Hot answers tagged cars
51
If you asked about Nickel Metal Hybrid batteries, the answer would be extremely easy. A large amount of studies have been done with these, usually concluding that they have lifespan comparable to those internal combustion engine vehicles. To cite the 100,000-Mile Evaluation of the Toyota RAV4 EV study,
The five-vehicle test is demonstrating the ...
43
This calculation is pretty much worst-case for the bicycle. It doesn't take into account that food production has actually stored CO2 from the atmosphere which is now just released back, while fuel was originally underground and its CO2 is added to the carbon cycle. Neither does it take into account mercury/other emissions, nor the wear-and-tear in cars and ...
34
No.
Wiki on this myth.
California's efforts to debunk this myth HERE
Synopsis: follow the manual's recommended oil change schedule, not the 3,000 mile recommendation that has become commonplace advice.
To translate that into some figures, I looked around for publicly available service manuals (just a few as I don't want to take all my time with ...
34
In the EU, speedometers are not allowed to display a speed that is lower than the speed the vehicle is traveling. Manufacturers calibrate speedometers to comply with this regulation as they would not be allowed to sell their cars if they did not.
Reference - EU Regulations for Speedometers (75/443/EEC)
The speed indicated must never be less than the ...
32
It looks like modern cars really are better when you adjust for survival bias
My subjective impression is that modern cars are much more reliable than older cars. But I can see one reason why fans of classic cars might disagree with this impression and it is one of those factors that can seriously bias someone's' perception. It is simply that any old car ...
27
From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - TOP 10 Myths o Lightning Safety:
Lightning laughs at two inches of rubber!
Most cars are reasonably safe from lightning. But it’s the metal
roof and metal sides that protect you, not the rubber tires.
Thus convertibles, motorcycles, bicycles, open
shelled outdoor recreational ...
26
It comes down to a few factors. I'll answer from a US perspective.
Lack of infrastructure1. Could the US power grid sustain the charging of millions of electric cars? One article says so3, but this paper disagrees. Also, individual home electric systems simply aren't built to charge electric cars, which require massive currents (80 to 100 amps) to do so. ...
24
According to HowStuffWorks' page on How Remote Entry Works:
The fob that you carry on your keychain or use to open the garage door is actually a small radio transmitter. When you push a button on the fob, you turn on the transmitter and it sends a code to the receiver (either in the car or in the garage). Inside the car or garage is a radio receiver ...
22
Is formaldehyde the sole source of the 'new car smell'? No.
It's more than likely the combined smell of the VOC's (of which formaldehyde is one) emitting from the interior, as there's over a dozen VOC's which are present.
Brown, Stephen K and Min Cheng, 2007. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in New Car Interiors
They found that the amount of VOCs ...
22
No
Once upon a time on old car engines this was required, and piston engined aircraft warm up because they stress their engines to the maximum as the first thing they do. But this is no longer necessary for modern cars. The recommended warmup time vary between 15 seconds and three minutes.
Canadian Department of Natural Resources:
Contrary to popular ...
20
While it's obvious, as @Adam Davis points out, that complex products, like cars, are not manufactured in a single day, it may still be of interest when critical parts of the car, such as safety belts, were installed, if Mondays and Fridays are bad days for manufacturing.
Statistics for manufacturing quality per weekday are hard to come by. However, if low ...
19
The short answer is yes, electric cars are about 4x as efficient as fossil-fuelled combustion engines, tank-to-wheel: ICE engine efficiency is around 20%. Electric engines tend to be around 80-90%. And the fuel prices in the article are tank prices, so tank-to-wheel is the right measure in this case. If you were interested in the whole-cycle energy ...
18
There are a few things at work here:
Safety requirements and standards are much more strict now than they were 10, 15, or 20 years ago. These added components (such as ABS, etc) along with modern luxuries (such as power steering, etc) have added a lot of weight to modern cars. The Geo Metro you reference had a curb weight of just 820kg (about 1800 lbs), ...
18
There are two very obvious reasons that higher speeds can reduce gas mileage:
1) drag and wind resistance: the faster you go the more the wind pushes back. Drag force scales with the square of velocity IIRC (and to overcome that force factors as a cube of the velocity) ( see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29 )
2) vehicle tuning: cars get the ...
17
According to a page on rubbernecking from the UK's Highways Agency:
Congestion caused by incidents is a significant cause of delay on the Strategic Road Network. In many cases, incidents can cause secondary congestion on the opposite carriageway due to road users slowing down to look at the incident scene (known as 'rubbernecking').
