Automotive woo
From RationalWiki
Automotive woo is the promotion of certain goods and services that ostensibly improve one's driving experience but are not founded in science. Though this fact rarely ever stops the petrol heads from trying it anyway.
Examples:
- Special spark plugs make your car run better:
- Actually, new spark plugs often make your car run better. The correct ones make it run best.
- A quart of magic goo will clean and preserve your engine:
- This goo might as well be literal snake oil. Proper engine oil works best, and runs no risk of engine damage.
- Inflating your tires with nitrogen will
improve your sex lifedo some magical stuff:- Air is 78% nitrogen already; pure nitrogen won't help anything. The density of nitrogen is 1.25 g/L, air is 1.2 g/L. For all intents and purposes they are the same.
- Using premium grades of fuel will increase power:
- This applies if and only if your car is designed to run on premium; in that case, lower octane fuel will reduce your power and economy. Otherwise, "premium" just costs more for no benefit. Odds are, if your car isn't a muscle car, it's designed for regular gasoline.
- Send $20 and we'll send you blueprints for converting your car to run on nothing but water!
- You get some hypothetical BS; none of these actually work. You're better off sending that money to the ad underneath it selling instructions for building your own helicopter out of a lawn mower engine, or to the ad above it selling Sea Monkeys.
- A really big exhaust will make it go faster!
- Actually, we doubt even the boy racers themselves believe this one. Though it's fun to try and convince them that it works because it's like putting a bigger rocket on the back.
- Our fuel is better than their fuel because it's enhanced with (fill in the blank: nitrogen, our secret proprietary magic formula, some no-knock compound, magic pixie dust, a tiger)... etc. etc.:
- Doubtful unless the additive improves the octane rating, although even this has dubious benefits unless the car is designed to run on premium.
[edit] Fuel economy woo
A common form of automotive woo is fuel economy woo: devices that claim to improve fuel economy. It becomes more common during temporary spikes in prices of fuel (1974, 1980, 2008). Most vendors of these products also claim an increase of power "up to" some percentage.
Examples:
- Magnets on your fuel line will improve economy
- Little coils in the fuel line will improve economy
- A magic pill in your fuel tank will improve fuel economy
- Adding "HHO gas" (from an underhood electrolyser) to the intake will improve economy
- Homebrew "water injection" devices to add to your carburetor were promoted during the late 1970s "energy crisis", in such magazines as The Mother Earth News. The fuel economy improvement from these is so negligible, why bother?
[edit] Techniques that work
"Hypermiling" is the obsessive-compulsive practice of driving techniques to maximize fuel economy. While unlike any of the above this does improve fuel economy, sometimes radically, it can result in some dangerous driving practices. Hypermilers tend to be nuisances on the road, especially if they aren't paying attention to anything but obsessively trying to squeeze as much kilometreage as they can out of that last drop of petrol. Truck drivers are sick and tired of you four-wheelers drafting right behind them, so cut it out already.
There are much less expensive ways to improve fuel economy that don't demand any modification, nor any dangerous driving practices. Most of these are free:
- Check tire pressure regularly. It's harder to drive with limp tires than firm ones.
- Keep your engine "tuned" with appropriate maintenance intervals. This can help your engine remain efficient at converting fuel to motion.
- Drive slowly. Basic physics states that it takes more energy to accelerate to a higher speed, and the power required to overcome air resistance increases as the cube of velocity. Assuming you don't drive too slowly, you'll be safer, as well.
- Use the pedals gently. Accelerate slowly if possible, and get out of the lower gears as soon as possible. Coast down and brake gently if possible.
- Do not carry excess weight in your vehicle. Basic physics also dictates that lighter objects take less energy to accelerate to the same speed.
- Buy smaller, lighter vehicles with manual transmissions; again, lighter object, same acceleration, less energy used.
- Buy a newer model vehicle if possible, as developments in engine technology are delivering ever greater efficiency with no impact to the performance of the vehicle.
- There are plans out there for a way to set up a variable resistor in series with a mass air sensor, to make your engine run much leaner when not requiring much power. This is only for the technically proficient.
- And, the last, most effective thing you can do: Carpool. Having a passenger doubles your "people miles/gallon", or halves your "litres/100 km-people". Two passengers triples pm/g, and so on and so forth.
