Bill Burr - Gas Mileage Debate With Listeners (Oh Geez) 

"I don't read, it makes me sleepy"

"I wish I was more intelligent so I could explain this better". Dear lord, how I know that feeling. x_x

The first generation Subaru were 1,710lbs the 2018 wrx is 3,250-3,300lbs.

Bill, the battery pack in your Prius makes it heavier.

You are scientifically wrong on this one I love you

Bill I love your take on sustainable alternative energy sources. No one understands it because the system trains them to not understand it

Bill i love ya but hes right cars are heavier than ever. Compact to compact full size to full size new cars are heavier. My mustang gt convertible is 4700 pounds a 67 mustang gt convertible is lik 2600 bls. The lightest cars ever were the ones in the late 80s befor all the technology and after the thick metal

Cars today are much heavier than cars back in the day respectively. Though today's cars are made with lighter materials than older cars (fiberglass, plastic, and lightweight aluminum, thin, lightweight plastic on the interior) as opposed to the classic metal, metal and more metal of cars of the day, todays cars are weighed down by safety features and tech. For example, today's vehicles have airbags in basically every part of the vehicle. Also, computers, screens and advancing technology in cars adds weight. Your power seats have motors, which are much heavier than a thin metal rail. Same goes for our advanced seat heaters, speakers, infotainment screens, etc. All of these accoutrement that we have in our cars now adds up to much more weight than what was previously in a car from say, the 80's. Not to mention, electric and hybrid cars are, in fact, much much heavier than a gasoline car. That is due to the battery packs, which are so heavy that car makers place them at the bottom of the vehicle to give it a lower center of gravity in the case of a rollover. There is not one big battery in an electric car (reasonably speaking). The big battery you think of is actually a collective of hundreds or thousands of battery cells, all strung together into one behemoth battery.

The newest VW Golf is 585kg heavier than the Mk1. That's like 9 Bill Burrs.

Thermal efficiency of internal combustion engines is topping out at 20%. Which means that 80% of the energy used to fuel a car engine is waste. I'm with you 100% all the way Bill! Also gasoline has less than half the thermal units as diesel and less than a quarter of hydrogen. Here we are in the 21st century still trying to perfect an engine which produces mostly waste heat. The only beneficiary to this proposterous equation is the oil companies as per Bill's rant. Bill! Loving the podcast. Thank you!

Love Bill's rants but I failed enough engineering thermo classes to understand that building a good combustion engine is more difficult than it sounds.

Bill makes a good point about how technology has been able to progress so far, but gas mileage is still similar. Whatever the reasons are, who's to say the oil companies aren't behind it? And they have enough money to conjure seemingly reasonable causes for stagnation of gas mileage. God knows it's to their absolute benefit that gas mileage stays as low as possible

Like she went to Midas muffler!!!!! I lost it.

You crush a bunch of commentaries.. thanks for sharing

Guy who doesn't know what he's talking about yelling about people who also don't know what theyre talking about. I work on airplanes and I absolutely love airchair engineers on the internet who think they know how to better design planes

I love the goodbye girl.

Cars are actually heavier now due to the extra features and added complexity

Guy isnt totally wrong. Retrospectively, when real true compacts first really hit the scene back in the the late 70's and 80's those cars were light as a feather with fuel sipping 4 cylinders. And yes, your prius, with those heavy as hell batteries, are waayyy heavier than an old school subaru. Just sayin. Its the safety features etc that make more modern car heavier.

I usually like Bill’s rants, but this is a bad one. The progression of technology like cell phones is easily explained with Moore’s law. But getting a car moving still takes a lot of energy, no matter how much technology you throw at it.

My truck gets 7.8 mpg lool

23:26 "Yes this is Armani " lmao

If you had a way to make a vehicle that gets 500 miles per gallon the millitary would buy that technology in a second

He makes a very compelling argument that the oil companies could cover up more efficient tech. Unfortunately the argument isn't whether they can or not, it's whether they are or not.

