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Originally Posted by UT-Engineer
Again, this too is mentioned in the film. The agrument there was that the oil companies have politcal ties with congress and further up the chain... so as much as people cry out to their congress men and women, nothing ever gets done about high gas prices becasue the oil companies have bought their way with the political powers above. There is a stat on the political contributions oil companies have made over the past few years... its in the Millions for both democratic and republican politicans.
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Contrast that against the tens (probably hundreds) of billions spent by GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, and all the other automakers on fuel saving tech over the last ~35 years.
It would be a whole lot cheaper for each one of them to assign a team of a dozen engineers for a few months to alter the design of those bought up patents enough to claim their version is 'unique' vs say spending a billion and a half on the Volt which doesn't even get the claimed mileage of these miracle inventions.
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Originally Posted by ffrcobra_65
Do some of us really think that men found a way to go to the moon, create TiVo, but can't produce a 100mpg combustion engine?
What do you think will happen to the world if someone was actually allowed to publicize an engine that can do that? The application of such invention/technology is almost limitless. We are not just talking cars. A lof of companies will break down, countries will perish.
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I bet there is a significant overlap between the people who believe 100 mpg internal combustion engines are being supressed
and believe that man has never walked on the moon ...
As for the consequences of using less oil ... if that was such a gigantic concern, why in the world would the CAFE laws have ever been passed? Their explicit goal is to use less oil, specifically oil imported from the middle east, which are the very nations who are dependant on the stuff for their economic well being. So the very basis for the conspiracy is undermined by CAFE laws. Think about it for a minute ... how in the world does it make any sense for there to be some group than can keep an invention away from an industry with a global revenue of over a trillion dollars annually (the auto industry), yet somehow can't stop a pair of agencies with a combined budget of less than $10B (NHTSA & EPA). How can it be that a 'patent protected device' isn't copied by nations like China who are well known for blatantly disregarding patents? They clone entire cars & ignore complaints from the original manufacturer. Yet they somehow overlook decades old inventions that would allow them to dominate the automotive industry?
Sure, its nice to believe that our cars are inefficient because there's a conspiracy against us. Fact of the matter is that the suck, squeeze, bang, blow cycle of an internal combustion engine has limits to how much energy it can extract from the burning of fuel. You can't just triple the efficiency with a magic carburetor or any other device.
To me, the belief in these technological conspiracys is an insult to my chosen profession (engineering). If they're true, then that means that every single automotive engineer, whether they work at an OEM, a supplier, or in the aftermarket, is incompetent. That includes the entire Camaro team & ones who contribute on Camaro5 like Number 3 and Camero.