The 65 mpg Ford the U.S. Can't Have

By John S.
in The Neobahn

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

chrisj1968

Posted
Posted
Yet how many micro-cars are sold in the UK?

Further, micros in the UK are distinctly classed differently than even subcompacts, and so are regulated differently. Also, aren't most speed-governed (in fact, aren't most vehicles in the EU speed-governed, primarily due to much higher fuel prices)?

No. US servicemen who want to convert their BMW's from German Specs to US spend more than the cars worth to convert, the windshield, headlights and tachometer. then you have to have a govenor installed to keep the car down to US speeds.

US cars couldn't handle the autobahn speeds and died very easily due to the speeds on them.

Enthusiast

FredEx

Posted
Posted
Also, what about crash-worthiness?

In order for Ford to be able to build (or import) the vehicle into the US, the car must meet crash-worthiness standards. (The Japanese ulta-minis are highly successful in Japan; however, none are available in the US for safety reasons; it's also why the original Mitsubishi Lancer and Nissan Skyline were never imported into the US.)

Fuel-efficient vehicles have issues when it comes to crash-worthiness (historically, subcompact cars as a class have the *worst* insurance rates among non-high-performance vehicles, while SUVs and pickups have some of the best such rates). Also, at least in North America, fuel is cheaper compared to the EU and Japan.

Data point: the GMC Typhoon, the fastest production SUV ever built, remains cheaper to insure than a Chevrolet Camaro or Pontiac Firebird of the same year, despite actually being faster.

Safety often trumps fuel-efficiency, at least in North America.

They already said they are going to have a gas version in the US, so obviously it meets the standards. In my opinion they are idiots for not building diesels in the us or Mexico for our market.

Veteran

Express

Posted
Posted

On caveat of using Diesel is that even the most efficient Diesel engine causes more pollution than Gasoline (petrol) driven engines.

Introduction of Low sulfer diesel will helps a little but Diesel engines have a way to go before becoming more environmentally friendly.

Enthusiast

FredEx

Posted
Posted
No. US servicemen who want to convert their BMW's from German Specs to US spend more than the cars worth to convert, the windshield, headlights and tachometer. then you have to have a govenor installed to keep the car down to US speeds.

US cars couldn't handle the autobahn speeds and died very easily due to the speeds on them.

Never heard of the governor thing. That doesn't make sense when I could buy a car here that could do 180 MPH plus (about 290 KPH) and many that could easily do Autobahn speeds. I often take my 1999 Chevy Lumina 4 door rather than my wife's 2007 Toyota Camry on long trips since my car gets better mileage...I have a heavy foot and drive 80+ MPH on the interstates when I go to Texas (1200 miles away). Been doing it once a year for years now and so far the ole 3.1 L V6 hasn't blown up yet...146,000 miles on it.

Grand Master

kombolcha

Posted
Posted
Never heard of the governor thing. That doesn't make sense when I could buy a car here that could do 180 MPH plus (about 290 KPH) and many that could easily do Autobahn speeds. I often take my 1999 Chevy Lumina 4 door rather than my wife's 2007 Toyota Camry on long trips since my car gets better mileage...I have a heavy foot and drive 80+ MPH on the interstates when I go to Texas (1200 miles away). Been doing it once a year for years now and so far the ole 3.1 L V6 hasn't blown up yet...146,000 miles on it.

this reminds me, there used to be a time i think the early or late 80's GM used to make powerful 3+ litre V6 engines that averaged 20+ MPG

they disappeared suddenly, even chrysler had made a few small I4 turbo engines.

Grand Master

chrisj1968

Posted
Posted
No. Look up OPEC it's not just the US- move on.

my statement should read that oil companies are not opec. the oil companies and those damn speculators are the reason for the high gas prices.

Never heard of the governor thing. That doesn't make sense when I could buy a car here that could do 180 MPH plus (about 290 KPH) and many that could easily do Autobahn speeds. I often take my 1999 Chevy Lumina 4 door rather than my wife's 2007 Toyota Camry on long trips since my car gets better mileage...I have a heavy foot and drive 80+ MPH on the interstates when I go to Texas (1200 miles away). Been doing it once a year for years now and so far the ole 3.1 L V6 hasn't blown up yet...146,000 miles on it.

yes. German BMW's can really rip. more so then their counter parts. I knew of a good colleague who did that once with a BMW he owned. that was a major thing for those who owned BMW 500-700 series. those cats romp baby.

Grand Master

zeta_immersion

Posted
Posted

what i don't get is why doesn't the government (or a company for that matter) .. make a car (on something other than petrol/diesel) and sell it ...? ... and why is the government so against smaller cars with better mileage ? ... why not research fuel based on algae(we have plenty of those) .... i mean there are so many otehr options than gas ... sun for example ...

Grand Master

MR_Candyman

Posted
Posted
what i don't get is why doesn't the government (or a company for that matter) .. make a car (on something other than petrol/diesel) and sell it ...? ... and why is the government so against smaller cars with better mileage ? ... why not research fuel based on algae(we have plenty of those) .... i mean there are so many otehr options than gas ... sun for example ...

