Cat Cafe: The Intro [Part 1]

The Cafe Industry has been changing from time to time. It is all begun with who is making the best coffee and tea in the town??? As time passed, people are getting richer these days, normally branded cafe shop like Starbucks will dominate the cafe industry because consumer's mindset is they paid for quality by recognizing a brand.

Therefore, small cafe business is unlikely to compete with those branded cafe in a city. Then suddenly, human being are intelligent enough to save their cafe business by introducing THEME Cafe. Such that, the interior design and decoration become the primary attraction. It can be some cultural theme where the cafe filled with the traditional design or perhaps pop culture theme would be more popular like anime, manga, Hello Kitty and etcs.

For the pop culture theme like Manga theme, consumers can just enjoy their coffee while reading the manga other than the interior decoration with the posters and mange-themed furniture and utensil. Or perhaps, Taiwanese most famous theme cafe is the Toilet-themed cafe. Other than the utensil and furniture that are familiar in our bathrooms, their food and drink also look like those bio-material that we dumped in the toilet.

However, such business is harder to be sustained if the cafe owners are not creative and innovative enough to upgrade their business. On the order hand, consumers won't forget that their secondary reason to enter the theme cafe is the drinks and food. Even though the theme may attract the consumers, their first visit probably will be their last if the food and drink are not satisfied. In my experience, normally less than 30% of the theme cafe I know outside of Japan could survive their business more than 2 years. The first year of operation is like a major success however the following years, their sales were declining exponentially eventually they just shut down their business once they can't afford the rent.

Now the cafe industry has the popular cartoon/bizarre themed cafe and the traditional BRANDED cafe that are dominating. If the entrepreneurs are not creative and innovative, indeed, they can't really compete any of them so someone from (Japan or Taiwan) come up an idea of CAT CAFE ???

Cat Cafe is unique because probably the first time cafe industry involved real animal and this animal is as common as a typical pet available in any home. Indeed, it is a fresh idea and it definitely attract a lot of cat lovers.

So how does Cat Cafe operate???
There are many style but the most common style is are you lucky enough to get the cat attention. In the whole cafe, the cat are allowed to move everywhere except the exit of course. They can just do whatever they want so it is up to the user effort to get the cat's attention.

Depend which Cat cafe, this is how they charge:
Based on my experience in Hong Kong <貓の茶房>:
1st Hour included a drink is HKD60 (about USD 7.77 based on April 2016)
Subsequent hour would be HKD30 (about USD 3.87 based on April 2016)
Additional item like food included cat food would be further charged.

So what can we do in the cat cafe??
Since it is a cafe, we can order food and drink.

Special Green Tea is FREE
Hot Dog is extra charge
Location: 貓の茶房

Then, it is up to you to catch their attention on you.
Even you are able to carry them, they can just leave immediately if they simply dislike you as you know, the nickname of cat owners is cat slave.

If you are lucky or you got your own pick up trick, then simultaneously you will enjoy both food/drink and the cats. However, my experience is that more than 50% of the customers may not really enjoy playing with the cat since it is the cat that select us as their "slave" not us. Most of the time, customers would feel like they pay the price, just to see the cats while enjoying the tea and chatting with their friends. Not many customers I recalled was able to play with the cats.

Really need to do research in order to enjoy your visit to cat cafe unless you have experience with cat. Therefore, my next topics will be dedicated to cat cafe visitors who want to maximize their pleasure in the cat cafe.

Stay tuned to my next topic:

Cat Cafe: The Beginner Guide [Part 2]

Fuel Consumption: Which Standard You Mean???

In the previous post, I emphasize on how to apply physic to perform simple analysis to evaluate the vehicle's performance on fuel consumption. This topic I focus on the Vehicular Exhaust Emission Standards specifically on the fuel consumption.

If you go to the car manufacturer website, you will look for the fuel consumption rating on the site then you will realize either JC08 rating [1]  or Urban/Extra Urban Cycle rating [2] for the fuel consumption.

So what are JC08 and Urban/ExtraUrban Cycle??

