Why are American cars so gas inefficient?

Question

My brother in-law from England has a ford Ka that gets 40 MPG int he city, that same car here in the USA gets like half that. Why?

Answer 1

because the Ka is smaller than the Ford Focus .. about the closest car to it in america which is still almost 1/2 bigger than the KA.

In England, most cars are small..Too small for americans (who are too worried about being overrun now by pickup trucks here)

Also most use extremely small motors and most are Diesel.. like a 1.3 diesel.. got the economy but probably lousy in power.... The car makers tried these kind of cars in the 1990s and americans' shunned them in droves (remember the geo metro and the Ford Aspire?)

Unfortuneately I couldn't find sizes for a NA focus but the Ka is 200 mm (about 9 inches shorter) smaller in wheelbase than the european Focus for example

FMI on the KA:
http://ford.co.uk/ns7/ka/-/-/-/-/-/-

Answer 2

The Ka's a size below the Focus. Until recently, there hasn't been very much interest in tiny cars in the States. How cool was it to drive a Geo Metro?

Two, English gallons are bigger than American ones, so you can get a few more miles out of them.

Answer 3

Well other country's have different standards. I worked at John Deere's and Tractors made for Europe where made safer. They had different safety issues than ones made for An American farmer. Because they had different wheel bases,escape windows,and fuel consumption was different. Cars are also made in different country's. Ford has a plant in Windsor Canada the engines are built different too. It may have less hp with less pollution control stuff on it.

Answer 4

European cars are built to different standards. First, the car might be a lot smaller and lighter. Europeans don't have this stupid obsession with huge cars like American men do. Second, the US has put a lot of restrictions on emissions that, ironically, reduce the gas mileage of the cars.

Answer 5

My 2004 Chevrolet Corvette gets 33 mpg at a constant speed of 70 mph. Who says they can't build them? They can, but they don't. (btw, I get 28 in city, if I just drive normally, but it's hard to "just drive normally" with such a fast car! You just know you gotta floor it sometime!). I put nitrogen in the tires, and it really did improve my mileage, about 4 to 5 mpg. But that's a Corvette. I can't speak for all cars. Nitrogen - $3 per tire.

Answer 6

they use different methods to calculate MPG, in the USA the EPA rates each model, in europe they use another method. There was a popular mechanics article about it recently. Also, emissions standards are more stringent in the US than in europe.

Answer 7

Big Oil controls the American car companies.

The oil companies lobby American car manufactures (GM, Ford) to make cars that use more gas in the U.S. so that they will sell more and make more money.

Answer 8

They are not inefficient..
They simply have more horsepower , torque & weight than the
typical European canrs...
Check the specifications on the car more carefully...

Answer 9

Fuel has cost substantially more in Europe than in the US for a long time, so it has become economically necessary for better fuel economy. In contrast, our fuel has been so cheap for so long we didn't care.

Answer 10

40 in the city...... It must be a one cylinder.