Water Carriers
Michael Grunwald at Time is trying his level best to carry water for Obama by "debunking" the Republican slaps at Obama's tire pressure advice.
But who's really out of touch? The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.
Here's something I doubt you'll see in the major, water-carrying media. Want to improve your gas mileage by about 4.5 percent?
Use regular gas without ethanol.
My car is driven 100 miles each day. The car has an instrument package that calculates mileage (which I have checked with manual calculations. It is accurate.). When I was burning "cheaper" ethanol blended gas I got 26.5 mpg (10% ethanol blend is cheaper by about 10 cents per gallon where I live – that is not always the case). A while back, I switched to running straight regular gas. The results?
27.7 mpg. A bit better than a 4.5% improvement. I do keep my engine tuned up and the tires inflated properly. Is this a huge improvement? No, but it adds up. And I rather doubt you will ever read that from the water – or ethanol – carriers in the MSM.
Uncategorized | Gaius August 5, 2008
Other Links to this Post
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Andrea Mitchell Carries Obama’s Water…Again! « Thespis Journal — August 6, 2008 @ 9:20 pm
By Hrothgar, August 5, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
Where, pray tell, can you get real gas these days?
By Gaius, August 6, 2008 @ 3:27 am
It isn’t available in some areas.
By bill-tb, August 6, 2008 @ 6:53 am
I have a similar computer, I also calibrated it manually. I lost an average of 6% mpg with E-10. It’s all we can buy locally, but it’s not mandatory. The last fillup, the zoom came back and so did the mileage, must not have had enough crap E-10 gas to go around recently.