bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

TRDFantasy

Isn't the iQ and Smart competition for this thing?

Och

iTrader: (3)

Guys, instead of bashing the 500 for its not so impressive fuel economy, its important to understand the following.

There's only so many energy units in a gallon of petrol, and no matter how you spin it, a certain number of energy units is required to keep a car moving. Decreasing the engine size and number of cylinders does not automatically guarantee better fuel economy, because it will just have to work harder to produce that number of energy units. A marginal increase in fuel economy might be realized due to lower weight of the smaller engine, and less moving parts (less friction) in engines with less cylinders.

Decreasing the weight/size of the car also does not provide as much of a benefit as you might think. Once the cars are rolling at steady speed, there's really not much difference between a large SUV and a tiny econobox. If anyone has ever pushed a stalled car, you'll know that the hardest thing is to push it off the line, once its rolling on a flat surface, there isn't much effort required. Most of the difference in fuel consumption of heavy car vs light econobox is during acceleration. Of course, once you reach high rates of speed, aerodynamics come into play as well, but that isn't much of a concern for modern cars either.

The bottom line is, modern cars and modern internal combustion engines have reached the peak of their efficiency. Don't expect someone with a magic wand to make a car that achieves more than 40mpg without hybrid technology.

Also, as someone noted, the old EPA ratings of 50mpg for old cars will not translate to the same rating today - it will be right about 35mpg at best.

With that being said, owning a minimalistic econobox such as the Fiat 500 can often translate into economy on expenses other than fuel. Cheaper repairs, less parts to break, easier to find parking, possible cheaper insurance, and so on.

TwiBlueG35

Fuel economy is probably not the priority of owning this car, the unique look and desire of owning an Italian car might be.

IS-SV

For the US market the fuel economy is plenty good.

LexFather

We have Focus's, Elantras making 40 MPG and they are much larger. Don't even get me started on hybrids. I understand the novelty of this but I feel the MPG is disappointing.

So the ABARTH must get even worse MPG.

TRDFantasy

Actually, that is incorrect. Even the most modern internal combustion engines are still quiet inefficient. Modern engines are roughly only 18-20% efficient. That means they are able to only convert 18-20% of the energy from gasoline into power.

Even full hybrids get around only 30-40% energy efficiency overall.

There are still plenty of improvements that can be made to increase the efficiency of non-hybrid internal combustion engines to above 30%.

SLegacy99

Ewww, that's ugly.

spwolf

they get better highway economy, for which larger engine is crucial... but your real life will be smaller...

SLegacy99

The 1.6L Fiesta gets 40 MPG. And the 1.4L Cruze is rated for 42 MPG.

Mr Johnson

Yup. There is still quite a way to go before we get really efficient internal combustion engines. However with very little tweaking they are getting there. Check out this info from Transonic Combustion and where they are at in partnering with major auto makers and producing some significant increases in economy. Bummer that it seems like Smokey Yunick's idea has effectively been "stolen".