Why would the government start a car business? The only one that made sense was volkswagen, but that was a different situation entirely. How is the government against small cars with good mileage? They aren't. Do you realise just how MUCH algae would have to be grown to satisfy demand if everybody drove a car requiring it? FAR more than can be produced. Solar power technology doesn't yield enough power to actually be feasible yet. The ONLY instance I've seen of it being a good solution is a solar powered yacht popular science had an article on where the solar powers were "wings" and could be positioned to catch the wind to propel it. That is the ONLY feasible implementation of solar power I've seen in a vehicle for long term use using the current technology. In order to use solar power in cars we'd need MUCH better batteries and much better solar cells.

Grand Master

Fred Derf Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
Never heard of the governor thing. That doesn't make sense when I could buy a car here that could do 180 MPH plus (about 290 KPH) and many that could easily do Autobahn speeds. I often take my 1999 Chevy Lumina 4 door rather than my wife's 2007 Toyota Camry on long trips since my car gets better mileage...I have a heavy foot and drive 80+ MPH on the interstates when I go to Texas (1200 miles away). Been doing it once a year for years now and so far the ole 3.1 L V6 hasn't blown up yet...146,000 miles on it.

If you go to a private track where no speed limits exist then try to get your car to do 180MPH. Chances are that it will be artificially limited to a lower speed even if the engine is capable of much more.

Grand Master

SoCalledChaos

Posted
Posted
Never heard of the governor thing. That doesn't make sense when I could buy a car here that could do 180 MPH plus (about 290 KPH) and many that could easily do Autobahn speeds. I often take my 1999 Chevy Lumina 4 door rather than my wife's 2007 Toyota Camry on long trips since my car gets better mileage...I have a heavy foot and drive 80+ MPH on the interstates when I go to Texas (1200 miles away). Been doing it once a year for years now and so far the ole 3.1 L V6 hasn't blown up yet...146,000 miles on it.

Most cars in the 1990's up to now have Governors.

I guarantee that your wife's 2007 Camry wont go above 110 MPH, same goes for the Lumina.

  • 3 weeks later...
Grand Master

+Gary7 Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted
Most cars in the 1990's up to now have Governors.

I guarantee that your wife's 2007 Camry wont go above 110 MPH, same goes for the Lumina.

I own a 2000 Acura TL and it does not have a governor or any type of speed restriction device. I have had it way over 110MPH.

Veteran

+Fulcrum Subscriber¹

Posted
  • Subscriber¹
Posted

I didn't read any replies to this, and just read the part of the article that lies to everyone "Ford's cost-benefit analysis doesn't show them capable of making a profit in the USA with the Fiesta...", I believe it, because Ford is run by a bunch of neenkamputs. But honestly, this is all a red herring, there's soo many Gasoline Lobbyists in America and THAT is the reason they don't want to bring it here is, as Exxon is already paying Ford enough money to keep it out of the states.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • The Trump administration doesn't want you to use OpenAI's GPT-5.6 without its approval

      By excalpius · Posted

      Ignoring the fact that this "colony" kicked the empire of King George's arse during those early years... You are confusing the First Industrial Revolution (which was clearly pulled out of some butt-hurt Brit historian's arse after the fact) with the Second Industrial Revolution (aka now called the Technological Revolution, undoubtedly by that same butt-hurt Brit), which transitioned the world from the UK/UPS Empire to the USA as the world's only superpower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution I hope you realize that I am having big fun here.
    • OpenAI announces GPT‑5.6 Sol, its next-generation flagship model beating Claude Mythos 5

      By pradeepviswav · Posted

      OpenAI announces GPT‑5.6 Sol, its next-generation flagship model beating Claude Mythos 5 by Pradeep Viswanathan Credit: OpenAI OpenAI today announced a limited preview of its new GPT-5.6 model series, which includes the Sol, Terra, and Luna models targeting different price points. GPT-5.6 Sol is the flagship model targeted at demanding reasoning and agentic workloads. GPT-5.6 Terra is positioned as a balanced model for everyday work, featuring performance competitive with GPT-5.5 while being half the cost. GPT-5.6 Luna is the fastest and most affordable model, delivering strong capability at a lower price point. Unlike previous model releases from OpenAI, GPT-5.6 is starting with a limited preview for a small group of trusted partners due to U.S. government restrictions. As expected, OpenAI previewed its plans and the models' capabilities to the U.S. government ahead of launch, and the government asked OpenAI to limit the first wave of access to select partners. OpenAI also mentioned in the official announcement blog post that it does not believe this type of government access process should become the long-term default. OpenAI highlighted that GPT-5.6 Sol comes with a robust safety stack featuring improved protections for higher-risk activity, sensitive cyber requests, and repeated misuse. The company also spent several weeks pressure-testing the system and hardening it against real-world attacks. On the capability side, as expected, GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI’s strongest model yet. It delivers better results in agentic performance across coding, biology, and cybersecurity. On the Terminal-Bench 2.1 benchmark, which tests command-line workflows requiring planning, iteration, and tool coordination, GPT-5.6 Sol sets a new record with a score of 91.9%, beating Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5. Additionally, GPT-5.6 introduces a new "max" reasoning effort for even deeper reasoning. The new "ultra" mode uses subagents to accelerate complex work beyond what a single agent can handle. Pricing starts at $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens for Sol. Terra costs $2.50 for input and $15 for output, while Luna costs $1 for input and $6 for output. GPT-5.6 comes with more predictable prompt caching, including support for explicit cache breakpoints and a 30-minute minimum cache life. Sol will also launch on Cerebras in July at speeds up to 750 tokens per second for select customers. OpenAI plans to make GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna broadly available in ChatGPT, Codex, and the API in the coming weeks.
    • The Trump administration doesn't want you to use OpenAI's GPT-5.6 without its approval

