63 MPGs Mini Cooper Countryman

[lostinblue 1,989]

The new Mini Cooper Countryman can get 63 MPGs on the highway – just not on our highways.

Like so many other high-mileage, diesel-powered vehicles, it’s not available in the United States. Instead we get gas-electric turkeys like the Toyota Prius hybrid – which maxes out at 48 MPGs on the highway. If you drive it at around 47 MPH in the left lane with your turn signal blinking… .

It’s very strange.

Our government (well, maybe calling it “our” government is a stretch) has been browbeating the car industry to produce more “fuel efficient” cars for decades, yet at the same time, also for decades, made it very hard to sell high-efficiency diesel-powered passenger cars. VW, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Land Rover and other European brands have been selling their cars here for a long time – just not their diesel-powered cars.

In Europe, diesel cars constitute about half the new cars sold; over here, less than 5 percent – chiefly because only a handful of diesel-powered passenger cars are even available.

For two reasons, mainly.

First, for years, we had not-so-great (for emissions reasons) diesel fuel that was fine for big rigs (which until recently could pollute to their hearts content, legally) but wreaked havoc with the finely tuned pollution control equipment fitted to modern passenger car diesel engines.

This, in turn, set up the potential not just for lots of warranty-related expenses and hassles for potential diesel-car buyers but also for even greater hassles and expenses for the car companies that sold them, when the government went after them for selling “dirty” diesels.

That’s why we don’t get diesels like the Mini Countryman D.

No 63 MPGs, either.

Even though our diesel fuel is now “clean” diesel – and the warranty/pollution control issues have been dealt with.

The European car companies are still super leery of bringing to market vehicles that could lead to problems for them with the EPA politburo. Their diesel-powered cars may be “cleaner” (in terms of tailpipe emissions) than a nun’s conscience but there’s still the endless pedantry of slightly different American vs. European regulatory codes. And not just federal codes, but also the different state codes, notably “California” codes that are both different and stricter than “49 state” codes. Some Northeastern states have also adopted “California” codes – which makes achieving compliance with all the varying codes – essential to being able to profitably sell a given car, nationwide – very difficult and very expensive.

Rather than spend beaucoups bucks on lawyers and other forms of paper-pushing to make the EPA and the various state-level eco-Nazis happy, the European car companies not surprisingly cut their losses and (mostly) keep their diesels to themselves, selling a few token models here.

You’d think the government (federal and state) would make it a priority to ease the regulatory chokehold a little, to streamline the ukase in order to get as many of these high-mileage diesels into mass circulation as the market will bear. Think what a difference a 10-15 MPG average uptick in the fuel economy of the typical passenger car would mean – not just in terms of reducing the aggregate fuel consumption of the nation but also in terms of placating the great god of global warming. Less fuel burned means less greenhouse gasses emitted – and a 10-15 MPG uptick in fuel efficiency spread out across say 20-30 percent of the passenger car fleet would mean a monster reduction in “greenhouse gasses.” And it could be done without elaborate technology (hybrids) or another round of government edicts (CAFE) that just make new cars more and more expensive to achieve minimal, incremental upticks in their average “fleet” economy numbers. You can only do so much with a gas engine; the way they work is inherently less efficient. Getting even 45 MPG out of one – even in a compact-sized car – is no easy thing. With a diesel, it’s no sweat – and you can get 45 MPG in a mid-sized luxury-sport sedan such as BMW 3 Series or Benz E-Class. In a small car like the Mini Countryman, 60-plus MPG is right here, right now. 70 MPG is realistic with a little tweaking. No hybrid can touch that. Hell, you’d need a Moped to match that.

Diesels deliver. They make sense. They work. People would love ‘em if only they had a chance to drive ‘em.

But they don’t – because they do (make sense).

Maybe things will change. I don’t expect them to.

Our government is run by lawyers, not engineers. Talkers, not doers. I doubt one out of 100 of them even knows how a diesel engine differs from a gasoline engine (other than the fuel it uses). So I’m not surprised by the government’s inability to see how much it would help – everything from “the environment” to the economy – to knock down the stupid regulatory roadblocks that are keeping diesel cars on the other side of the pond.

http://epautos.com/?p=1934

Eric Peters

[Pooky 3,348]

You also need to make sure the gallons are the same size, too.

British gallons are bigger than American ones.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

You also need to make sure the gallons are the same size, too.

British gallons are bigger than American ones.

Then there is the whole metric thing. If we adopted the metric system our cars would be 10 times more efficient because there are more kilometers than there are miles PLUS you could get more pancakes in a doghouse..

Kidding.

Another example of government messing up something people would do if they were not stopped by government regulation. How hard would it be to sell a car that gets 63 miles per Imperial gallon?

[mawilson 2,133]

EPA keeps the Countryman out of the country.

