All of this is so beside the point!
Clearly you kept saying "mostly safety and emissions" because you want to blame "big government" for bad things (grr, regulations!)
Straw-man. Thanks for the belly laugh. I'm quite happy the government mandates these types of things, or we might not have anything but spectacularly inefficient and polluting suicide machines you seem to favor.
Now that I found actual data that says otherwise you are looking for any technicalities to try to justify the original claim, even though it was based on political ideology to begin with.
LMAO "political ideology".
As to your "data". No, I'm not disagreeing with your data for "technicalities" or "politics". I'm saying your data is junk because it doesn't fit with reality for those of us that understand the manufacture of vehicles. And, it's pretty clearly committing a sin of statistics by not comparing apples to apples to determine how the composition of vehicles has changed.
So, let's do that, shall we? Let's compare a Honda civic from the early 80s to a Honda fit for sale on the lot today. Both vehicles are in the same class (compact vehicle), the same size, made for the same market segment, produced by the same maker, etc. Apples to Apples.
79-83 Civic (4 door):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_%28second_generation%29'16 Fit (4 door):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Fit#Third_generation_.282013.E2.80.93present.29Size (WxLxH in inches):
Civic: 62x161x53
Fit: 67x156x61
The fit is a bit wider and taller (inches) and the civic is a bit longer. In other words, neither is clearly larger or smaller based on dimensions. (We'll get to the small differences later)
How about the weight (max available):
Civic: 1,841lb
Fit: 2,381lb
A difference of 540lb
Drive Train:
Civic: FWD, Auto Trans, 1.5L inline four
Fit: FWD, Auto Trans, 1.5L inline four
(both cars still offer manual trans, which are lighter of course, but the delta between models is roughly the same). The both have the same displacement-sized engine.
Fuel Economy:
Civic: 34/47MPG @ 55 @ pre-'08 testing speeds (50-60mph)
Fit: 33/41MPG @ '08+ testing speeds (50-80mph)
When you account for the difference in evaluations speeds, the Fit meets or beats the Civic, despite its added heft.
Horsepower/Torque:
Civic: 52/68 (first model)
Fit: 118/107
So, despite being the same size displacement engine, it produces over twice the horsepower and nearly twice the torque
Emissions:
Civic: Belches CO, NOx, particulates, formaldehyde, un burnt hydrocarbons, lead, etc at a prodigious rate (many times that of a modern car). It's part of that 25% of cars that cause 90% of pollution.
Fit: Emits pollutants at more than an order of magnitude LESS than the civic.
So, where is that 540lbs of weight coming from?
Let's start with all the things you think are just terrible, no good huge wastes:
Difference in size?
Nope. The Fit provides nearly identical passenger space. And again, apples to apples here.
The Engine?
Nope. The engines have the same displacement. The old civic engine may or may not have been aluminum (no idea), but the Fit's certainly is. The Fit's engine has about 30 years worth of technology, manufacturing and design improvements behind it, which make it smaller and lighter while retaining the same displacement.
Lots of mechanical equipment (fuel pumps, etc.) have been replaced with much lighter electrical or non-metal equipment. The carburetor has been replaced with much lighter fuel injectors. The distributor has been replaced by much lighter electronics. The valve cover is now plastic. Metal carb covers/filter enclosures replaced with plastic housing, And probably a ton of
Bottom Line: Worst case scenario, the engine weight change is net zero. More likely, it's been reduced.
(to be clear, I am talking about the core engine -- the part that provides power, not all the emissions and other components that are attached).
The Transmission?
This is a little murkier. modern transmission have more gears and other additions, but also have benefited from weight reduction through materials, tech and manufacturing processes. I can't find any good numbers on weight change, but here's what I have. A relatively modern Honda transmission weighs about 70-80lb (weight established by people actually weighing them). The weight difference between a manual Fit and an Automatic fit is 75lb (Honda website). That pegs weight of the Fit's auto transmission at ~160lb. That's pretty damn light -- lighter than most auto transmissions.
Here's a list of GM transmissions with weights with applicable engine size matching. This is a nice data point because it shows my back of the envelope calculation is about right (GM mates ~160-180lb auto transmissions to 1.4-2.4L engines)
Note, both the Honda and GM (along with most FWD) actually use a trans-axle, which is a combination transmission, differential and parts of the axle. ~160-180lbs for all that is... amazing.
http://www.gminsidenews.com/index.php?page=trans_guideBut is it lighter or heavier? Almost certainly lighter and stronger per weight, but I'll say 60 lbs in additional gears and engine power handling. That would make the old civic auto transmission roughly 100lbs, which is somewhat absurdist but I'm being generous and accounting for the major overhead associated with a more powerful engine.
