this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
399 points (93.1% liked)
Technology
59568 readers
3606 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The early 90s was mostly a perfect storm for fuel economy.
You had the computing power available to make use of CAD and develop more aerodynamic designs with less significant overhead (i.e., doing it by hand).
EFI technology had matured and carburetors were broadly defunct, allowing more efficient operation in a broader range of environments.
The US had updated its archaic lighting regulations to allow for more aerodynamic headlight shapes.
A lot of the safety technology that adds weight to modern cars either hadn’t been developed yet or hadn’t trickled down to the average vehicle.
So you had a confluence of more efficient engines, more aerodynamic vehicles, and cars that were still small and relatively lightweight.