Regulations aren’t going to do much.  Quick back of the envelope shows that this Ranger will pretty much be dead on the 2025 mpg requirements for a truck its size.... and I doubt that we’ll see stricter requirements, especially while Trump says that the 2025 requirements are impossible to achieve.

Ford did a bit of a disservice not putting a boost gauge on the things as standard.  It would go a  LONG way in training people to get good mpg while not being total sloths.

Is your van filled with 15 passengers?  Cause that’s probably a full ton of extra cargo - cargo that isn’t counted in the EPA tests.  I doubt your Matrix is weighed down the same.

0-60 in 14 seconds for a 15 passenger van used to be fast. :)

I love when people complain about slow vehicles. Then I point out that the slowest mainstream sedans / trucks of today are actually about as fast as the fastest mainstream sedans / trucks of 20-25 years ago.  It used to be if you bought a car, you’d expect a 0-60 time of 10-12 seconds, and anything under 9 was…

Not where I live. The speed limit in front of my office is 55 mph. If I pull out from the stoplight in my 06 Fusion I4, and don’t keep the RPMs up around 3500, everyone is passing me. At 4000-4500 rpms, I’m still accelerating slower than all but about 20% of vehicles. Freaking murder on the engine when its cold.

Stupid…

Not in my experience.  It’s a different style of throttle modulation, but you only have to be ginger on them in my experience up through 1st gear... after that, you can put more oomph into it without triggering boost....

Oddly, since every car is different, going 60-65 instead of 70 might not be advantageous.

My 2010 Mazda6 has a 5 speed slushbox. To keep the “zoom zoom”, Mazda programmed the transmission to be quick to unlock the torque converter if it sensed a slight increase in load while at lower RPMs. Based on the gearing, driving…

Not only that, but the Rangers of 15 years ago were smaller and the V6 was just 210 hp and 254 lb. ft. Now it’s 270 hp and 310 lb-ft. You can get all that torque at low rpm, unlike the old V6.... and if you just don’t lead foot it, you can take power and torque like the old model and get good gas mileage.

Bovine excrement.

Don’t drive like an idiot and you can easily beat the EPA ratings.

So a 2019 truck that basically meets the 2025 CAFE targets, yet we’re supposed to believe those are impossible to achieve?

Well, no idea where you live, but I’ve got quite a few friends on Teslas now and they all swear road trips are easy if you do a tiny bit of planning. A few more friends have Leafs - they love them but road tripping is pretty much a non-starter there.

Personally, I think something like the Volt (or just a…

I’m assuming you can’t charge at home and that’s what you’re implying?

EVs won’t be for everyone just yet, but if you can charge at home or at work, the idea that you can’t find charging for other trips is absurd - chargers are all over the place, and you simply have to know where to look.  Thanks to smart phones and…

About half the Walmarts near me already have charging stations.  And I’m in an area where the legislature has been hostile to EV adoption.

Your point is very valid, but as I provided, the number of charging locations is still only about 1/8th or so of the number of gas stations. Accounting for differences in the number of connections/pumps, the discrepancy grows even more. And if you account for amount of time spent at each one, that gap grows again.

Howev…

Time for you to go measure again.  They’re smaller.  Not by a ton (except for eliminating the V10 really cut back significantly), but they are smaller.  And they keeep making the space for them BIGGER.

Neutral:

Never say never.  But they have a LONG road to travel to prove to me that they can make a safe, long-lasting, quality vehicle.  Couple that with how little of a vehicle goes towards labor, and I’d gladly pay what will likely be a very small premium to get an EV from Toyota/Honda/Ford/GM/Tesla instead of one…

Fair point, but find me any maker that hasn’t missed their promises on EVs by years (yes, this includes Tesla)

There are a ton of charging spots across the US already. The catch is that people don’t know about them, and you have the compatibility issue among some of them. At the end of last year, there were 17,526 public charging locations around the US. By comparison, we have a bit over 150,000 gas stations. Granted, when you…

Where did the 7.5L go? 7.3L? 6.8L?

The displacement is going down, on average, but the hood line and engine compartment volume keep going up.