A lot of people just saying he’s wrong but he admitted he was wrong and made some good responses.

I like how all of the comments are “car guys” being like “Wyell Beel, Akchally carz r heavier then ever” ignoring the bigger fucking picture 😂

By the way, I fully agree with you on everything you said there! And It’s very funny said as well.

I'm gonna just say bill was wrong on this one.

Weight is only a factor in energy consumption to accelerate a body. Once the body is moving energy is used to overcome air resistance and a small amount of friction on the wheels.

BillderBurr group is at it again

Midas muffler🤣🤣

Their is some truth to vehicles being lighter and older. My 1985 f150 waighs 2500 pounds. My sisters 2010 Ford focus waighs 3100 pounds.

I think the issue with water powered engines is that you'd need everything made from stainless steel. So the engine would be quite expensive.

A professor of Thermodynamics here, it's amazing how an untrained person can STILL talk about a subject he knows little to none for over 25 minutes.

Resale value dictates this too. Back in the day BMW made an F1 engine that produced over 1100hp, but only for the qualifying lap. After that it had to be completely rebuilt. The tolerances were high and that produced efficiency but minimal robustness. If you build cars that get 100mpg but the engine needs to be rebuilt every 50,000 miles, resale values of those cars will be rock bottom due to the repair bills, and the guy who bought it new will never buy a new car from your company again. Ease off the super high tolerances and you build a Camry that'll do 250,000 miles if maintained. That keeps people buying new Toyotas as they know it'll hold its value. Everyone knows cars from back in the day we're bought on Monday and scrapped on Sunday. They probably could squeeze the engines and enjoy having no environmental legislation to hold them back and get decent MPG. Repeal all current safety and emissions legislation and we'd have a 150mpg car within 18 months.

Bill your completely wrong here on so many levels. You’re in Eddie Bravo territory here. Ok now Bill sees he is wrong but just like a LADYEE he digs in his heels and changes the point and dives in head deep. WTF Bill!

Many cars of yesterday are a lot lighter than you might think. I have a 1970 mercury cougar, which was basically a fancy, well optioned mustang... its 3400lbs... a 2018 ford mustang is 3700lbs!

Cars have a lot more tech and safety equipment in them nowadays, of course they're going to be heavier.

I have a small Tiburon and it weighs 3860lbs. The car looks like it weighs much less. It gets about 30mpg on the highway and it's insane. My car without these stupid tests and electronics could probably get 50. I'm in Florida now but I'm worried if I mod to far the second I leave the state I'll be in deep shit when I get pulled over. Or even moving out the state it would instantly illegal. Too much regulation is the issue and that goes for nearly everything today.

I agree with Bill. There’s a reason why car companies buy up potential super fuel efficient technologies, and we never get to see any of them.

You're right about big Banks especially Bill!

There isn't a drive to get better gas mileage after they found out that fossil fuels are renewable and mostly plant matter instead of dinosaur bones.

You might want to watch Mythbusters about running cars off of water.

A first gen subbie leone from the 70’s could have a 1.1L engine powering a 1700lb car. the thing SHOULD be getting like 55mpg at 55 mph

Greed will always hold us back

1985 honda civic dx , 51 mpg with a carburetor

I mean car manufacturers usually aren't oil companies...

Cars are heavier. They are much bigger, better safety features and structure, more insulation, more comfort options, etc But another big impact on the gas mileage is the emission crap that are build in car engines nowadays.

Plenty of oil ,fuck a carbon footprint

oh gezzus

Your facts are wrong but you're still right

Yeah, they have the technology to get 500 miles to the gallon... of water.

The Ford Taurus AWD weighs more than every passenger car Ford made in 1969.

35 mph i would go across 20 green lights before catchiing a red

True there are limitations to gasoline efficiency and True there are nefarious intentions in the petroleum industries. I suspect the latter more prevalent in practice.