The Agency believes ...
17
Mythbusters visited this topic in both episode 22 and episode 38:
Episide 22
PARTLY CONFIRMED *
Tests were performed under varying conditions (55 mph versus 45 mph). The 55 mph test used a computer to estimate fuel efficiency based on air intake, not actual fuel consumption, and showed A/C was more efficient. The 45 mph test consisted of running ...
16
Passengers inside a steel bodied car are protected from lightning because the car behaves like a 'Faraday Cage'. When lighting hits the car it wants to take the shortest path with the least resistance to ground. That is via the body shell and not via the occupants.
This was demonstrated several years ago on the BBC entertainment show 'Top Gear' where they ...
15
I think this phenomenon is explained by a simple economics rationale:
Manufacturers compete on price, but have to control quality to a chosen fixed standard. For example, It's extremely rare to buy a new car that doesn't start. Cars are clearly quality checked for safety and their parts are made to last at least as long an the warranty. A company would lose ...
15
Is it possible to detect a laptop inside of a car boot?
Generally speaking, having equipment like used for example by Customs and Border Protection, you can. I'm not sure though if that would be in common thieves' league.
[...] thieves used an inductive amplifier to detect the wires inside of a laptop.
No, that is not possible. Each of the ...
15
The "heater" in your car does not actually generate heat itself. It actually takes the heat generated by the engine and passes that back through your cabin rather than venting it outside. So neither heaters nor winter will increase CO2 emissions.
Californians use approximately 1.8 billion liters (472 million gallons) of fuel each year running car air ...
14
Did a quick look at Amazon and a few other places on this device. Both the EPA and Consumer Reports mark this as a scam device. Many of the EPA reports were commissioned by the FTC, and conclude:
EPA judged that there was no technical basis or appropriate test data to support the claims for a fuel economy improvement or emission reduction due to the ...
14
[An aside, before I start: I think your question about the mechanism is a reasonable one, but I trust your skepticism, upon gathering more evidence, will lead you to provisionally accepting the evidence of a peer-reviewed controlled scientific experiment over a gut feel, if it turns out that the study holds it own! In particular, it doesn't take many drivers ...
14
Renault publish sales figures but only back to 2007.
Automobiles Review concur with Top Gear, stating that, in July 1984:
Commercial launch in France with only nine sales in first month and 2,427 sold in the year.
While they don't cite sources, note the additional full year figure, which suggests they did not source this information from Top Gear ...
14
Yes, older cars used mechanical odometers, which go forward or backwards, depending on which way the gears are turned. Modern cars use electronic odometers. I couldn't find anything indicating over what time period this changed. It was well before my time behind the wheel, though.
I also found a January 1961 article from Popular Science Magazine on the ...
13
Reliable source for this answer: Me. I've been involved in traffic and public transportation politics for years (although I stopped ten years ago). I'll try to find other reliable sources too if I can and have time. :-)
If you have a congestion problem there are a bunch of different things you can do about it. The thing that is most natural: Add an extra ...
13
On this claim, Snopes says
While a mixture of raw egg and water
vigorously stirred together in a glass
will produce a somewhat milky-looking
liquid (which might be the source of
this tale), there's nothing about the
interaction of egg and water that
renders the resulting combination into
a substance guaranteed to completely
block a ...
13
source
Let me oppose science to political propaganda and flyers:
Objectives. We evaluated the protective effectiveness of speed humps in reducing child pedestrian injuries in residential neighborhoods.
Methods. We conducted a matched case–control study over a 5-year period among children seen in a pediatric emergency department after being struck ...
12
No it's not true, although a lot of people drive faster than they should.
On motorways in 2009, 52 per cent of cars exceeded the 70 mph speed limit. In addition, 16 per cent of cars were recorded as travelling at 80 mph or faster.
—source
In response to your edit: the majority of people drive below 80mph. only 1 in 6 drives at 80mph or over.
12
This was tested and busted by Mythbusters.
It is also listed as urban legend / email hoax by About.com.
The signals emitted by the car remote are mainly radio signals with a frequency of 315MHz in the US and Japan and 433.92MHz (ISM band) in Europe as explained in Requirements of Remote Keyless Entry (RKE) Systems. An alternative are infrared remotes which ...
12
No.
In general, elderly drivers account for fewer accidents, as you correctly pointed out in your question. However, as age increases, fatality rate increases drastically.
Between April 2001 and March 2002, the
rate of fatal crash involvement per
100 miles driven for older drivers was
higher than any other age group
besides teenagers (See graph ...
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