texas were filled with pumps. We can get gas anywhere and we can get it cheap. Even during the rationed states of World War II, we could still get gas cheap and everywhere. So why would we care about saving money on fuel? This wasn't an idea that disappeared. Even with the 1950s and everybody coming back in one of these big, burly sedans and station wagons and moving to the suburbs, there were still companies out there looking at saving money.

With Europe trying to get back on its feet, vehicles like the Citroen 2CV and the Volkswagen Beetle became hugely popular due to the fact that they highly underutilized cars fuel. Their consumption rates were less than the American-made vehicles that they had, the reason why the Beetle and 2CV blew up in the European marketplace is because all the people in the outer lining areas, which were now just starting to get back at the root of things and started enter the industrial revolution era of the automobile age, needed to do it on less money. Big, burly American vehicles where fuel mileage didn't mean anything meant something to Europeans. They didn't have their own fuel source. They had to get it from other countries, mostly from the USSR, which they were fighting in a Cold War, or the Middle East, which was still unstable at those times. So, with lack of supply, they needed to get as much as they could out of the vehicles they were driving. So, vehicles like the Volkswagen Beetle and the Citroen 2CV were the perfect vehicle for the entry-level families and with slow introduction of the BMC Mini by the 1960s, fuel consumption was just on its way further advanced in Europe.

In North America Nash decided to look at small city runabouts. The Beetle hadn't made its way over to North America yet, but tiny little roadsters like the MGs and the Austin Healey's had. These were small, little sports cars with small little engines, but powerful for their size. They were fun to drive. They weren't like the big, burly V8s that we had driving around the roads in our Chevy Bel Airs. But hell, these things were more fun and crazier. Why the Corvette came out. Unfortunately, the Corvette did it American style with a big, burly V8.

Nash on the other side, looked at fuel consumption as a problem. They released the Metropolitan. People looked at it and thought, no, no, that's dumb. Why do I need to save money? And Nash said in the future of tomorrow, when gas isn't as readily available as it is today, we're going to have to start taking a look at fuel consumption of our vehicles. You can't keep living with these big, burly V8s forever. We're eventually going to start losing out on our fuel supply. Texas and California can't supply North America forever on fuel.

We have to look to our European counterparts who are looking at vehicles like the Messerschmitt and the Isetta to save money in and around cities. They're building these small cars because they have narrow streets to get down, but they also need to save money because they don't have a widely available fuel source. But it's the 1950s in North America and we're just yeah, okay, we got gas that to last forever. Here it will last forever. We all thought that. So, as the European marketplace is expanding heavily into saving fuel by building smaller vehicles with smaller engines. They're starting to learn about turbocharging, they're starting to learn more about lightweight components. They're starting to add disc brakes. They're starting to get rid of their leaf springs by calling independent springs. They're doing this to save weight, to get even better fuel consumption out of their vehicles. Where in America we're just putting giant leaf springs on these massive, big V8 Road-hogs because we got gas until the end of time. Well, in comes the 1960s. Volkswagen is entering the North American marketplace, but so is another company, Toyota.

In Japan, the use of four-cylinder vehicles is more accepted than any other country in the world. After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their entire manufacturing industry was decimated and with a lack of all kinds of males for the workforce, they needed to find a way to get into it. The key car industry blew up with small motorcycle-style engine vehicles to get in and around on such a small amount of fuel. The Japanese had learned that they can use a small amount of fuel with a small amount of engine. They didn't need to go fast and have a big, burly engine with tons of power that they're never going to use. They looked at what they required to complete a job. Only they didn't live in a world of opulence. Because they didn't have a world of opulence, they didn't have an oil industry to support them, so they had to learn how to get the most out of what little they still had. Even though American cars had come over to Japan, the Japanese were uninterested, and as they slowly learned how to build better quality vehicles out of smaller and smaller engines, fuel consumption in their vehicles far outweighed anything sold in the North American climate, similar to that of the Europeans, the Europeans had a more steadily available source of fuel than the Japanese did, so they still had some bigger vehicles and were more inclined to be using 4-cylinder and 6-cylinder vehicles. Where the Japanese were at the most using 4-cylinder vehicles as their highest amount of power, it wasn't uncommon to find two or three thousand cc vehicles on the roadways. This is because they didn't have the fuel, so they had to make use with the smallest amount to gain the most efficiency out of it. And Toyota, as we all know, is about finding biggest efficiency out of the least number of products. And by the 1960s, when the Beetle arrived, so did the Toyota Corona. Toyota Corona was what we got before the Corolla arrived in the 1970s, Texas oil rigs started drying up.

