Hybrid cars can use FOUR TIMES more fuel than makers claim and could be costing owners £450 more a year than expected
Consumer watchdog Which? tested the mpg ratings of 22 popular hybrid cars. On average, the cars were 61 per cent less fuel-efficient than claimed, they said
Plug-in hybrid electric cars can use four times more fuel than makers claim, costing owners an average of £462 per year more than expected, Which? has warned.
The consumer watchdog tested 22 popular hybrid models over 62 miles (100km) and found that they had all been advertised with unrealistic fuel efficiency figures.
On average, hybrid cars were found to be 61 per cent less fuel-efficient than promised.
The worst offender, the BMW X5, was 72 per cent less efficient than claimed, and could cost its owner up to £669 more each year in fuel expenses.
Meanwhile the Toyota Prius, the 'best' of the rest, was still 39 per cent below its official fuel economy rating and could cost up to £171 more to run each year.
Which? said that their tests were tougher than the official ones, because they better represented real-world driving conditions.
A recent report from Greenpeace and Transport & Environment called hybrid cars a 'wolf in sheep's clothing', as they emit 2.5 times the CO2 in reality than in tests.
'A fuel-efficient plug-in hybrid vehicle is an attractive feature for prospective buyers, as many will expect to spend less on fuel and reduce their carbon footprint,' said Which? head of home products and services, Natalie Hitchins.
'Yet our research shows many hybrid models are not as efficient as the manufacturers claim, which means motorists could be spending more on fuel than they anticipated.
'It is clear that the standard set for calculating fuel consumption is flawed and should be reviewed to better reflect real-life driving conditions.
'This would ensure manufacturers advertise more accurate figures and consumers have a better understanding of how much they should expect to spend on fuel.'
The fuel consumption figures advertised by car manufacturers are calculated via the so-called Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) and include consideration of the given model's electric driving range.
This means that the miles per gallon figure achievable in real-world conditions can be much lower than the test figures, resulting in drivers consuming more fuel than they might expect.
Other poor performers in the consumer watchdog's tests included the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer, which was found to be 71 per cent less efficient than claimed.
According to BMW, this vehicle can cover 156.9 miles per gallon (mpg), whereas Which? concluded that it could only do 44.8 mpg and would therefore cost £1,081 a year to fuel, or £772.08 more than the £309 based on the manufacturer's mpg figure.
The Mercedes-Benz B-Class plug-in hybrid, meanwhile, was found only able to cover 78 of the promised 256 miles per gallon, adding an extra £411 to the annual fuel bill.
Annual fuel costs were calculated based on average fuel costs of 121.8p for diesel and 118.5p for petrol and an annual mileage of 9,000 — roughly the average distance travelled by respondents in the Which? annual car survey.
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Predicting and planning for the next polar vortex?
We say we can predict and plan for climate chaos 50 years out, but not an imminent vortex?
Duggan Flanakin
Americans know a lot about planning for hurricanes, and about voluntary and mandatory evacuations. They also know that some hurricanes bring major damage to urban and rural areas, and that sometimes (Katrina comes to mind) people’s failure to heed calls to “get outta Dodge” can have disastrous results.
The National Weather Service website explains, whenever a tropical storm forms in the Atlantic or eastern North Pacific [or central North Pacific], the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center issues tropical cyclone advisories at least every six hours. Once a hurricane watch or warning is issued, the advisories come every three hours.
When evacuation orders are issued, there are always a few who opt to “ride out the storm,” for fun and excitement, or fearing the theft of their property more than their possible loss of life. Even then, rescue teams risk their lives in dangerous weather to save those losing their crazy gambles with storms.
On January 11, National Geographic warned, “The polar vortex is coming – raising the odds for intense winter weather,” caused by a sudden major rise in temperatures in the stratosphere above Siberia. This polar vortex “could mean frigid winter weather pummeling the U.S. Midwest and Northeast and the mid-latitude regions of Europe.” Not a word about intense cold in the American southwest.
On January 28, NOAA’s Climate.gov website announced, “The POLAR VORTEX is coming!!!!!” NOAA explained that the impetus for this extremely rare event was a “sudden stratospheric warming” [SSW] that occurred on January 5. Such an event happens about six times per decade, NOAA says.
NOAA acknowledged that parts of Europe had already seen very cold weather in the north and stormy weather in the south, but gave no specific warning that disaster was imminent in any specific parts of the United States.
Shortly thereafter, meteorologist Joe Bastardi predicted in his Twitter feed that “Texas is going to be tested on so many levels” by the coming storm. He acknowledged that NOAA’s own forecasting model prompted comparisons to the disastrous 1899 polar vortex incident that dropped temperatures below zero in every U.S. state.
On February 3, Jennifer Gray at CNN announced, “It’s about to get so cold that boiling water will flash freeze, frostbite could occur within 30 minutes, and it will become a shock to the system for even those who are used to the toughest winters.” She went on to say “the coldest air of the season will be diving south, not leaving anyone out. Every single state in the U.S. – including Hawaii – will reach below freezing temperatures on Monday morning” [February 8].
