Engineering gone wrong
40 years ago i was driving a VW Beetle with 34 hp, and when I drove it carefully I had a fuel consumption of 7 liters per 100km.
A study conducted in Switzerland (I am 99% sure the same applies to Germany) showed that in the last 5 years from 1997 to now the average fuel consumption has increased from 5.96 to 6.80 liters/100 km for gasoline cars and even from 5.94 to 7.22 l/100km for the supposedly more efficient diesel cars. That’s are staggering 14 and 22% increases respectively. Hello? Geht‘s noch?
And the greenwashing plug-in hybrids consume 3 to 5 times the advertised fuel amount, a study in Germany found. Because people are too lazy to plug them in.
In 1998 VW had the Lupo as a 3 liter Auto commercially available. With 3 liters per 100km it consumed less than half of my Beetle and today’s cars. Audi had a similar model. So technically this was possible 25 years ago. What could have been possible 25 years later? What went wrong? Where did the technical progress go that was made in 40 years?
* Into 5-10 times the horsepower of my Beetle‘s.
* In driving around more weight.
* In bigger engines.
* In mothers driving their kids to Kindergarten in the city on good asphalted roads in SUVs, because they „feel safer.“
* In fathers compensating for their small C…s.
And on top of that, the German car manufacturers are the most environmentally unfriendly, with VW, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz und Porsche ending on ranks 23, 24, 26, 27 and 30 of 30 in a study commissioned by Greenpeace.
Link to Greenpeace Report.
As a German Engineer and as somebody who wants to leave a livable planet to our kids, I must admit that I am pretty much disappointed, frustrated, even disgusted.