California was moving into a new age and its oil sources were drying up. Nobody had found oil in Alaska yet In the Gulf of Mexico well, that was. Deep Offshore rig drilling wasn't as big as it was about to become. The United States had more cars than people, and with that they needed more fuel to service those. Well, they decided to go to the Middle East, because they had lots of cheap oil and they didn't need it. Unfortunately, the Middle East would fight back, and with it, the 1970s gas crisis fell onto North American hands. Both Canada and the United States never saw it coming, and with it the North American automobile industry was brought to its knees in less than six months. Fuel efficiency was now king.

Automobile companies like Studebaker had already looked into electric and hybrid vehicles. Hell Chrysler looked into turbine engines as well in the 1950s, but nobody had ever thought they would need to develop vehicles like this. Hybrid technology was unheard of. Batteries were big bulky things, but can there be a way where we can get as much out of our fuel as possible? It's the 70s. Volkswagen, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Honda have all arrived on North American shores. Hell. Even small companies like Renault are here, and with them they have brought their fuel-efficient engines from both the European and Asian marketplaces to North America.

And as the North Americans were caught off guard with these big, burly V8 engines, massive sedans and nothing at the entry level with small engines Nash was gone by now, so their metropolitan was not even heard of. The biggest hit came to both Chrysler and AMC, whose nearly entire lineups consisted of big, burly V8 engines and horribly inefficient sedans, wagons, hell, even pickup trucks. They were hit the hardest by the 1970s fuel embargo. That gas crisis brought everybody to their knees. But where smart men like John Z DeLorean brought out cars like the Chevy, Vega and and Ford released the Pinto, AMC would rush to market the Pacer and Gremlin, Chrysler would still be sitting in the background trying to figure things out. Unfortunately for them, bankruptcy was almost the way out. Forming an alliance with Mitsubishi Motors saved Chrysler in the end. Their fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines helped bring Chrysler out of bankruptcy in the 1980s.

From there they learned about body molding, blending your bumpers into your cars, building designs that allow a better coefficient of drag. They learned about ground effects kits in the 1980s and how creating a lower bottom will keep air pressure from pushing up on the car and creating a negative force which acts against your fuel efficiency. The Americans started learning from the Japanese. General Motors took Suzuki, Isuzu and hell even tried to scoop Toyota under their wings. Ford started working with Mazda and Chrysler formed an alliance with Mitsubishi. All three American conglomerates had made alliances with the Japanese because they knew the only way they can get through this fuel-efficient mess is to form an alliance with somebody who already knew about this technology, who had already spent the past 40 years working on something that Walter P Chrysler thought of in the 1940s. Something that Walter P Chrysler thought of in the 1940s Streamlined designs, lighter gauge materials to build a more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Wind tunnels were coming into play, blending lights, blending bumpers, new safety features, catalytic converters were all being entered in to create a better, efficient design. And even though the 1980s are billed with big, blocky vehicles of two box designs, you start to get vehicles like the Ferrari F40, the Porsche 928, hell, even the Chevrolet Camaro and Firebird starting to get more streamlined, lowering your car to the ground to create less negative pressure underneath of it. Car companies started to realize that their designs were acting against them. These big, heavy steel, body-on-frame vehicles were disappearing and something that was brought in in Europe of all places unibody construction was taking notice in the American marketplace. Well, General Motors owned over 50% of the American marketplace by 1985, they had dropped, and they had dropped extensively. General Motors was being bumped out of owning half of the American marketplace to owning 35% of it by 1990. Within the course of less than a decade, General Motors lost 15% of their market share. All because they didn't look at fuel efficiency for the future. But by the time, Suzuki and Isuzu helped them create products like Geo and even the Asuna brands and even the brand-new Saturn.

General Motors was taking notice of curved designs, bubble lights. Cab forward designs were shaping the vehicles of the late 80s and early 90s, blending more together into vehicles. Products like the Dodge Intrepid and Ford Probe showed to us a better coefficient of drag in your vehicle will reduce your fuel mileage overall. By the 90s, the teardrop shape and cab forward designs were moving in. Unibody construction was all the rage. Front wheel drive was pushing rear wheel drive out. The Japanese were ruling. The day when General Motors and Ford and Chrysler were closing plants and losing jobs, the Japanese were coming in and scooping them right up their fuel-efficient vehicles and decades of investments into this technology had worked out for them. In the end, unfortunately, all their alliances would implode upon them with the entry into the 21st century. By the year, 2000 rolled around, Mitsubishi was separating itself from Chrysler as Chrysler became part of Mercedes. General Motors was selling off its stake in both Fuji Industrial, the owners of Subaru and Suzuki. Ford was dumping all of Mazda and getting rid of all of its other underlining brands.