The next day, Austin’s KXAN-TV issued its own “First Warning: Extended Arctic blast coming to Texas.” Emmy-winning meteorologist David Yeomans noted that his actual first warning had come a month earlier – the day the SSW event had occurred.
Yeomans said the cold front would likely slam into Texas by February 9, “cooling us off dramatically by the middle of next week.” While “this pattern may last for an extended amount of time,” Yeomans predicted just “4 to 5 days where local temperatures will remain in the 30s and 40s into Valentine’s Day weekend.” He concluded that, while “some precipitation appears possible … it is too soon for specifics on this Arctic outbreak and potential winter storm.”
But he did not foresee the impending disaster; nor did most others in the field. And yet actual lowest temperatures in Austin reached 9o F (-13 C) – the lowest in 32 years and just the fifth single-digit low in a century. Not until Valentine’s Day did the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) declare an “energy emergency alert three” that mandated rolling outages.
Texans were clearly not prepared by their federal, state or local governments, or even their local news media outlets, let alone ERCOT, for the magnitude of this polar storm – or for the devastation it could and did cause. People get a warning to prepare prior to hurricanes. But this time there was no urgent demand that people lay in food, turn off or otherwise secure water pipes against a deep freeze, expect water cutoffs, plan for lengthy power and heating outages, and be ready for horrific driving conditions.
Lone Star State public officials are getting slammed for their lack of foresight. But Texans are not alone in this disaster. Over 100,000 Oregonians went all week without electric power days after a snow and ice storm swept through that region. Portland General Electric (PGE) spokesperson Dale Goodman, noted that over 2,000 power lines were still down two days after the storm. “These are the most dangerous conditions we’ve ever seen in the history of PGE,” he lamented.
This is after PGE had worked tirelessly to restore power for over half a million other customers who’d been affected by the polar storm. As in Texas and elsewhere, people there died from carbon monoxide poisoning, food spoiled, and many of the 200,000 Oregon customers who lost service were told they may not get their Internet back for weeks. Oregon is much smaller than Texas, with fewer people and colder weather. Portland’s average February temperature is 10o F cooler than Austin’s.
In the aftermath of this massive storm – which also caused major power outages in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky and West Virginia – there will be plenty of time to evaluate where forecasts went wrong, assess blame, and determine what damages can and cannot be recovered. Job one right now, however, should be to get people back into their homes, their jobs, their hospitals and their lives. (One Austin hospital lost power and water.) Blame-throwing only gets in the way of human rescue.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called for an investigation of ERCOT, acknowledging that the power grid curators have been “anything but reliable” over the previous 48 hours. “Far too many Texans are without power and heat for their homes as our state faces freezing temperatures and severe winter weather,” he added. “This is unacceptable.” Well, DUH! But they aren’t the only guilty parties.
Worst of all, the nightmare is far from over. The damages are widespread, and it will be some time before anyone can calculate the actual costs – and the avoidable costs – of this supposedly rare event. Will Texas shrug its shoulders and simply say, “This can’t possibly happen again.” Will Oregonians? Will the entire nation, which will suffer the effects of this loss of energy production and economic vitality in Texas?
Any investigation must begin with the fact that hardly anyone paid attention to warnings that this storm could have major impacts. Perhaps big winter storms need names, like hurricanes do, so that they stand out and can compete with partisan political bickering. Maybe we need a thorough review of all disaster preparedness, including spring floods, summer fires, and summer-autumn hurricanes and tropical storms.
We certainly need better prediction, prevention and preparation – including thinning overgrown forests and clearing out dead, diseased and intensely flammable trees.
Will the American people get this kind of response from their elected officials – or from those charged with direct oversight of our land, water and infrastructure, and increasingly our lives and livelihoods? Or will we spend the next two, four or ten years bickering over trivial matters, like a modern Nero fiddling as our nation falls apart and becomes even easier pickings for Mother Nature and predator nations?
We’ve spent billions on wind turbines and solar panels that were useless when people most needed electricity, instead of on winterizing baseload power generation. We’ve spent billions on “climate crisis” models and fear-mongering – but can’t seem to get winter storm forecasts and warnings right. Too many are paying with their lives. When will we get it right?
Via email
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Biden-GM Urge Electric Vehicle Transformation, But Experts Say Climate Case Is Weak
As the Texas power grid shudders in part under renewable power, the auto industry is also facing an uncertain transition to green energy. General Motors dropped a bombshell last month that it will build only electric vehicles by 2035. The commitment comes as the Biden administration stocks up on climate activists to transform the economy to fight global warming.
The administration is in line with governments from Europe to China that have declared EVs the future and - for the first time - are mandating which powertrains automakers must use.
But as GM and other automakers spend billions to bring electrics to market, prominent auto and climate experts say they are a solution in search of a problem.
Physicist Frank Jamerson, one of the architects of GM’s EV program, wrote in a 2020 Society of Automotive Engineers paper there is no evidence that gas-fired transportation is changing the climate. An advocate of nuclear power and hydrogen fuel cell development, GM’s ex-chief of electrochemistry said in an interview that “fossil fuels can be used until they run out, in hundreds of years.”
