Good new for ICE extended life.

What has the Big-3 been doing for the last 50+ years with their steady 20 mpg vehicles.

It seems that a mid-size ICE vehicle could do 50+ mpg if all known technologies were fully and properly integrated.

Nothing new here. I even drove a Honda Civic CVCC back in the 1970s. I must say it was a piece of sh_t. It was bought new, blew a head gasket at 50,000 miles.

With Tank to Wheel efficiency, currently between 15% and 20%, there is lot of room for future improvmemts.

How much has it really been improved over to last 30 years?...60 years?...90 years?

Couldn't all the affordable new techniques be applied to double the current ICE vehicles overall efficiency?

A 40+ mpg mid-size affordable ICE vehicle should be possible to build without too many compromises.

A 60+ mpg affordable mid-size HEV is also a short term possibility.

Bailouts carrots may help to convince manufacturers to do more.

Harvey D,

The ICE has been steadily improved at a rate of 5.3% a year compounded since at least the early Seventies. And more before. See GCC pages
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/04/looking_back_pr.html

Wringing out these improvements has taken $billions of dollars spent by the World's automakers. They are approaching the last theoretical improvements possible when HCCI arrives, in a few years. To set the stage for that eventuality, most of the enabling technologies, engine control via computerized electronics, turbocharging, DOHC, VVT engines, with GDI, and variable EGR are in place. Each such improvemnt has cost lots of time and money. The last obstacle, reasonable cost, high pressure, fast acting GDI injectors, with long lives and high reliability, are only now arriving on the scene.

The stage is set for HCCI, and hybridization, especially Series hybridization, will maximize the portion of the performance spectrum that HCCI enables.

Governments, emisions and AGW ranters, and safety critics heretofor have merely mandated that the automakers spend on their pet wishes. Without any regard to the costs involved. Any attempt to bring rationality to the scheduel discussion, was transformed into malicious intent and regarded as a desire to kill their customers.

But now they will have to accept the fact that they have bled the automakers too much. If they want more, on a faster, unreasonable schedule, they will have to pay for it themselves.

This novel idea has brought some semblance of reality and sanity back to the most ardent automotive critics.

The average auto exhaust of a new car in LA is BETTER than the average ambient air quality. Stop and think what that statement means. We have come an awfully long way toward cleaning up ICE emission, with only a little more to do. Diesel engines, even when they start arriving in greater numbers, with T2B5 emissions levels mandated for next year, will still need another generation of tightening to achieve T2B3 or better cleanliness. That is still only a mop-up operation, at most.

But there is little necessity to achieve this on a crash basis, any longer. We in the USA alone, among the world's countries, have come so far along the way. By 2025 maybe Europe can catch up and join us.

In practice when given an alternative, most people will not purchase "A" or even smaller "B" segment vehicles. They do so now only because their governments acting "for their own good" force them to seek better fuel economy. I fail to see the difference in whether gouging is performed by government bureaucrat or Oil Shiek, it's stillgouging. It has certainly not resulted in better air quality in the EU. If anything it has gotten worse, with diesel stink and the carcinogens implied, ever more prevalent.

The AGW religious believers do not understand Technology, and think they can just make a wish, and the engineers will produce their desires. Nonsense.

Up to now, better fuel economy, has only been possible by severe downsizing. But not for much longer.
But now that family mid-size cars like the Prius and Ford Fusion, using even primitive hybridization, can achieve 40+ mpg and the EREVs will double that, these tiny cars have little future.

The automotive scene will most certainly be transformed in the next decade.

For what it's worth, the Tata Nano (if that's what you are thinking of) doesn't get fantastic mileage, and has not a hope of meeting safety standards in ANY western country, and even if it did, is so basic that scarcely any person in a western country would want one. Given that this vehicle is intended to replace a small motorcycle, and takes up more space on the road and will therefore lead to more congestion, one questions whether this is really progress ... (by the way, my 2007 Honda CBR125R has closed-loop fuel injection and 3-way catalyst, so don't get on me about motorcycles being "dirty", they don't have to be!)

The upcoming Toyota IQ might be more acceptable and useful in western countries, but let's see how the fuel consumption is going to be.

As for the ESStor supercapacitor ... call me a skeptic, but let's see a workable demonstration powertrain before demanding that they be across-the-board in every vehicle. Just because there's a patent, doesn't mean it works. I hope it does, for all the issues they have I recognize that electric is the long-term solution, but all I've heard of regarding ESStor is vaporware.

"provides 17% efficiency improvement"
Not quite.
This swirl chamber system is CLAIMED to have "experimentally shown" that it "can" deliver a 17% reduction in fuel consumption with a 7% increase in power compared to a "conventional" 1.6-liter port-injected engine.
Empty words.
What has the Big-3 been doing, indeed.
"Buy stock in Istanbul Technical University (ITU)? Because, if they can ..." ?
No, safer to buy pork futures (for when they fly ...).