Whats the big deal with the new cars with high gas mileage? How are they useful?
I am an autotech, automotive lecturer and examiner and Alex has it all wrong. People in general put far to much emphasis on fuel consumption when considering the running costs of a vehicle; when in actual fact this is only one of many components that contribute to the OVERALL cost of running a vehicle. Alex was saying that smaller cars don’t wear as fast, this is completely untrue. With smaller wheels and therefore much higher angular speeds of rotation, tyres and brakes wear out considerably faster than on a larger car. The lower unsprung weights of smaller cars wear suspension parts at an accelerated rate too. The smaller engines are more highly loaded and generally have much higher piston speeds, wearing rings and bores thousands of kilometres before a larger engines, creating high oil cunsumption and more pollution. Also the smaller engines require larger throttle openings to make them go, negating some of the fuel consumption advantage of smaller cars. Smaller cars in general also
