I’ve never been one to believe in grand conspiracies, but sometimes, I might consider something and see what’s really behind its motivation. The topic of the automotive industry and fuel efficient cars will have me ranting for hours. It’s not that bad, but it’s a serious issue for me. As gas prices started to approach the $4 gallon mark, people aren’t dismissing the conspiracy theory and my ranting as quickly as they used to.

this is totally wrong

If you take a look at the miles per gallon, or MPG, of an American production vehicle, it falls somewhere in the ballpark of government averages. When the government raises the requirements for CAFE, automakers also raise the miles per gallon that their vehicles are capable of carrying for the consumer. They complain about it all the time because the general public is used to acceptable fuel economy standards and the benefits of it. Now the car companies have to try to give us the fuel economy and the big improvements. They can do it, they just don’t like it.

Consider that a Honda Civic (1984 model) that was famous for getting 64 MPG on the highway did not have fuel injectors installed. It did not have a computer system that would allow the regulation of the systems. It simply had a carburetor which is a device that has tubes designed in an hourglass shape to mix the correct amount of fuel and air.

Why then is the compression ratio lower than it used to be?

This is probably the question you are asking yourself. The answer is simple and, at the same time, complicated. Octane is the amount of fuel a vehicle will burn. On gasoline pumps, the numbers listed on these different grades of fuel are the octane numbers. Many people just ignore them because they don’t know what they mean. Octane ratings range from 87 to 93 depending on the altitude at which you live. The higher the octane rating, the more the air-fuel mixture is compressed. In 1966, premium gasoline had an octane rating of 107. This is what allowed the 1984 Honda Civic to get the gas mileage it did.

No more leaded fuel, now what!

If you go to Wikipedia and search for octane ratings, you will find the octane ratings listed for each type of fuel. You’ll see that methanol and E85 have ratings well above the 105 range. This is a big number. This means that if an engine were created to burn these types of fuel, the compression ratio would be substantially higher and the mileage per gallon and horsepower of the vehicle would also increase. Emissions would be lower than before. Vehicles, or flex-fuel cars, built to run on E85 fuel and some on methane still have lower compression ratios and no benefits are felt. Most of the time, when premium gasoline is used in a vehicle, there is hardly any change to be felt.

What can be done?

If you haven’t gotten the idea, let me give it to you again. Automakers are only going to give consumers the minimum requirements that the government requires and nothing more. It will require the public to take matters into their own hands and work for the government and big corporations to change life and new technology. There are many things we can do or experience. You can modify your vehicle to run on methanol or E85. You may only get a moderate improvement in your miles per gallon, but this will help the environment. For those that have diesel engines, vegetable oil can be used as biodiesel and for regular gasoline vehicles, a new water electrolyser can be installed to take the HHO gas from regular water and use it as fuel.