Center for Automotive Research Chairman David Cole, a leading Michigan research firm, concurs: “The climate data has been pushed aside by the politicians. This (climate crisis) idea is being pushed to save the world, and it’s a mistake.” Cole, Jamerson, and Weather Channel founder and meteorologist Joe D’Aleo plan an SAE warming conference in April.
Cole says the enormous investment in EVs, which make up less than 2 percent of U.S. sales today, is creating a two-tiered industry of haves and have nots. Big players like GM, Toyota, and Volkswagen have the resources to invest in a battery-mandated future whereas other companies do not.
“The haves can play that game, and the have-nots cannot. The big boys are investing so that if government is pushing autos towards electrification, they will be the winners.”
Veteran climatologists like John Christy, who oversees satellites that monitor global temperature data, says the EV push is disconnected from scientific evidence.
“There is no climate crisis. If you apply the proposed government regulations to the auto industry, they will have no climate impact,” said Christy, professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, in an interview. “Indeed, if you eliminate the U.S. economy from the face of the earth, it will have no impact on global temperature.”
Decades of scientific data indicate that global warming alarms have been inaccurate - including the predicted retreat of the Great Lakes in the Detroit automakers’ back yard.
Still, Big Auto has done an about-face on climate regulations after backing the Trump administration’s challenge to California's controversial CO2 emissions rules.
GM's view now aligns with the Biden campaign which asserts “humans’ contribution to the greenhouse effect is indisputable” and poses an “existential threat to . . . human life.” America’s largest auto manufacturer, GM’s reading of the political tea leaves echoes past strategic moves to align itself with Washington trends.
With the U.S. mired in Iraq in 2008, for example, the General supported the Bush administration’s transition to ethanol-fueled cars by 2022 to reduce foreign oil dependence.
A nuclear physicist by training, Jamerson worked at GM for over 30 years, becoming assistant program manager of the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium in 1990. The alliance of GM, Ford, Chrysler, and the Department of Energy aimed to pool resources for a new generation of battery-powered cars.
The consortium was driven in part by concerns over climate change– fears data no longer support, the ex-GM exec says. Jamerson said batteries have progressed since his team developed GM’s first EV prototype, the Impact - but electrics still suffer from range challenges.
“There is no reason to deny the use of fossil fuels,” he said. “Let the marketplace decide.”
Climatologist Christy said mandating EVs would have no impact on climate: “1) The US is only 14 percent of global emissions so what we do won’t affect much. And 2) climate is not as sensitive to CO2 as the models say it is.”
Warming orthodoxy has been challenged by real world evidence. With Great Lakes levels at cyclical lows in 1988, climate alarmists like then-NASA scientist James Hansen projected man-made warming would cause shrinking coastlines. But lake levels today are back to historic, 30 year-cycle highs. Climate models have also erroneously predicted disappearing polar ice caps and record hurricanes.
James Taylor, president of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, said in an interview that Biden administration plans to power an electrified vehicle fleet with wind turbines in the next decade would require nearly half the land mass of the United States – “the most environmentally ruinous plan we can think of.”
The contrarian data has not slowed political pressure on automakers. The governors of California and Massachusetts have set a ban on gas-powered cars by 2035. Biden promises rules “ensuring 100 percent of new (vehicle) sales . . . will be electrified."
Auto analyst Cole said that, despite years of climate alarmism and government subsidies, consumers have not embraced EVs. Even in England, one of the most popular countries for electrics, EVs made up only 7.4 percent of sales in 2019.
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Biden Energy 'Pipe Dream' Will 'Bankrupt' Us
President Joe Biden's unwinding of American energy independence under the Trump administration will ultimately "bankrupt the country," according to Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore.
"The idea that we are going to eliminate fossil fuels is a pipe dream," Moore said Sunday during an appearanc on "The Cats Roundtable" on WABC 770 AM-N.Y. "We're not going to go from 80% fossil fuels down to zero in the next 15 years, or else we will bankrupt our country."
Democrats are arguing for renewable energy, but Moore said America can allow the technology to evolve and become better and more affordable as we use the resources that have made America energy independent under former President Donald Trump.
"We need to use the energy that we have," Moore told host John Catsimatidis. "We have more oil, more gas and more coal than any other country. We've got 500 years worth of coal. We have at least 200 years of natural gas. We’re not running out of this stuff."
Moore said Biden needs to get with the "program."
"Trump used to say to me, 'I don't want America to be energy independent; I want America to be energy dominant,'" Moore said. "And we should. "We should be the energy-dominant country in the world."
Even the electric cars environmentalists are seeking are going to require use of fossil fuels in generating the electricity, Moore said.
"I don't have a problem with electric cars, but people have to realize you have to have electric power to charge the batteries for electric cars," he said. "That takes coal and oil.
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/stephen-moore-fossil-fuels-gas-oil/2021/02/21/id/1010912/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
1 comment:
On today's "weekly summary" by Joe Bastardi, the recent cold wave down to Texas wasn't caused by a "Polar Vortex," but by high pressure pushing it down. It's just weather.
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