ENERGY FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD - World Resources Institute

Table 10. Continued
d. The 39-kilowatt car has a 3-cylinder, DI, TC, diesel engine. The 66-kilowatt car has a
3-cylinder, heat-insulated, TC, intercooled diesel engine with multifuel capability. Extensive
use of aluminum, magnesium, and plastics; drag coefficient between 0.25 and 0.28 (R.
Mellde, "Volvo LCP 2000 Light Component Project," SAE Technical Paper No. 850570,
presented at the SAE International Congress and Exposition, February 25-March 1, 1985).
e. Supercharged, DI diesel engine; engine off during idle and coast; drag coefficient of 0.225
(Renault USA press release).
f. DI diesel engine, continuously variable transmission (CVT), wide use of plastics and
aluminum, drag coefficient of 0.26 (Toyota press release, October 23, 1985).
g. Four-cylinder, DI, spark-assisted, multifuel capable, adiabatic diesel with turbocompounding;
CVT; 1984 model Ford Tempo body (R.R. Sekar, R. Kamo, and J.C. Wood, "Advanced
Adiabatic Diesel Engine for Passenger Cars," SAE Technical Paper No. 840434, presented at
the SAE International Congress and Exposition, February 27-March 2, 1984).
nologies they replace. The costs of adding
various fuel-saving technologies to a gasolinepowered
30-mpg (7.9-lhk) Volkswagen Rabbit
costing $7,000 have been calculated by von
Hippel and Levi. 42 (See Figure 26.) The
estimated extra cost for adding all measures,
which would raise the fuel economy to 90 mpg
(2.6 Ihk), is $1,725. This analysis indicates that
the total cost of owning and operating a car
would be roughly constant over the entire
range from 30 mpg (7.9 Ihk) to 90 mpg (2.6
Ihk), a finding in sharp contrast to the 1979
NAS study, which suggested that the cost
would rise sharply after a fuel economy of 37
mpg (6.4 Ihk) was reached. 43
The von Hippel-Levi analysis may actually
have overestimated the costs of fuel economy
improvements. One reason is that most of the
fuel-saving measures being explored by manufacturers
offer consumer benefits other than
just fuel savings, so that charging the extra
costs exclusively to fuel economy is inappropriate.
Consider the multiple benefits of the
ongoing trend toward the use of more plastics
in cars. Analysis by John Tumazos of Oppenheimer
& Company indicates that greater use
of plastics will reduce the cost of owning and
operating a car in the United States by $150 to
$250 per year because of longer product life
from cheaper repairs, corrosion resistance, and
lower insurance rates. The CVT would eliminate
the noticeable jerkiness in shifting with
automatic transmissions. 44
The cost estimates of von Hippel and Levi
may be too high for another reason too: the
costs of improvements are not simply additive.
Some extra costs may be offset by savings
through related technological innovations. For
example, the extensive use of plastics in auto
bodies can cut fabrication and assembly costs.
Such savings opportunies have led developers
of the Volvo LCP 2000 to conclude that in mass
production this car would cost the same as today's
average subcompact. 45
How much first costs will increase with fuel
economy is still uncertain, though the arguments
cited here suggest that the net increased
first costs may be modest. High fuel economy
can almost certainly be achieved without increasing
life-cycle costs, as indicated by von
Hippel and Levi.
If the goal for the average fuel economy of
new cars in the mid-1990s were 60 mpg to 65
mpg (3.9 to 3.6 Ihk), the average fuel economy
for all cars on the road would be about 48 mpg
(4.9 Ihk) in the year 2000. If there were 112
65