In order to understand those two terms, you should realize the world exhaust emissions standard. It is true that different countries should have different regulations on vehicular exhaust emissions however there are only three major regulations that govern the vehicular exhaust emissions:

1. European Emission Standards (EU/ EEA) - the most common
2. United States Emission Standards (EPA) - the second most common
3. Japanese Emission Standard 

Regardless which countries (that have implemented vehicular exhaust emissions regulations), either one of the above standards is the foundation to develop local regulations on vehicular exhaust emissions. A rather easier way for policy makers to do their work is they can just follow either one or all of the standards above by specify that their country recognize this specific standards.

For example, if the country only recognized EU Emission Standards, car manufacturers with EPA standard or Japan Emission Standard are required to bring their car model to perform exhaust emission testing based on EU Emission Standards before the car model can get the type approval/license to travel around that country. This is basically what my industry look like.

In reality, most countries that are lack of profession in this area would just simply recognize these three standards above to allow the automobile industry to runs smoothly since majority of the vehicle were either European made or Japanese made. 

Since most cars either European Made or Japanese Made, I would like to focus on EU Standard and the Japanese Standard. Regardless which standards, the exhaust emission test must be conducted in a laboratory environment where the vehicle would be placed on the chassis dynamometer to allow the wheel to rotate in order to simulate the driving condition. 

In the test procedure, the testing driver must follow a speed-time graph while driving the car on the chassis dynamometer. One major difference among these three standards is the speed-time graph or simply refer as driving cycle.

EU Standard used the NEDC (where urban cycle and extra cycle are two components for NEDC) [3] whereas the Japanese Standard used the JC08 cycle [4]. 

With simple mathematics, the gradient of the speed-time graph is the acceleration. We can see that NEDC has constant acceleration whereas JC08 has a rapid change in speed. In theory (as seen in previous topics), vehicle should consume more fuel with the driving behaviour that has rapid change in speed. However, recalled the formula for kinetic energy, the kinetic energy is directly proportional to the vehicle speed in the power of 2.  

Just Refresh Memory on Previous Topics

Rough prediction on minimum fuel requirement for the acceleration from 0km/h to 83km/h

Rough prediction on minimum fuel requirement for the acceleration from 83km/h to 0km/h

Red Region: Kinetic Energy from 0km/h to 85km/h
Blue Region: Kinetic Energy from 85km/h to 120km/h

Above calculations and the graph are used to demonstrate the significance of vehicle speed that affect the overall work done. Even though NEDC only has constant acceleration driving pattern however the overall work done from 83km/h to 120km/h is greater than the overall work done from 0 to 83km/h.

Therefore, it is difficult to judge which standard are harder for the vehicle to achieve better fuel consumption rating since

1. EU Standard expected the vehicle fuel consumption performance up to 120km/h.
2. Japanese Standard expected rapid change in speed frequently.

However, there are reasoning why each policy makers wanted their driving cycle in that ways. NEDC has longer history than JC08 therefore it is more standardized test that want to test the full potential of the vehicle however JC08 reflect the real driving condition in a city because there will no constant speed and acceleration in reality and it is unlikely to drive more than 90km/h in a city unless it is a highway.

Therefore, I will advise you to think this way,

If you prefer a realistic condition, Japanese Fuel Consumption Rating is more suitable for you.

If you prefer a standard that show the full capacity of the vehicle's performance, then EU Fuel Consumption Rating is more suitable for you.

Hopefully, my readers have clearer understanding the meaning behind JC08 rating and Urban/Extra Urban Cycle rating.

Meanwhile, different countries would adopt different Exhaust Emissions Standard eventually some car dealers outside of Europe, Japan and USA would just show the fuel consumption rating without specifying which standard.

If you want to learn more about the Vehicular Exhaust Emissions in different countries, there is a e-booklet[5] which is available online and free. Hopefully, your local country's environmental policies will be shown in this e-booklet.

Next time, you visit a car shop and you placed fuel economy as your highest priority in consideration, you may challenge the car dealer about which standard they refer about the rated fuel consumption value.

References:

1. http://www.honda.co.jp/Fit/webcatalog/performance/spec/pdf/fit_spec_list.pdf

2. http://www.lamborghini.com/en/models/huracan-lp-610-4/technical-specifications/

3. http://blog.toyota.co.uk/how-official-fuel-economy-figures-are-calculated

4. https://www.dieselnet.com/standards/cycles/jp_jc08.php 

5. http://delphi.com/docs/default-source/worldwide-emissions-standards/delphi-worldwide-emissions-standards-passenger-cars-light-duty-2016-7.pdf

Fuel Consumption: Mass & Engine Size

Welcome to the 3rd post !!!

