There is something about this 110 MPG car that does not smell right (opens in new tab)

A lot of it seems to be tricky math. It's not MPG, it's MPGe, the 'e' is for 'equivalent'. However, marketing guys have been playing those games forever, so no surprises there.

They're claiming E85 has 1/3rd less energy than gas, so they're actually getting 110*0.66 = 72.5 mpg of E85.

72.5 mpg is not as good for marketing hype, but it's still impressive.

He seems to be playing some games with the acceleration profile as well. If you 'gun it', you're in 'power mode', not 'efficiency mode', so the mpg numbers no longer apply. I'm not certain if this is common practice or not in these kinds of tests. It probably is.

I think he is mainly just taking control of the throttle away from the driver, and doing a "throttle by wire' system, giving you the most efficient (and probably painfully unresponsive) acceleration profile possible, when you're in 'efficiency mode'. I'm not sure if that buys him the whole 72.5mpg or not, but it's in his toolbox. <EDIT: Actually I can imagine such a system that wouldn't be too bad. When the user makes relatively small acceleration addition requests with the throttle pedal, you use your efficiency optimized acceleration profile to give it to him. When the user "stomps on it", because a truck is about to hit him, then you give him the requested throttle amount. I can imagine such a system would yield efficiency gains without being too painful to drive.</EDIT>

Whether there's something else in the engine that gives you the rest of the efficiency gains, or if that's all of it, remains to be seen.

Of course, we don't know if any of this is real, but if it is, it's a cross between "real" and "marketing real".

Comment #1 below really says it: Even if you have a 100% efficient engine, it takes more energy to propel that un-aerodynamic Mustang through the air 1 mile at highway speeds than you get out of 1/100 gallon of gas. And that's ignoring rolling friction and powertrain losses. It's a perpetual motion machine.

From their website:

"A Northwest Ohio start-up company is nearly ready to create 2,000 green auto industry jobs!" [1]

They've received 312,000 orders ... right. For comparison the tesla model S has received over 1,000 orders [2]. An order of magnitude difference. Why haven't we already heard of these guys?

1. hp2g.com/articles.html; 2. www.autobloggreen.com/2009/05/12/tesla-reports-over-1-000-model-s-orders/

I think the trick is the "equivalent" part. If I got it right, they are using some sort of fuel which provides 1/3 of the energy regular gasoline does. Which means they are probably doing 110/3 mpg on this type of fuel.

A car that does 377 mpg: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/351903_needle20.html

But that means: hardly any chassis, no gearbox, aircraft tires, the engine is wrapped in asbestos, driving a constant 30 mph, etc., etc.

This car is in the Guiness book of records.

Edit: BTW, I'm not claiming that means the car in this article is also plausible: if it claims to yield a constant 55 hp, then it can't do 110 mpg.

110 miles / gallon = 2.14 liters / 100 km

My suspicion is that they're not counting the ethanol in their MPGe calculation. They claim to be using E85. In other words, the fuel mixture may contain about 85% ethanol. Their MPGe calculation probably only counts the gasoline in that mixture, the 15%.

its probably gets 110mpg based on the % of fuel that is gasoline. ie the fuel is 99% ethanol and 1% gas so the car runs a regular 20mpg but because only 1% of that fuel is gas it gets a magical 2000mpg (20/1%). Their probably doing something shifty like counting the ethanol as free energy and therefore not including the ethanol burned in their MPG calcs...