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Originally Posted by
BlurredElevens
Your "last reply" was dodging the question. I'm still waiting on your answer I asked you.
Your question is ridiculous and you know it. It isn't even relavent.
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Well, of course energy conservation is always a good thing. However, there are certain things that are so superficial, they don't even warrant argument, and DRLs are one of them. You know what wastes 1000x more energy than DRLs?
Bad driving habits. Are you going to hold classes teaching people to ease onto the accelerator instead of mashing it stoplight to stoplight?
That is true, but its much, much harder to have people do that. notice I said the easiest possible way. Its about effort vs. reward. this takes pretty much zero effort, telling people to not accelerate fast is almost impossible.
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As far as saving millions of barrels of oil a year?
That's why I've been asking you guys to calculate fuel loss due to alternator drag. What most here are forgetting is very important. Gas/diesel engines are inefficient. Factors such as torque and horsepower help make them that way. What torque and horsepower lose in energy efficiency, they make up for on the back end when spinning something so minute as an alternator.
For example, my trucks engine has a lot of torque at an idle. That torque and power, however inefficient, will be there whether a tiny amount of drag is being placed on the engine from an alternator or not. The inefficiency of the mechanical motor is made up for running an alternator in this regard.
So my point is, having a powerful engine is in itself inefficient. That's how it came from the factory. You have to remember that certain types of engines aren't going to be effected by such a small factor.
You don't seem to understand that headlights will use some amount of gas proportional to the amount of power they draw, regardless of the engine. your truck uses the same amount of gas to run the headlights as a headlight equipped go cart.
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Now, when you have one of your little horsepower fuel saving engines, then yes, the engine will have to adjust, because the mechanical power of the engine is so little.
Therefor, driving a small, underpowered "green friendly" car actually wastes more gas for using DRLs, than say, my ungreen friendly truck. ;)
It wastes the exact same amount of gas. It uses a smaller portion of the gas it uses on the headlights, yes, but that is fucking retarded.
I think the REAL benefit of DRLs is that if they are always on, people won't forget to turn on their headlights at dawn/dusk when they might matter. So why not have the lights turn on or off based on a sensor, like a lot of cars already do? Then they don't run during the actual day, but are still on when needed and might be forgotten.