The guy from that handlebars song said he can make one that goes 64 miles per gallon. Maybe ask him?

Here is why it is so difficult to raise mpg. For long trips most energy is lost to the air resistance. That can only be lowered by improving aerodynamics of the car or reducing it's size. And btw Prius is very close to the best aerodynamics we ever invented for the passenger car. After optimizing drag we are left with ICE efficiency, which also has a hard cap of 40-50% for fundamental physical reasons. So raising mpg by a factor of 10 compared to 80s is basically impossible unless we discover a magical car design which somehow cuts through air without friction. Probably nobody will ever be able to prove it, but I'm confident such design simply doesn't exist. P.S. "Impossible" 0 drag car design: have a wormhole connecting front and back surface of a car.

1:00 I'm pretty sure it's true though those batteries weigh A LOT

Here’s the truth. We absolutely have the tech. It’s not about power/money if it was then they would release high mileage autos, raise gas price, lay everyone off and coast on easy street.

There is a tiny vw lupo 3l in europe, 20 years ago that car was made, or there about, made next to 80mpg from its non hybrid tiny turbo diesel engine (3l per 100km), nobody bought one, to expencive and way complicated copaared to standard version wich made like 47, and it was tiny as it was, and still 3l version was made out of expencive weight reducing materials like aluminium, and even had a expencive to replace and therefore maintain aluminium suspention parts

petroleum engineers say that the regular gasoline sold today is made so cheap that a pre 1970's engine would be destroyed if it ran at all. in terms of gross weight , the latest cars ARE heavier -size for size- than certain earlier cars. however, the typical internal combustion engine wastes over 90 percent of the HEAT energy .

10mil+ work for oil in US alone. More gas we burn = need for oil = need for manpower = need for housing = need for support = burn more gas. Take away need for oil and everyone suffers. If you want better fuel economy then figure out how majority of us will support themselves!

cars now have 3x the hp

Thats kinda like the Truckers that say "There will never be an automated or electric truck, runnin deliveries. The technology isnt there." Like we haven't advanced LIGHTYEARS in tech over the last century. Like we havent developed Nuclear bombs, and phones to talk to people across the world. Lmaoooo

Against Bill's point- there's only so much energy potential stored in a gallon of gasoline & it's nowhere near 500-1000 miles per gallon for a light passenger car. Its simply not possible... plus you lose close to 40% when the gas is burned to heat. Then you lose 20% converting the power from the engine to the drivetrain. But again there's just not that much energy potential in a gallon of gas period.

The first car made by Henry Ford ran on hemp and corn, no idea what the gas mileage was tho

Back in 1997(circa) the college (RecintoUniversitarioDeMayaguez) in PuertoRico designed a car that ran on 100% solar energy, the US military killed that designed that by the way wan a competition in the NASA Expo of that year

Im a mechanic. And i really dont see how they are hiding fuel mileage ..lol. I mean they pretty much got it down pat

There are plenty of weight stations nearby...

As an author tech I always bring up how every modern car up to the late 80s should be capable of getting double the average of today’s gas mileage standard

My 64 pontiac weights about a hundred tons

There is a conspiracy that Exxon mobil bought the blueprints to a carburetor in the 1940’s that could get 200 miles Pete gallon on these hugely inefficient cars. When they had the blueprints they destroyed them

20:30 😭😭😭😭

And weight wise it depends on the vehicle of course yes some are heavier but not all

Gas today contains ethanol which burns faster. And bill you're Prius is very heavy for its size. Huge batteries aren't weightless

Bill, please take a class in thermodynamics. It is physically impossible to use water as a fuel

My 2006 Citreon C5 Estate gets around 47 miles per gallon and its a heavy and long car and its a 12 year old car, but to me the whole car needs looking at and improved, the clutch is poor and an old design, it needs to be re designed, in 2nd gear you can lift the clutch quickly to go into 3rd, as you can from 3rd to 4th and to 5th and 6th, but try do that from 1st to 2nd, you will stall on most cars; and car companies need to stop messing around with the basics, putting the clutch or gear stick on the dash, etc; And old cars should be banned if the breaks are not as new, soft breaks are a huge problem if you buy an old car, if a child runs out in front of your old car that child will most likely be hit by your car.