So that's 60/540lb, or 11% of the gain for pretty much the entire drive-train. And again, that's a generous estimate.
The Wheels?
For sake of argument, I'll assume the old civic had alloy wheels (a dangerous assumption) and thus we net zero change. More likely they were steel in the old civic so there is 5-10lb of reduction, but I won't quibble.
(Purely) Comfort And Convenience Items?
Yep, some weight has been added here. Let's break it down, shall we?
* A/C (The Fit A/C is ~35lbs for compressor/evap/hoses/etc.)
* Power Windows/Doors/etc. (~10 lbs of motors, switches and solenoids and wiring for all 4 doors)
* Door Remotes ( a few ounces of electronics )
* Cruise Control (< 1lb of electronics+wires+buttons in a modern "fly by wire" car)
* Nav Systems/Fancier Stereos/More Buttons (with massive advances in electronics, these are probably actually still lighter than the simple radios of old -- the fanciest 2din nav system/radio I could find was 7lbs and that includes the heavy LCD display which is now mandatory equipment)
* Multi-Speaker systems: add 4 more speakers (for a total of 6, hah!) for shits and giggles: 5lbs
* Automatic climate controls ( <1lb electric motor to handle the blend door + electronics )
* Push button start (probably a weight reduction since it's a cheap ass plastic button replacing a metal ignition switch)
* Automatic wipers (<oz of electronics)
* Motorized seats ( 2-3 lbs of motors, wiring, etc. )
* Push Button Trunk/hatch release (<lb of solenoid, wires and switches)
* Heated Seats (<lb of wire, plastic and carbon fiber)
All adds up to, generously, ~65 pounds gross, and more like 45-55lbs net when you consider most of these are replacing existing, manual/mechanical systems and are not brand new. With the exception and bulk of that being the A/C components. I'll use 55.
It's actually pretty damn hard to think of anything added to vehicles that is purely about comfort or convenience that has any substantial weight. Even fit & trim improvements have included weight reductions (more plastic, less metal and lighter metal).
So that's 55/540 or ~10% of the weight gain
What about power steering?
A power steering pump for a Fit is comes in, generously, at a whopping ~10lbs in pumps, pulleys, fluid, etc. Of course, it replaces a much larger steering gear so its net added weight is considerably less but I'll stick with 10lb.
So, your much maligned power steering is 10/540 lb, ~2% of the weight gain.
Oh, let's add power brakes too, as I bet you hate responsive braking just a much as responsive steering.
"Power" brakes, of course, mean you have a "brake" booster in addition to a master cylinder. The brake booster uses vacuum from the engine to multiple your brake force. Being that their purpose is to build and maintain a vacuum, they are mostly empty space and weigh a "whopping" ~8-10lbs despite being pretty large.
So, we'll add power brakes to the list for:
10/540lb or ~2% of the weight gain
Oh, but what about the power requirements! It takes a MONSTER amount of power to run all that fancy pants powered shite, right?
Nope. It's takes:
2 HP to run a car A/C when it's on, generously. An big window A/C unit, sized to cool a 4,000 cubic foot room vs a ~100 cubic foot car, uses about 1200 watts (1.6 HP), so it's an EXTREMELY HIGH upper limit, even assuming a extraordinarily inefficient car A/C that is run with clutch engaged 100% of the time (hint: they aren't).
1 HP to run a power steering unit. Should be no surprise, a single horsepower is quite a lot in human terms (it's an estimate of the power a horse can generate after all). An average human running at 5MPH speed produces about half a horsepower.
1 HP to run the power brakes (runs off vacuum, but still takes power). Again, we're talking replacing a bit of human power so 1 HP is actually a huge overestimation.
1 HP Electrical equipment (non-engine related). All the fancy pants doo-dads don't actually use that much power. The worse offender is the nav/radio systems, which use about 400 watts peak (0.5HP) Again, extremely generously.
So the total is about 4 HP (very generously).
Of course, that power is easily handled by the existing engine already without any further increase, so there's no "secondary" weight needed.
So shit, we're at 75lbs our of 540 (~14%) and we've accounted for all those terrible, horrible no good wasteful convenience items you hate.
Where is this huge weight coming from!? According to your "source", it's overwhelmingly comfort and convenience stuff. Let's brain storm some more:
Comfortable Seats? Foam and Cloth are pretty heavy... errrrrr not
Buttons and doo-dads? Small, cheap plastic shit, doesn't weight anything
Consoles, armrests, cup holders and cubby holes? Plastic shit, a couple pounds at most.
Got anything to add?
Hmmm.. not looking good for your "source". Let's account for the need to beef up the brakes and suspension for all those items now, eh? Actually, let's account for the the entire weight gain (~30%) and assume the Fit has 66% more braking and suspension weight/capacity (overkill mostly to account for things not directly mentioned).
