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| | The new 2007 line of new cars and vehicles includes a nice selection of fuel efficient car models. These high-technology cars and trucks have high fuel efficiency ratings and are lightweight, have small bodies, and contain innovative hybrid gasoline-electric powertrains. One of the new models, the Honda Insight, is rated at an impressive 66 miles per gallon on the highway and 60 mpg in the city but lacks the room necessary to carry much in the way of family or friends. So even though these new models have great fuel ratings, they fall short on comfort and room...so what if you need more vehicle than a 2-seat coupe?
The struggle for non-polluting (more exactly - with significantly less harmful chemicals in exhausts), or ecologically friendly automobiles in the beginning of the 70's sharply became more active. First of all in the USA, where the number of cars exceeded a hundred million and the annual production came nearer to 10 million. In 1973 in the USA and Japan, stringent norms on marginal levels of the amount of harmful impurities (oxides of nitrogen and carbon, hydrocarbons) in used gases have received the legal base. As a result, factories were forced to use catalytic neutralizers for used gases, systems of injection with electronic control, power supply systems with impoverished gas mixtures and other innovations for automobiles of their production. Air cushions of different types, inertial belts, foldable pedal bridges, deformable structures of carrying body are used to increase the safety in the 1990's.
In 1980 Japan overtook the USA in the manufacture of cars. Its firms already for a long time ceased to copy foreign designs. They started to find new technical solutions on a wide scale to introduce them on serial models. The branches of the Japanese firms have successfully developed the manufacture of models on such advanced automobile posts as the USA and England. In America as per the data in 2000, 28% of automobiles are made at local affiliated factories by the Japanese firms. This share in England is even higher at 51%.
The invasion of Japanese engineering became especially appreciable during the last decade. In 1982, the firm "Isudzu" promulgated the data on experiments with the engine working on adiabatic to process. It conducted these works together with “Kioto Ceramics”, which made the major components of the engine from ceramics.
The firm "Mitsubishi" was the first in the world to master the release of diesel engines for cars with the direct injection of fuel controlled by microprocessor. And in 1996, it entered into the market (first, only in internally) with the model "FTO" for which the automatic gear box had two-modes, in the manual mode of switching it remembered the manner of its control by the driver and repeated it working in an automatic mode.
But the major achievement of the Japanese motor industry of last years, which certainly will become history, is the automobile “Toyota Pries” with a hybrid power plant. A lot of vehicles equipped with engines of internal combustion and the electro-motors, which in certain conditions of movement would help one another or work separately, are produced. All of them were pre-production models. The model "Pries" for the first time in the world was produced in 1998 and serially went on sale.
Enriched with long-term experience and traditions, the European firms tried to not recede under the pressure of the Japanese automobile industry. Turbo pressurization, which changes the phases of gas distribution during travel, anti skidding systems with electronic control, aluminum bearing bodies, variators with multi node metallic belt and full driving road models has come from Europe.
After estimating the evolution of automobile engineering for last decade (down to 2000) it is necessary to note that intensity of the occurrence of new designs of units and systems has increased in comparison with 1900. Actually on any demand of the market, leading companies already have not only ready-made concepts, but also ready-made specific designs. To imagine the scales of work of the global automobile industry, it is enough to say that only the factories, which produce cars, operate in 37 countries. They make 42 million vehicles of 122 different grades per year, and the total number of cars on the planet is 529 million.
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