On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 21:40:30 +0100, No Spam wrote:
Dave Hinz wrote:

And is that vehicle roadworthy?

In terms of absolute government published figures then the answer to
the first point is yes, a few, (four) but this is due to a change five
years ago in the way the tests are performed. Government published
steady state 56mph tests were routinely in the 50-60mpg bracket 25
years ago.

Will that vehicle pass present crash tests, and can I drive it to work
as a normal car? (no to at least one, and I suspect both).

Real world magazine published road tests show that 80mpg + is
achievable across a whole raft of vehicles. Just last year a team of
journalists drove around 800 miles from the top end of the UK to the
bottom and got more than 100 mpg (in a VW)

How fast were they driving? Again, experimental one-off "but nobody
would ever use a car that only goes 3MPH" cars are interesting but not
relevant here.

Union Type Approval Tests, achieved more than 70mpg on the extra-urban
cycle - this being carried out in controlled laboratory conditions on
an vehicle that has previously run for around 2.5 miles from a cold
start.

Great, that gets me 1/20th of the way to work.

It consists of roughly half steady-speed driving and the remainder
accelerations, decelerations, and some idling. Maximum speed is 75 mph
average speed is 39 mph and the distance covered is 4.3 miles.

In case you have doubts over the size of the vehicles achieving these
figures, some of them are two seaters, some are four, some are capable
of carrying five median sized Americans with enough space left over
for a week of non stop food ;-)

Safely?

Emissions? Well in general they all meet the latest emissions
requirements for Europe (EU4) which is a similar level to that
required in the US and Japan.

As for the second point, No, but did you expect it to be.?

Well, if it's going to be relevant when we're talking about a
transportation device, yeah, it's kind of important.

VAUXHALL Astra, MY2004 1686 D 80.7
VAUXHALL Astra, MY2004 1686 D 80.7
CITROEN C1 1398 D 83.1
HONDA Insight 995 P/ E 94.2

Would any of those pass USA'n crash tests?