Inspiration:

In reality, I do believe we have family guy and housewife who would spend time with their children. By considering mass of the car alone is not good enough to save fuel for their case.

One more factor, they need to concern is the ENGINE SIZE of the car as it is related to the engine's maximum power output of the car as shown in Chart 1 below. For example, when you drove your car with full passenger capacity, your car gained weight, so is your car's engine is powerful enough to handle this loading?

Simple illustration, you drive your car with 4 other passengers in Suzuki Swift. You could feel your car will be a lot weaker than you were driving alone especially you were going up a slope that against gravity.

Chart 1: The relationship between engine size and maximum power output of an engine for 7 selected Honda Models.

Chart 2: The relationship between engine size and vehicle mass based on 7 Honda Models

Chart 3: The relationship between JC08 fuel consumption rating and vehicle mass based on 7 Honda Models

As seen above,
Chart 2 showed that it was an upward trend that heavier the vehicle tend to have greater engine size except one model (which is the outlier)

Chart 3 supported my statement in the previous topic that lighter the vehicle tend to have better fuel economy but the outlier in Chart 2 is the same outlier in Chart 3.

Physics 101:

If you read the previous topics, you should be very familiar with the terminology of FORCE and WORK. If you didn't, either you read them again or just a quick revision.

By Newton's Second Law,
Force = mass x acceleration  [unit: N]
where k defined 1 Newton Force as amount of Force to increase the 1m/s of speed of an object with 1 kg mass for each seconds.

Work Done = Force x Distance (travelled along the force acted) [unit: J]

New terminology introduced here:
Power is the rate of work done/work output.
In short, power is the amount of energy released every second. [unit: W or J/s]

For automobile application,
It is common to see the rated Max Power Output as 47 kW @ 6600 rpm.
What does "47kW @ 6600 rpm" means?
That means if the engine speed for that car reached 6600 rpm, it would produce 47 kJ of work per second.

Familiar with the concept of Force, Work and Power yet ?!?!

Perhaps, a case study is better to address our topic here.

Case Study:

The relationship between vehicle mass and engine size that affect the fuel economy of the vehicle.

My Hypothesis:

There must be a balance between the mass and engine size in order to yield a good fuel economy.

Test Scenario:

Each car would carry 4 person (included driver) and travel from 30km/h to 50km/h on a flat road along a straight path.

Assumptions and Considerations:

1. Frictional Forces are not considered.
2. Combustion efficiency, power transmission efficiency and energy conversion are ignored and assumed to be 100%.
3. Assume the engine power output has linear relationship with the engine speed for all cars in this studies.
4. Most cars achieved acceleration from 30 km/h to 50km/h when the engine speed was around 1750rpm to 2000 rpm. Hence, the median value of the engine speed range (which is 1875 rpm) will be used as the reference engine speed value when the engine is doing work to speed up from 30km/h to 50km/h.
5. Flat road indicated no gravitational (potential energy) effect.
6. Straight path indicated no centripetal force to be considered.

(Note: With all the assumption above, it is an ideal case hence the reality is expected to be worse than this ideal case)

Data:

Nine Selected Honda Models
Source: http://www.honda.co.jp/

Note: Honda S660 is unable to carry more than 2 person so it will not be studied in 4 person loading but I will show the data  in the case when there is the driver alone.

Calculation Methodology:

1. How much work done needed from 30km/h to 50km/h?
With assumption#5. assumption#6 and derivation from the previous post.

where
m = dry mass of vehicle + total mass of passengers + mass of driver
(assume average mass for a person is 65 kg)
v = 50km/h = 13.89 m/s
u = 30km/h =  8.33 m/s

2. How much fuel will be consumed to perform the work done above?

Energy Density of Gasoline = 34.2 MJ/L (where L is litre)

3. How much engine power output at 1850 rpm?
With assumption#3,

Note: This calculation is important to realize how much work can the engine do at 1850 rpm.

