Extreme fuel efficency competetion nets 3587 mpg

[Stubby]

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/04/ ... 7-mpg-car/

Not very practical but shows what can be done on a tight budget.
World record is 8914 mpg by the French.

I remember an episode of Junkyard wars where they had to build fuel efficient vehicles. The end results were quite interesting given they had 24 hours to build them.
Winning vehicle got 178 mpg.

[kunkmiester]

These competitions need to require the vehicle to have minimum usable volume and mass amounts--Say you have to have enough volume to hold at least two people, whatever that would be, and carry at least 500lbs of ballast to simulate having people and stuff in the car. And be able to go over a speed bump.

It's not of much use otherwise, even if it can hit 60 on the highway.

[Stubby]

This was the prototype division.
There are other divisions.

It may not be practical as is but it does show what can be done to achieve superior efficiency. Such thinking you would hope translates to the auto industry.

[GIThruster]

There's nothing to translate. It's an extremely low friction vehicle operating at 15 MPH. Got nothing to do with driving a real car in real world conditions. This is just optimizing lessons learned back in the 1970's with a lawnmower engine, which even itself is not particularly efficient. And in fact, the design was stollen from the solar challenger driven across Australia on solar 20 years ago, IIRC.

[chrismb]

People who know better than the reality of Prius (with its electric 'defeat' device to overcome the emissions tests) and are NOT impressed by it are, instead, typically more impressed by the best of european diesels.

One can BUY this car in the shops right now - quite a good deal on at the moment for this one, too:

Try 130mpg, in a REAL 5 seater car...

http://www.caradvice.com.au/118704/skod ... k-of-fuel/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdB3J2yLoYI