Americans love their cars. Some states have three times as many parking spaces as cars. But the price of gasoline continues to rise and more people are concerned with how their driving leads to global warming, and so fuel-saving transportation options like electric vehicles and public transportation have gotten more popular.
Ford is doing its part with plans to offer a fuel-saving start-stop system in its cars beginning in 2012, according to the Detroit Free Press. The car company won't have an electric vehicle of its own until 2012, when its electric Focus should hit the streets. (The company is expected to unveil the car at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this Friday.)
So it's a taking a step in the fuel-saving direction with a start-stop system that reduces gasoline use by turning the engine off when the vehicle is idling, and quickly restarting it when the driver takes his or her foot off the brake or steps on the gas pedal. The system is expected to improve each car's fuel economy by four to ten percent, according to Ford.
According to this article from Ford, the start-stop system is "designed to work on both gasoline and diesel engines, is standard on the ECOnetic models of the Ford Ka and Mondeo, and is launching now on Focus, C-MAX and Grand C-MAX. The fuel-saving system debuts in North America in 2012."
Thanks to new fuel economy standards, any car sold in America will be required to get at least 34.1 miles per gallon, even though that might not be the best measure of a car's environmental impact.
The fuel-saving benefits of the start-stop system don't show up much in the Environmental Protection Agency's testing, because those tests don't include many stops.
So, do you want a car with start-stop technology, even if the results don't show up on the car's sticker in the showroom? Let us know in the comments section.
Photo: Ford
Tags: Cars, Electric Cars
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