4. How long does it take from 30km/h to 50km/h with engine power output at 1850 rpm?

Recalled 1 kW = 1 kJ/s

Calculations and Tabulated Data:

With the above data from Honda Official Site, assumptions and the calculation methodology, I present your my finding on the relationship among engine size and the total mass of the vehicle as tabulated below:

Calculated data in the case when there is the driver only.

Calculated data in the case when there are 4 person included the driver.

Data Digestion:

Regardless 1P case or 4P case, Newton is RIGHT.

Lighter the car is, more fuel is saved

What is the significance of time taken???
The time taken refer the amount of time needed to accelerate from 30km/h to 50km/h.

Time is a more familiar and common quantity to most readers where they judge the time taken to determine the car's power. No doubt, shorter the time, more powerful the car is.

There are 9 Honda Models but only have 5 categories of engine in term of engine size:

1.  0.66 L engine
2. 1.3 L engine
3. 1.5 L engine (most common)
4. 2.0 L engine 
5. 2.4 L engine

As shown, Honda Civic Type R [FK2] is the most powerful vehicle in my data as it takes 1.4s to speed up from 30km/h to 50km/h whereas Honda NBox G Turbo takes 4.4s to accelerate.

Of course, Honda Civic Type-R is an outlier because it is designed based on racing car specification. With balance in mass and engine size, it is more powerful than Honda Odyssey Absolute although Honda Civic Type-R used 2.0L engine as compared to Honda Odyssey Absolute that used a 2.4L engine.
Similarly, above calculation also show that Honda's K20A engine is the most powerful when comparing other engine at 1850 rpm engine speed.

However the flaw of being the most powerful engine is more fuel consumption.
As compared to Honda Civic Type-R
Other models like,
Honda Fit/Jazz RS takes 1.2s longer but save 0.60ml of gasoline;
Honda Fit/Jazz G13 takes 1.5s longer but save 0.69ml of gasoline;
Honda Verzel/HRV takes 1.5s longer but save 0.36ml of gasoline.

On the other hand, why it is bad to take longer time to achieve 50km/h from 30km/h ???

Lighter car is equipped with smaller engine size since the engine didn't really need to do much work to move the car therefore it is expected to have good fuel economy.

However, Kei Car with 0.66L engine takes more than 3s to achieve that acceleration as shown in the calculated data. In reality, human being are impatient such that we prefer to accelerate in a shorter time.

Let refine our experiment such that we set the acceleration from 30km/h to 50km/h duration to be fixed which is 3s. As a result, vehicle that takes more than 3 secs with 1850 rpm engine speed will do more work per seconds. Similar calculation approach, engine speed for Honda NBox-G Turbo need around 3207 rpm. By considering the work done rate to max power ratio, the kei car need to achieve 53.4% of its MAX POWER OUTPUT. At this stage, the car engine will produce more noise and more potential that lead to engine inefficient. Therefore, can you imagine that you drove Honda NBox in full loading and maintain the speed around 70-80km/h??? In long term, it is very unhealthy to your car engine.

Conclusions:

Honda Manufacturers will equip the vehicle with suitable engine size by considering the overall loading. Greater mass require greater engine size.

As discussed in previous topics, lighter car saved more fuel.
Hence, Honda S660 has the best fuel economy rating in theory.

With well balance between vehicle mass and engine size,
Honda Civic Type-R uses the most powerful engine such that it take little time to accelerate.

Similarly,
Honda Fit/Jazz G13 has the most optimum performance in both engine power output and fuel economy rating.

Further Reminders

Keep remembering that the whole analysis in this post is purely IDEALISTIC.
The beauty of ideal condition is that:
We know the perfect results.

In reality, conventional gasoline powered vehicle is very inefficient.
Depend which cars model, its overall efficiency is 1-10% only.

For example, Honda Fit/Jazz G13 need 65787J of gasoline to accelerate from 30km/h to 50km/h. If the overall efficiency is 10% only, it need 657870 J of gasoline which is 19.2ml of gasoline instead of 1.92ml.

In addition, the major flaw in the analysis is I excluded the engine torque consideration. In engine structural design, it is hard to improve engine torque and engine power output together.

