Here’s another thing that really is holding these things back. The push in recent year to go from large displacement naturally aspirated engines to smaller turbocharged engines in the name of fuel economy seems to have accomplished the goal…on paper. In the real world, we’ve gone backwards. While this isn’t a “dieselgate” level of deception, there has been a bit of a lie the auto industry has been forced to put on everyone. On the EPA test loop, these modern vehicles with small turbo engines do yield better numbers than the natural aspirated larger engines they replaced. So the number on the window sticker is higher and they get to raise their CAFE number and keep the governments off their back for another year. And of course other little tricks like the auto start/stop system that everyone hates, ultra lean burn fuel timing at low throttle (like how someone drives rhe EPA loop), low rolling resistance tires, and so on…I know Honda does a particularly trick thing with a staged electronic regulation of turbo boost in lower gears. In the real world, people don’t drive like how they do on the test loop. Much heavier footed, which gets the turbo into boost much more often. Auto stop gets turned the hell off immediately as soon as most people start the car, so there goes another maybe 1mpg you lose.
Case in point? Let’s take those Acuras again. Our ‘21 Acuras have 2.0L turbo four engines. Roughly the same horsepower (but more torque) than the stalwart 3.5L natural V6 they replaced. A V6 I had in my ‘18 TLX and is still under the hood of my mother’s ‘18 RDX. So a generation newer vehicle with fancy 10 speed automatics compared to last generation with bigger V6s and less gears…I got 2mpg better with my old TLX and 1mpg better with the old RDX.
