Better Mileage In The Near Future

How Detroit Will Reach 35 mpg By Chuck Squatriglia December 20, 2007 | 4:37:15 PMCategories: Fuel Economy, Industry It's taken more than two decades of fighting, but the auto industry finally has a new fuel economy standard it can live with. The magic number is 35 mpg, and automakers have 13 years to get there. Now the question is: How?

Meeting that benchmark will require developing new technology, investing billions in new manufacturing and shunning the "bigger is better" mentality that has guided the auto industry for 20 years. It will be an unprecedented challenge and a seismic change for an industry that has never had much interest in either.

"This is the automotive equivalent of the moon shot," Ron Cogan, the editor and publisher of Green Car Journal and GreenCar.com, told us. "They know they have to reach these goals. They know it won't be easy. They'll have to marshal all of their resources, and those of their suppliers, to do this."

A recent study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found automakers could double fuel economy relatively easily by emphasizing lighter - though not necessarily smaller - cars with more efficient gasoline, diesel and hybrid drivetrains. And that, industry experts told us, is pretty much what the industry will do.

Just 58 of the 1,199 vehicle models listed in the Environmental Protection Agency's 2008 Fuel Economy Guide eight of the 2007 models get a combined city and highway fuel efficiency of 35 mpg or better, and they're not all subcompacts or small hybrids like the Toyota Prius. The current average is 26.4 mpg, so clearly there's a long way to go if automakers are to reach an average of 35 mpg for their entire fleets, as the law requires - especially for Detroit, which has spent the past two decades focusing most of its attention on SUVs and pickups.

Industry experts said the first changes will be relatively subtle, relatively cheap and relatively soon. They'll include improved aerodynamics, six-speed automatic automatic transmissions and dual-clutch manual transmissions. Engine-driven components like power steering pumps will give way to electric ones. More efficient gearing and tires with lower rolling resistance will bring still more improvements. The cumulative effect can be significant. Ford says these tactics boosted the fuel efficiency of the V-6 Taurus by 10 percent. The 2008 Taurus has a combined city/highway fuel economy of 22 mpg.

Subcompacts are the fastest-growing segment of the market, but no one expects Detroit to dump SUVs in favor of microcars. Instead, automakers will use a lot more aluminum, magnesium and lightweight steel to reduce the weight of all their cars. Ford has said it will trim 250 to 750 pounds from every car in its lineup between 2012 and 2020.

The most radical changes will come under the hood. Automakers will embrace direct injection -- a more efficient means of getting fuel into the combustion chamber -- in a big way and bring more diesel and hybrid drivetrains to market.

"We're looking at massive changes in engine technology," Aaron Bragman, an auto industry analyst with Global Insight, told us. "Two-thirds of the U.S. fleet will have to change to direct injection. One-third of the total market will be diesel, and half of those will be diesel-electric hybrids. Everyone is pursuing a strategy of smaller engines with direct injection and turbochargers."

Each of the Big Three is investing billions of dollars in these efforts. Chrysler's new Phoenix V-6 engine shuts down three cylinders when less power is needed, improving fuel efficiency by 3 to 6 percent. The company recently opened three factories to begin producing the engines. Ford is developing four- and six-cylinder direct injection turbocharged engines it says burn 10 to 20 percent less gasoline without any loss in performance. It plans to begin putting the engine in several models during the next five years, beginning with the Lincoln MKS.

All three automakers plan to offer more "flex-fuel" vehicles that burn gas or E85 ethanol. They're all looking at so-called clean diesel engines, with Chrysler offering one in the 2009 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ford putting one in the F-150 pickup - the best selling vehicle in America for 26 years - by the end of the decade. And they're all dumping truckloads of money into hybrid technology. GM and Chrysler and banking on the two-mode hybrid drivetrain it developed with BMW, while Ford will continue pushing the system it first offered in the Escape while also developing plug-in hybrid technology.

General Motors is way out in front on the hybrid front, promising to deliver one new hybrid every three months for the next two years. Look for gas-electric versions of the Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac Escalade before long. Ford's rolling out hybrids of the Fusion and Mercury Milan next year, and Chrysler will come along a year later with the Aspen and Dodge Durango gas-electric SUVs. Both will offer a 25 percent improvement in fuel economy over their gasoline-powered counterparts, which get 16.5 mpg (combined city and highway).

The Big Three also are looking beyond petroleum. GM recently opened a design studio dedicated exclusively to developing electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt, and it recently started road testing 100 hydrogen fuel cell Equinox SUVs in Southern California. Ford has its own hydrogen fuel cell fleet on the road, and is testing hydrogen-fueled internal-combustion engines. Chrysler's got an electric vehicle development program and will show off its ecoVoyager hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next month.

All this technology won't come cheap, for the automakers or consumers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it could cost the auto industry $114 billion - with a 'b' - to implement the new fuel economy standard, and Bragman tells us sticker prices could climb 5 to 15 percent. But Cogan says retail prices will come down once the number of cars using the technology goes up, just as it did with airbags, anti-lock brakes and other advances. We're wrapping up a story examining the issue and will post the link once it's up.

American automakers may face the biggest challenge in reaching the 35 mpg benchmark because they offer everything from subcompacts to full-size SUVs and will have to improve the fuel efficiency of all of them. But they may also be in the best position to make quick gains because they sell a lot of cars in Europe, where vehicles tend to be smaller and thriftier. The automakers just need to figure out how to adapt them to American regulations and sell them to American consumers.

GM is already figuring that out. Just this week, GM unveiled the Saturn Astra, a slightly reworked version of the Opel Astra, one of Europe's best-selling compacts.

Its 1.6-liter turbocharged engine delivers 32 mpg.

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