In the engine, we have cylinders and its volume determine the engine size.
In automotive terminology, they would call them bore and stroke instead of diameter and length respectively as shown in this picture.

In engine design, Bore:Stroke ratio will determine both the engine torque and the engine output.

If the bore is a lot longer than the stroke, the engine is expected to have higher power output.
If the stroke is a lot longer than the bore, the engine is expected to have greater engine torque.

For practical application, we need both optimum value however truck or jeep might prefer higher engine torque. If you have high power but small torque, it is likely that the car need to do double work to produce the torque to move. If you have high torque but low power, it is harder for the car to accelerate.

Of course, I am still learning the relationship between engine torque and the power output and hopefully it will be discussed in the future.

After reading these 3 posts about fuel consumption, I hope my fellow readers have better understanding to choose a car with optimum performance in both engine power output and fuel economy.

Ideally, if I was a big fans of Honda and I have a family of 4, my wife and two working children (a daughter and a son).
I would buy myself
A Honda Fit RS for family vacation (or my own transportation).
A Honda N-Box for my wife to do shopping or my daughter (it is a cute design)
A Honda Fit G13 for either one of my children.
A Honda S660 for me to bring my wife to celebrate our own events without the children.

Fuel Consumption: Newton's First Law

This is just an extention for the first blog post where I explained the significance of the car's mass to improve fuel economy with Newton's Second Law. A more basic Newton's Law that explained that is Newton's First Law aka Law of Inertia.

This first law is rather abstract since we can't quantify this law however it is very common, just like a common sense and we experienced it almost everyday in our life.

The statement:
"A physical object tend to stay at rest or in a motion at a constant speed unless there is an external force acted on the system"

In another words, if there is no external forces,
An object would maintain its speed forever either the speed is zero or a constant speed.

Therefore, First Law and Second Law are strongly related since Second Law is describing the meaning of external force.

On the other hand, law of intertia also suggested that the massive the physic object, more force is needed to move the object from at rest or change its speed.

These example are very common in our daily life. Hence, the first law highlight the importance of MASS in a motion.

Played some calculation game,
How much of EXTERNAL FORCE needed to move a car from rest to 50km/h in 1 minute with the following model:

==================================================
Acceleration from 0 to 50km/h in 1 minutes = 0.2315 m/s/s

#1: Perodua Axia [1]
Mass = 820 kg
So, F = ma = 820 x 0.2315 = 189.83 N
Hence, it takes 189.83N of Force to move Axia from rest to 50km/h

#2: Honda Fit/Jazz [2]
Mass = 1070 kg
Hence, it takes 247.71N of Force to move Fit/Jazz from rest to 50km/h

#3: Nissan GT-R [3]
Mass = 1740 kg
Hence, it takes 402.81N of Force to move GT-R from rest to 50km/h

These three examples showed that the greater the mass, the greater the inertia effect such that more force is needed.

==================================================

Alright, force is not your language, how about energy or we prefer to call it WORK. Because we know the energy density of gasoline is 34.2 MJ/Litre [4]
It means every 1 litre of gasoline burnt would produce 34.2 MJ of energy through 100% combustion efficiency.

You may ignore the picture, but just to show the relationship among force, energy and work:

Derivation of Work Done = Change in Kinentic Energy

So now we have the formula to calculate the work done to move the car from rest to 50 km/h regarding time and distance. Similarly, we also know the amount of gasoline needed to perform the work so apply the new formula in the previous three examples by assuming 100% combustion efficiency:

==================================================
#1: Perodua Axia
Mass = 820 kg
So, Work Done = Change in Kinetic Energy = 79.1 kJ
Hence, 2.31mL of gasoline to be burnt to move Axia from rest to 50km/h

#2: Honda Fit/Jazz
Mass = 1070 kg
So, Work Done = Change in Kinetic Energy = 103.2 kJ
Hence, 3.01mL of gasoline to be burnt to move Jazz/Fit from rest to 50km/h

#3: Nissan GT-R
Mass = 1740 kg
So, Work Done = Change in Kinetic Energy = 167.8 kJ
Hence, 4.90 mL of gasoline to be burnt to move GT-R from rest to 50km/h
==================================================

As you can see from these three example under ideal condition, it is clear that the MASS of the vehicle play important role in fuel economy although they are just performing the same operation.