      By monterxz · Posted

      I'm not sure if you are trolling because I saw people saying this with the straight face, but there were no United States of America when industrial revolution started, just United Colonies 🤣 p.s. I'm not British, so I'm not offended.
    • Firefox 152.0.3

      By James W. · Posted

      Glad I uninstalled this incredibly buggy browser. Looking at that changelog, they clearly don't test their updates at all.
    • UniGetUI 2026.2.2

      By Copernic · Posted

      UniGetUI 2026.2.2 by Razvan Serea UniGetUI is an application whose main goal is to create an intuitive GUI for the most common CLI package managers for Windows 10 and Windows 11, such as Winget, Scoop and Chocolatey. With UniGetUI, you'll be able to download, install, update and uninstall any software that's published on the supported package managers — and so much more. UniGetUI features Install, update and remove software from your system easily at one click: UniGetUI combines the packages from the most used package managers for windows: WinGet, Chocolatey, Scoop, Pip, Npm and .NET Tool. Discover new packages and filter them to easily find the package you want. View detailed metadata about any package before installing it. Get the direct download URL or the name of the publisher, as well as the size of the download. Easily bulk-install, update or uninstall multiple packages at once selecting multiple packages before performing an operation Automatically update packages, or be notified when updates become available. Skip versions or completely ignore updates in a per-package basis. Manage your available updates at the touch of a button from the Widgets pane or from Dev Home pane with UniGetUI Widgets. The system tray icon will also show the available updates and installed package, to efficiently update a program or remove a package from your system. Easily customize how and where packages are installed. Select different installation options and switches for each package. Install an older version or force to install a 32bit architecture. [But don't worry, those options will be saved for future updates for this package] Share packages with your friends to show them off that program you found. Here is an example: Hey @friend, Check out this program! Export custom lists of packages to then import them to another machine and install those packages with previously-specified, custom installation parameters. Setting up machines or configuring a specific software setup has never been easier. Backup your packages to a local file to easily recover your setup in a matter of seconds when migrating to a new machine Devolutions UniGetUI 2026.2.2 changelog: This release marks the completion of UniGetUI's migration from WinUI to Avalonia. With the remaining WinUI components and dependencies now removed, UniGetUI is fully powered by Avalonia. This update also brings Windows 11 Snap Layouts support, refined styling throughout the application, improved log viewing, new illustrations, and significantly smaller release packages. Highlights Further refined the Avalonia user interface to better match WinUI styling and behavior across package lists, navigation elements, dialogs, and controls. Added support for Windows 11 Snap Layouts when hovering the maximize button, matching the behavior of native Windows applications. Added illustrations for empty and loading package list states, improving visual feedback throughout the application. Improved the operation log window so automatic scrolling no longer interrupts users when reviewing previous log entries. Reduced installer and application package sizes, resulting in smaller downloads and a significantly leaner Windows distribution. User Interface Improvements Improved package list styling, column headers, backgrounds, hover states, and selection indicators for a more polished and consistent experience. Refined sidebar navigation and segmented controls to better align with modern Windows design patterns. Improved package tag badges and icon presentation throughout the application. Updated several labels, placeholders, and interface elements for improved clarity and consistency. Removed the remaining WinUI-specific styling dependencies, further consolidating the application around Avalonia. Windows Improvements Added native Windows 11 Snap Layouts integration for the maximize button. Improved maximize button hover and pressed visual states to more closely match native Windows behavior. Performance & Reliability Reduced the size of Windows release packages by removing unnecessary runtime dependencies and optimizing published builds. Reduced installer size through improved compression settings. Simplified application dependencies and reduced overall maintenance complexity. Fixes Fixed log output auto-scrolling behavior when manually reviewing previous entries. Resolved various UI inconsistencies and styling issues across the Avalonia interface. Addressed several minor issues and edge cases throughout the application. Other Changes Dependency cleanup and project maintenance. Internal code refactoring and infrastructure improvements. Additional test coverage and build pipeline optimizations. Download: UniGetUI 64-bit | Portable | ~90.0 MB (Open Source) Download: UniGetUI ARM64 | Portable Links: UniGetUI Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware

  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      tuben earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • First Post
      OffsetAbs earned a badge
      First Post
    • Reacting Well
      OffsetAbs earned a badge
      Reacting Well

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      441
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      197
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      154
    4. 4
      FloatingFatMan
      71
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      67
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!