Some of these amazing vehicles built in 1999 were "built by schoolchildren," yet the auto industry still can't come up with a car that get's 100 mpg? Granted these cars are slow and small, but if they can get almost 10,000 mpg, don't you think similar technology could be used to get at least several hundred mpg in regular cars? For why car mileage hasn't increased much since the 1908 Model T got 25 mpg, ...

http://www.wanttoknow.info/newenergynewsarticles

Several hundred MPG? No. Not if they're going to include the safety equipment required today, from air bags to crumple zones, and conveniences, from AC to power windows that consumers continue to demand. I don't think several hundred MPG approaches reality.

That's not to say there isn't vast room for improvement, and that auto manufacturers - ESPECIALLY those in the US - have not been reckless, irresponsible and, frankly, unpatriotic. And of course there's the entire market of alternative fuel vehicles offering, 0 gallons per many miles.

In the interim, check out this fascinating story from today's LAT about a 10-15 year old breed of vehicles that far exceed what is considered today to be a high mileage car.

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A race to use less gas in the long haul
With energy crisis on full bore, fuel-efficient cars are scarce. But a new breed of driver is stretching what you can squeeze out of a tank.
By Ken Bensinger
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

10:34 PM PDT, September 8, 2008

Darius Tarman dreams of roaring engines. He owns three classic muscle cars, races on weekends and sells exotic racing pistons for a living. He is what is known as a car guy.

Tarman's vehicle of choice these days? A 92-horsepower, 16-year-old Honda Civic hatchback with a fading teal paint job that takes about 15 seconds to reach highway speed.

Then again, it does get 61 miles per gallon -- and when your daily commute, from Rancho Cucamonga to Irvine, is 100 miles round trip, that's huge.

"There's nothing like driving a big, black 440 with a four-speed. But . . . this Honda is the best car I've ever owned," Tarman says. "I would cry if anything happened to it."

Tarman's love affair with a slow, undersized Civic shows the tremendous effect soaring gas prices have had on the way everyone, even hot-rodders, thinks about driving. And the fact that he turned to a creaky old 1992 model serves as a stark reminder that it's nearly impossible to buy a new car today that gets the kind of mileage many automobiles got 15 or 20 years ago, despite the industry's insistence that it's focusing on efficiency again.

"In the 1970s, '80s and '90s, carmakers all offered super-high-efficiency cars," says Eric Noble, president of the Car Lab, an auto industry research and consulting group. "Now that consumers are clamoring for them, those cars are pretty much all gone."

For the 1992 model year, car buyers had the choice of 33 cars that had a combined city and highway EPA rating of at least 30 miles per gallon. For the current model year, there are 12. And though the 1990s had its share of gas guzzlers, it's notable that the two-wheel-drive Ford Explorer from 1992 had better fuel efficiency (17 mpg) than the same model in 2008 (which gets 16).

With demand for efficiency surging, carmakers are racing to improve their lineups. General Motors Corp., which currently doesn't have any cars that top 30 mpg combined, said last month that it would spend $500 million to produce a new compact car for 2011, the Cruze, that would reach 45 mpg on the highway. That's about 13 mpg below the rating for its most fuel-efficient Geo Metro 14 years ago.

(Last year, the government adjusted the way it calculated fuel economy, but even under the new rating system, the Geo beats the Cruze by 6 mpg.)
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LINK TO THE FULL ARTICLE