In reality, it might burn 10 times more fuel to overcome the road friction, air drag and compensate the engine and power transmission inefficiency. So you multiply the above value 10 time, you realize that you are burning more gasoline.

On the other hand, Newton's First Law also taught us that how inefficient our cars was during slowing down.

Take example like Honda Fit/Jazz,
Your car is burning 3.01 mL of fuel when you reached 50km/h from 0.
You can't stop burning the fuel, otherwise the speed would drop.
Suddenly, you applied brake where your car stopped from 50km/h to 0,
Imagine it is an IMMEDIATE brake.
Similarly, it applied the same work to stop your car to stop from 50km/h which is 103.2 kJ of work.
Luckily, you have braking system, so you can just apply small amount for work from your feet to apply the same work to stop the car.
Unfortunately, the same amount of fuel the car burnt would be wasted in the form of HEAT instead of mechanical energy to move your cars.
Each time you apply brake, each time you are wasting your fuel.

By understanding First Law and Second Law, don't ever perform immediate brake. It hurt your car and it wasted more fuel than you imagine.

Luckily, scientist invented an interesting device known as Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) [5]. If you drove a manual car, you will apply clutch to disconnect the engine and the wheel. With KERS, some of the mechanical energy in wheel would be stored instead of 100% dissipated into heat loss.

The stored energy can be used to charge the battery so only electrical cars or hybrid electrical cars is more suitable to adopt this technology.

Surprisingly, Formula One was using KERS first.

Lastly, once again, THANKS to the Physic Legend who taught us that MASS is everything before considering the driving pattern.

So what would be my next topic???
In fact, this is a warm up topic for my next topic because consumer should really concern the relationship between the engine size and the mass of the vehicle.

For example,
"Why does the engine size of a car increased as the mass of the car is increased?"

Next topic:

Fuel Consumption: Mass & Engine Size

so

STAY TUNED

Fuel Consumption: Newton's Second Law

As oil is depleting, the price of vehicle's fuel is likely to shoot up. In reality, fuel price will not be dropped although the value of global crude oil is falling. Hence, it is very important to pick a car that has good fuel consumption or fuel economy in order to reduce financial burden.

Without sophisticated understanding about the technology and mechanism behind a vehicle, Newton's Second Law is the simplest way to identify a car with fuel economy since Newton is the OG of classical mechanic such that we still apply Newton's Law today. Just to refresh the memory,

F = ma

The Statement:
"The resultant force (F) acted on an object is directly proportional to the mass (m) of the object and the acceleration (a) of the object where the direction of the resultant force acted on the same direction as the accelaration"

However, a more fundamental version of Newton's Second Law is 

F = kma

where k is the proportionality constant.

Extra Fact: 

With the rise of quantum mechanic, modern physicist concluded that k is Lorentz Factor in order to apply Newton's Second Law in the quantum world so k is unnecessary equal to 1.

Experimentally, scientist discovered that k is approximately to 1 hence if you rearrange the fundamental form of Newton's Second Law as shown below.

k = F / ma

The significance of k is it defined the physical quantity, Newton (N).

What does 1N of  force means?

With definition of k,
In order to accelerate an object with 1 kg of mass such that there is an increment of 1m/s for each second, it need 1 N of force.

Some engineer and physicist consider Newton's Second Law as the Conservation of Mechanical Energy.

=========================================

Automotive Example:

Mass of a vehicle: 1100 kg

Acceleration from 10km/h to 20km/h within 5 sec.

Acceleration (m/s/s): 0.556 m/s/s

Amount of force required to accelerate 1100kg of car from 10km/h to 20km/h within 5 sec require 611.6 N.

=========================================

As mentioned Newton's Second Law is Conservation of Mechanical Energy hence there is a relationship between force and energy.

The moment the car accelerate, it has apply work. In physic, Work Done (W) is defined as

W = Fs

where s is the distance travelled.

Combining the definition of F and W, we get

W = m x a x s

In short, the car will apply more work (or more fuel would be consumed) when the car is heavier, rapid change in acceleration and the longer the distance travelled.