Bill you couldn't be more wrong on this gas mileage thing. Chemically, there is literally a maximum amount of energy that can be extracted from a gallon of gasoline even using the most efficient methods available. Vehicles have gotten heavier due to not only several safety features but also sound deadening material and loads of electrics such as power mirrors power windows and enormous amounts of wiring needed for all the electronic controls of the engine and body control modules what have you. You're simply wrong on this.

At highway speeds 70% of the energy sink of a car is in aerodynamics anyway. I wouldn't mind a tandem seating car. reduce that frontal cross section.

If the oil companies, owned by the bank companies, could get one thousand dollars for a litre of gas, engines would get far more efficient.

Bill, in this case, you have no idea what you're talking about. 500mpg would represent around 300 or 400 percent increase in how much power an engine can extract from a gallon of gasoline where engines are about 20-35% efficient as is. The math simply dosn't work, you can't extract more than 100% of the energy in gas. Btw, we can do better than 40 mpg. We have cars that run entirely on electricity now that are extremely efficient. That don't use gas at all.

You absolutely could make a car that got 100+ mpg. It would be way too fucking expensive. Most oriole drive either a) a sub 10k used car b) a lease c) a 25-35k new car.

They killed the people who made carburetors that could get 100 miles to the gallon.

bill in city the lights at intersections are no longer timed

of course cars are heavier now, just compare sizes. a Honda Civic today is bigger than an Accord ten years ago. and that is not an outlier, cars are just generally bigger. bigger cars weigh more.

They really are heavier. A 57 Chevy bel air is like 3200lbs. My 2014 corolla is like 3300-3400lb, and its half the size.

Wait until the pumps go dry. That’s going to be a real shit show.

Don’t completely agree with Bill, but EV’s have shown that batteries are much more efficient than cars running on gas. You can push 300* miles in a Tesla on a single charge, and some European dude pushed 500k miles on his odometer in one car.

Just buy a tesla bill...!

Steam powered engine! Long before fuel. Remember the locomotive?

gotta agree with his overall point in that we made no progress in 40 odd years . Just doesn't seem right

The 1910 Ford model T and the 2010 Ford Explorer both get 10mpg! Bill is right.

Hey what about 2001 two college kids went from California to new York on used fry oil that restaurants gave them along the way?? It was on the today show

Modern gasoline engines have a maximum thermal efficiency of about 25% to 50% when used to power a car. It can't go higher than that due to how old technology the whole thing still is, doesn't matter how many electronics are involved the core is still oldschool. Electric cars efficiency is typically between 85% and 90%.

I mean - The way I see it - One company doesn't own all of these independent car companies. There's a massive market for cars that can do 500MPH. Billions of dollars at stake. Ford doesn't care if Ferrari doesn't want them to make 500MPH cars. Maybe I'm wrong, what does everyone think?

Its emissions that kills fuel mileage too. the old civics are small light and no emission bullshit thats why they got 40-45 mpg. in the NINE-TIES!

Pretty sure they have the tech to make long lasting parts but they need to make their money... Also there are patents that are bought and shelved, they don't want new tech messing with their bottom line.

Lol the dude is right

Look up article 50 years of car weight gain.

Actually the carburetors became too efficient.... I had a 1986 Chevy nova 4 door... I got 40 to 45 mpg. around my graduation ford had come out with the 3 cylinder in the fiestas, .. it had like half the Hp... Similar mileage. but was fuel injected..... if people realized how much more volatile gas vapors are than liquid gasoline they'd catch on to how we've been screwed

The prius battery doesnt way that much ive changed a few cells myself ide say it ways no more than 110lbs my prius get around 38.5