A Fit Rotor is 12lbs, a caliper is 6lbs. That's 20lbs per wheel for the Fit, and 12lbs per wheel on the Civic. A different of 8lbs. Account for 4 wheels, and we have 32lbs of weight added for braking. Add in some beefed up lines and other components, and call it 35lbs.
How about suspension? A Honda Fit strut assembly (shock, spring, mounts) is a whopping 12 lbs. Add in a control arm (a whopping 2 lbs) and you have a Fit strut for 14lbs. That means our civic equivalent was 9 lbs for a difference of 5lbs. So we've added 20 more lbs to the car.
Rounding up, that's another 60lbs in beefed up brakes and suspension.
So, now for drive-train and all the comfort and convenience items, we're up to a ridiculously generous to your position 195/540lbs, or 36% of the increase.
So where the hell is this other 345 lbs (64%) coming from? We've covered wheels, brakes, suspension, drive-train, convenience and comfort and related overhead. We're finally down the the meat and bones:
Body:
This is the biggest weight gain. Modern car bodies are constructed radically different from older cars. Older cars like the early 80s civic are pretty much tin cans. Body on frame designs where the body is pretty much for appearance only. Just enough structure to not fall apart, providing very little head on crash survivability.
A modern vehicle starts with a heavily re-enforced passenger space. Huge structural additions (read: lots of new weight) to make the passenger space NOT crush like a tin can during an impact. Also structural additions to the passenger space to prevent intrusion. Effectively "armor plating". This includes structural members under the door body panels, higher body lines/smaller windows, heavily beefed up roofs and pillars, and stronger body panels. You can see this difference easily. Most of this is readily visible even to the laymen. Compare the Civic and the Fit. The Fit has much higher body lines, smaller windows, HUGE A, B, C pillars, and of course the wider body to accommodate more structure. Also note the increased height of the vehicle -- which is done to make the windows a reasonable size despite the higher body lines. You see this increase in height in most new vehicles for exactly these reasons.
Then, of course, there are the crumple zones. Crumple zones are made to absorb the kinetic energy of an impact. The only way this happens is with more material (designed to deform in a controlled manner). More sub structure to the body, more structure to body panels, etc. Lots more weight.
Some of this is mitigated with newer materials and a unibody design, but is still hundreds of pounds of cold, hard steel (and some other metals) added so you don't end up gibbed inside a crushed tin can if you get in a head on collision or get rear ended at high speed. This could be mitigated MORE if we weren't cost sensitive. Unfortunately, Titanium (et al.) is NOT cheap.
Safety Restraints/etc.
Air bags. The Fit has 8+ bloody air bags (front, side, curtain, etc.). This is not insignificant weight on its own, but also requires a larger vehicle structure (see the wider width of the Fit) in order to preserve the already minimal passenger space.
Anti-Lock Brakes, Stability Control, etc. Yes, these all are safety equipment, not convenience like you seem to be claiming.
Beefed up restraints, child restraints, beefed up seat mounts, etc. (lots of metalwork in there, though not a Lot of weight)
Backup Cameras, displays, wiring (now required on all new cars including the fit we're looking at)
Collision detection and lane keeping (automatic steering control).
Emissions Equipment.
Holy hell is there a lot of this: catalytic converters, smog pumps, exhaust re-circulation valves, oxygen sensors, etc. And, in addition to their directly added weight, this equipment also uses or wastes substantial engine power. You know why they are so eager to check your catalytic converter when you get an emissions test? Because gear heads LOVE to remove them, because they waste about 10% of your engine power due to exhaust back-pressure, and as they age (get plugged up), they waste even more. Gear heads regularly _upgrade_ their factory cat(s) to get just 7-10 HP/TQ back.
More Overhead
All those things require braking and suspension overhead, but I've generously lumped then in on the convenience/power numbers to help make your source look less stupid in it's apples to oranges nonsense.
Like I said, safety and emission are where the majority of weight, apples to apples, is coming from.
Cars are inefficient because American consumers want big powerful cars with power everything.
If you disagree, explain why Europe has higher emissions and safety requirements (with correspondingly lower emissions and lower fatality rates in accidents), yet has smaller, lighter, more fuel efficient vehicles.
The reason Europe has smaller, lighter more efficient vehicles on average is is due to (1) economics (gas price) and (2) stricter regulation of vehicle weight and (3) higher vehicle taxes and (4) cities not designed for large vehicles (or vehicles at all actually). It's not because the European makers are magicians and can make cars that are equivalently equipped magically lighter (but only when they don't export them to the U.S. -- their magic fails to work in the new world!). Europe v America is not apples to apples, because our markets are significantly different.
But go ahead and keep trying to compare apples to oranges. It's just darling.