Of course, distance travelled and acceleration are essential, there is no way we could change our driving habit to minimize the accelerating behaviour and the distance travelled. However, the MASS of the vehicle is something we can decide.

In short, the lighter the car, less fuel would be consumed.

Therefore, smart consumer will not fill in their oil tank in 100%, optimum around 80%  because they want to reduce the loading on the vehicle.

In fact, I wrote this topic dedicated to fellow Malaysians who need to drive in order to earn a living therefore it is very common that a family of 4 members would have 4 cars in Malaysia.

Since it is likely that only the driver alone in the car so it is smarter to pick a car that is 1000kg - 1200kg in order to save fuel.

Of course, engine efficiency and power transmission efficiency are major factors that affect the fuel consumption however I will assure you that even an high efficiency 2000kg cars would consume more fuel than a low efficiency 1000kg cars. Because Newton had taught us that the amount of work done require to move a massive object under 100% efficiency.

However, there is one factor to be considered, the maximum engine output of the vehicle. A simple way to identify the maximum engine output is determine its engine capacity/engine size.

Ever wonder what does 1300cc means?

Just a reminder, we called it Internal Combustion Engine because there is a combustion process require both fuel and air.

1300cc means the amount of air required to start the combustion.

In order to have a good combustion efficiency, the greater the engine capacity would require more fuel to be consumed.
In short, more air in, more fuel would be consumed.

Therefore, typical sport cars like Ferrari and Lamborghini were unlikely to have good fuel economy. It has a relative lower mass but its engine capacity was at least 3800cc. In another words, it consumed more fuel then it needed to travel a specific distance. Another good example would be Aerial Motor's Atom that used Honda Civic's K20A engine. Its mass was about 700kg only but it used a 2000cc engine hence it burned more fuel than it needed because Newton told us that it didn't really need that much of energy to accelerate respective to its mass.

Ideally, mass of car from 1000-1200kg just require 1300cc to 1500cc based on my experience in vehicular exhaust emission industry.

Considered that Japan placed very high priority in environment protection, each year they would update the fuel economy of each vehicle according to its mass. [1] Similarly, Macau Government offered tax exemption to eco-friendly vehicle. [2]

In fact I did plot a graph to combined both Japan and Macau Vehicular Exhaust Emission Standard as shown below:

Fuel Economy Target vs Average Mass of Vehicle

By showing real example on two different policies, we could see that policy makers expected heavier vehicle would have lower fuel economy.

=========================================
Automotive Example 2:

Based on the manufacturer website[3], they claimed that Lamborghini Huracan LP610-4 has a fuel consumption of 8km/l (12.5 l/100km)
The dry weight =  1422 kg

According to Japan's Fuel Economy target, Lamborghini Huracan failed to meet the Fuel Economy Target as it required at least 13km/l.

Similarly, it also failed to get tax exemption from Macau Government as Macau Government expect its fuel consumption to be at least 17km/l.
=========================================

With this guidance and two real example from Japan and Macau, I hope my friends has a simple understanding on fuel consumption.

One more example dedicated to Malaysian drivers.
=========================================
Automotive Example 3:

Based on the manufacturer website[4], they claimed that Perodua Axia 1.0 Standard E - Manual has a fuel consumption of 21.6km/l
The kerb weight =  820 kg

According to Japan's Fuel Economy target, Perodua Axia achieved the standard as it expect to be above 18.8km/l.

However, it also failed to get tax exemption from Macau Government as Macau Government expect its fuel consumption to be at least 23.8 km/l.
=========================================

Two important lessons I expected my fellow readers realized them;

Lesson#1:"Lighter the car, less fuel will be consumed provided the engine capacity is optimum"

Lesson#2:
"Fuel Consumption alone does not define the magnitude of eco-friendliness, it depend on its mass and which country's policy"

Reference:

1. http://delphi.com/docs/default-source/catalogs/delphi-worldwide-emissions-standards-pc-ldv-15-16.pdf?sfvrsn=2
2. http://bo.io.gov.mo/bo/i/2015/14/despce_cn.asp#59
3. http://www.lamborghini.com/en/models/huracan-lp-610-4/technical-specifications/ 
4. http://www.perodua.com.my/specification/axia



Next topic:

Fuel Consumption: Newton's First Law

so

STAY TUNED