[natty bumppo 289]

Another example of government messing up something people would do if they were not stopped by government regulation. How hard would it be to sell a car that gets 63 miles per Imperial gallon?

just completed the IRS form 8910 for full tax credit permitted ...

yes i get ~34 mpg surface streets and ~45 mpg highway (70mph) for burning ULSD...this vehicle has more torque than our V6 gasser and and serves quite well in houston or highway traffic.

a prius ... drove one and rode in one ... nowhere near as fun (can you say ... boring)

[Brother Hesekiel 2,235]

There was a time when I hated Diesels like the plague but it has all changed about 10 years ago. Today I have 4 Diesels in my personal stable:

1) 1992 Dodge D250 3/4-ton pickup, Cummins Turbo Diesel: 20mpg (the workhorse and a keeper for life)

2) 1985 Mercedes 300CD Turbodiesel Coupe: 28mpg (my first Diesel and a keeper for life)

3) 1995 Mercedes E300 Diesel: 38mpg on the freeway (the family car)

4) 2002 Volkswagen Beetle TDI: 49mpg on the freeway (my wife's car)

It's not just the fuel efficiency, it's the time you can keep it. I live in sunny Southern California and we don't have rust problems here. I have a 1917 Ford Model T Touring car with original paint on it. My two daily drivers are a 1962 Volvo PV544 with God knows how many hundred thousands of miles on it, much of the original paint burnt down to the primer, and a 1964 Austin Mini. My Dodge's Cummins engine is good for about 1 million miles in a pickup. I won't get old enough to see that happening. Therefore, it's the last pickup I needed to own in my lifetime, and I aleady have it for 10 years now.

My '85 Mercedes has now barely passed the 100K mile barrier. It, too, will outlive me. My '95 Mercedes is the family's long distance car and has 195K miles now. Its engine will live another 10 years but there's no car that I could replace it with. Everything that came later has more computers than a space shuttle which is the one thing that ends the life of a car here when it simply becomes to expensive to replace all that electronic stuff month after month. For the same reason I see any hybrid as a stupid idea. Here you have a car that is 3 times as complex as a normal car. It has a gas engine, an electric engine, and a computer system, all of which make it as disposable as a broken cell phone, at a higher impact on the environment and the purse, of course.

My wife would love to get the MINI Diesel, but they don't sell it here. The Volkswagen Lupo Diesel gets 78mpg, btw.

The thing is this: gas is way too cheap here. If we had gas prices of $8 or $9 a gallon consumers would demand fuel efficient cars. But the corporations who run this country don't really want that, for the same reason they don't make cars anymore that live forever. They are all crappily made, and destined to be thrown away after a certain amount of years.

Well, I'm not playing this game. I only buy cars that last and unless they make one I like and can live up to that promise, I won't buy one.

[B_J 2,752]

There was a time when I hated Diesels like the plague but it has all changed about 10 years ago. Today I have 4 Diesels in my personal stable:

1) 1992 Dodge D250 3/4-ton pickup, Cummins Turbo Diesel: 20mpg (the workhorse and a keeper for life)

2) 1985 Mercedes 300CD Turbodiesel Coupe: 28mpg (my first Diesel and a keeper for life)

3) 1995 Mercedes E300 Diesel: 38mpg on the freeway (the family car)

4) 2002 Volkswagen Beetle TDI: 49mpg on the freeway (my wife's car)

It's not just the fuel efficiency, it's the time you can keep it. I live in sunny Southern California and we don't have rust problems here. I have a 1917 Ford Model T Touring car with original paint on it. My two daily drivers are a 1962 Volvo PV544 with God knows how many hundred thousands of miles on it, much of the original paint burnt down to the primer, and a 1964 Austin Mini. My Dodge's Cummins engine is good for about 1 million miles in a pickup. I won't get old enough to see that happening. Therefore, it's the last pickup I needed to own in my lifetime, and I aleady have it for 10 years now.

My '85 Mercedes has now barely passed the 100K mile barrier. It, too, will outlive me. My '95 Mercedes is the family's long distance car and has 195K miles now. Its engine will live another 10 years but there's no car that I could replace it with. Everything that came later has more computers than a space shuttle which is the one thing that ends the life of a car here when it simply becomes to expensive to replace all that electronic stuff month after month. For the same reason I see any hybrid as a stupid idea. Here you have a car that is 3 times as complex as a normal car. It has a gas engine, an electric engine, and a computer system, all of which make it as disposable as a broken cell phone, at a higher impact on the environment and the purse, of course.

My wife would love to get the MINI Diesel, but they don't sell it here. The Volkswagen Lupo Diesel gets 78mpg, btw.

The thing is this: gas is way too cheap here. If we had gas prices of $8 or $9 a gallon consumers would demand fuel efficient cars. But the corporations who run this country don't really want that, for the same reason they don't make cars anymore that live forever. They are all crappily made, and destined to be thrown away after a certain amount of years.

Well, I'm not playing this game. I only buy cars that last and unless they make one I like and can live up to that promise, I won't buy one.

You talk about your cars the way others talk about their guns.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

EPA politburo? Yes, Vladimir Obama had these regulations well in place, long before he became ruler of the U.S., just so yahoos could blame it on him.