160 replies to this topic

[mattdc2r]

I'm thinking of selling my daily and buying a motorbike. Better on fuel and can filter through the bloody awful Friday traffic on the m6. If the weather's really bad, I'd take the mini.

[Ethel]

The A Series is still an economic engine, most advances are in fuel delivery (injection). Weight only effects mpg if you throw away the built up momentum through your brakes. Minis are on a par, or better than, other cars when you take account of both frontal area and drag coefficients. There's a limit to what you can do with a 4 seater box that's barely 10 foot long.

[MalcolmB]

Weight only effects mpg if you throw away the built up momentum through your brakes.

Agreed, in a few years' time kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) should start becoming widely available, but until then I guess we'll have to brake for lights.

[maggies_minder]

stick Visards yellow bible on your Christmas list

there is a whole section in the book on economy

how expensive will fuel be by then bungle?
we'll all be using reindeers to pull our cars, when demand for those (reindeers) gets high and the price follows we'll have to use huskys.

[AVV IT]

how expensive will fuel be by then bungle?
we'll all be using reindeers to pull our cars, when demand for those (reindeers) gets high and the price follows we'll have to use huskys.

Nah!!! the "animal rights lot" are never gonna allow any of that sort of thing!!...... & if even they do, it's still not gonna happen, as it's bound to be in contravention of some sort of EU law on the use of arctic animals for pulling automobiles or something!!

[reallybig]

we should all go back to using horses like in the wild west

[MalcolmB]

Minis are on a par, or better than, other cars when you take account of both frontal area and drag coefficients. There's a limit to what you can do with a 4 seater box that's barely 10 foot long.

I was curious so did some digging. The drag coefficient of the mini is 0.48, and it has a frontal area of 16.5 sq. ft, (1.53 sq. m). That gives it a CdA of 0.74 sq. m, which if you compare it with the list here is identical to a Bugatti Veyron! (http://en.wikipedia....rag_coefficient)

[1984mini25]

www.fairfueluk.com

[ANON]

sorry but on line petitions are a waste of time.

"minister there's a petition here on that interweb thing, would you like to read it or should i just hit delete?"

[madaboutcherry]

copied from the mk1 forum,
http://mk1-forum.net...php?f=11&t=1727

[maryquant]

Thought I would add my 2p worth after reading the entire thread.

I agree with the fact that fuel is very expensive. Ive been driving about 4 years and my first car (a citroen zx diesel) would cost about £1.09 a litre at the pump - so I used to fill up at tesco...... with the 0.69p 3Litre Value Vegetable Oil. So fuel would cost about £54.50 and vege oil would cost about £11.50

One thing I do realise though is that a) I cannot change the price of fuel and b) I will always need it. With this in mind I always wonder what would happen if people really did take a stand against the price of fuel, for example if as the previous posters have said moms walked their kids to school and dads walked to work (sorry for the stereotyping lol) As far as I can tell all it would do is affect the oil company (and governments) bottom line, which would need to be corrected somehow and the most likely way for any business to keep going after demand drops is to increase prices.

I do fancy an electric car though - but probably not for another 10 years or so, the closest I have found to a viable vehicle for me is the Nissan Leaf Linky
The 'Leaf' costs about 4pence per mile - as a comparison my mercedes does a mile for about 22pence.

Since I average about 200 miles a week - that would save me about £1800 a year in fuel costs. But when I do a full comparison including the cost of the car to start with I would be crazy to switch to an environmentally better vehicle. Any thing I saved in fuel costs and running costs would be nothing in comparison to the cost of financing the vehicle in the first place.

I do watch quite a few shows on alternative energy, and read a fair bit about it and it seems the major argument to things like wind farms, is that they dont produce anywhere near enough electricity per turbine so we would need to cover ... say... an ocean with them in order for them to be viable. Although a few deserts with PS10 Solar Power Plants does sound good.

For as long as there is excessive cost in the production of alternative energy it just will not happen. When the world has no choice - the price will come down as *everyone* will be doing it, supply will be greater, prices will be lower. Personally I cant wait to see what happens, but until it does I will still turn up every other day at the petrol station and be content that there is no way I can change the price per litre.