Fuel efficiency was becoming a mainstay better design, lighter materials, making better use and by the gas crisis of the 1970s to the early 2000s, fuel consumption had dropped 80% in production vehicles on North American roads. We were more efficient than we were 30 years previous and we actually even had more power coming out of our vehicles, and we were still more fuel efficient. Turbocharging, which was brought in in the 1980s thanks to German and Japanese, was now being utilized in North American products. Eco-boost was being moved in. Ford was utilizing turbos to get better fuel efficiency. Well, Toyota showed us in 1998 the future and what it had in store for the internal combustion engine, hybrid technology. Sure, we were using nickel-cadmium batteries, unlike the lithium-ion ones that would come out over a decade later with Tesla, Toyota was showcasing to us that we can actually add more weight to our vehicle and still get better fuel efficiency.

The North American marketplace wasn't picking up on that, because in the early 2000s it was similar to that of the 1950s and 60s. Again, opulence was king. Everywhere you can get cheap gas, big burly vehicles, the Hummer was king. And then the 2008 crisis hits us and we realize we've made a mistake. We chased excess again. Where we got good at building things in the 1990s and the early 2000s, it was all crumbling in upon us. Fuel efficiency needed to play a role again and hybrids needed to start coming out. With that. We were starting to look at a future where the internal combustion engine would be put on the same playing field as batteries.

Fuel efficiency became king after the economic crisis in 2008, and by 2015, Most North American crisis in 2008. And by 2015, most North American, Japanese, European car companies all started looking into alternative power sources for the future. Unfortunately, companies like Toyota and Honda were still looking at hybrid technology. We're still adding them to their lineups, as the North Americans were looking at batteries for the future. They didn't understand the fact that you can't put all your eggs into one basket. That is what got us into this in the first place.

You may think fuel efficiency can be thrown out the window by going to a battery, but technology like hydrogen and nanoflow cell can also play a pivotal role in fuel efficiency of the future. Sure, hydrogen you still have to look at making an efficient design to get the most efficient use of your power source, whereas batteries, you just have to make an aerodynamic vehicle that doesn't utilize as much power to move it through the air. Power was now taking the place of efficiency. But when the electric vehicle market took a fault in 2023, everybody started to look at companies that didn't give up on hybrid and fuel efficiency. Today, companies like Toyota, Honda and Hyundai are looking at the future of hybrid technology, whereas batteries, as a new power source, is slowly making its way into the market.

The future of tomorrow is more involved in different fuel sources, still utilizing both combustible fuels, synthetic fuels, hydrogen and flow cell technology. Our power sources of the future are moving away from a single source of battery power. Fuel efficiency still plays a key in our designs of our vehicles and technology for the future, and today we are looking at a future of more hybridization for the next decade. For the next decade and for that, and the only reason for that is due to the fact that, until we make our complete changeover to flow cell, hydrogen and battery technology by the mid-2030s, we need something that's fuel efficient to be able to use the least amount of petroleum products we have in the world without having to open up massive amounts of new pipes and new wells. We are learning how to make the most efficient internal combustion engine until the internal combustion engine's time is done. Over the next decade, fuel efficiency is going to play the most crucial role for the end of the internal combustion engine's lifetime.

Similar to how we changed things in the 80s and 90s, today fuel efficiency is number one, and without it and without the use of turbocharging, hybridization, plug-in electrics and more and more different air intakes, air exhausts, spoilers, ground effects, kits and anything else to bring down our coefficient of drag in our vehicles, our efficiency is just starting to take off once again. So, where we came from alternative power sources and a need for more fuel stations and finally moved into a world where we understood how designs impact the efficiency of the amount of fuel we use, fuel efficiency is something that we have to look at for today, tomorrow and in our future, along with our present. Without it, our engines won't survive and we'll be left at the side of the road. Today, fuel efficiency is key and it'll only play a bigger part in the world of tomorrow. So, if you liked our podcast, please like, share or comment about it on any of the major social feeds or streaming sites that you've found the Outlooks podcast on. And remember, click the like button at the bottom, click the follow button at the bottom, then go to the website and sign up for our newsletters, for our updates and everything else that comes from the AutoLooks podcast and the AutoLooks.net website.

After that, send this podcast out to your friends, your families, your well-wishers, hell, even your coworkers and boss. Tell them about their lack of efficiency and how we can improve it by learning from the automobile industry. What happens when we become complacent in what we do? It happened more than once in the history of the automobile and it could happen yet again as we change. And after that, stop by the website, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings and go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we've got car companies from around the globe all on the AutoLooks Corporate Links website page. The AutoLooks Podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. So, from myself, Everett Jay, the AutoLooks.net website and Ecomm Entertainment Group, strap yourself in for this one fun wild ride that fuel efficiency is going to take us on.

Everett J.
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