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I’ve driven many cars, but none have had engines as small as the one I am driving now: a Kia Picanto. This has a 1L engine. It has no trouble reaching 100kph on Singapore’e expressways. The interior is roomy enough to seat 5 (cooperative) adults. It has 4 doors and a hatch. The trunk is small but fine for groceries for a family of 3.

It’s also the smallest car I’ve driven. Even in the parking lots around NTU, it’s about the dinkiest car around.  Here is a photo.

The car is supposed to get 50mpg easily. I’ll report on the results I get this month.

1 Feb 2010: First tank of gas, mileage is 13.6 km/liter, or ~32 mpg.  Not as much as I would have hoped.

Why don’t we have city cars in America?

When I lived in Auckland from 1992-1999, I relied on the bus and, later, the harbor ferry to commute to work.    The ferry boat trip took just 10 minutes, but I often wished it was longer to enjoy the harbor breeze.

When I lived in Silicon Valley I spent two years commuting by public transport to work. Each morning I rode my bicycle to the Caltrain,  hopped on with my bike onto the bike carriage, and rode about 15 minutes from Sunnyvale to Palo Alto.  Then I rode 4 miles to my office.

Now that I’ve moved to Singapore, I rely on public transport. Here is a city where it is possible to survive without a car.  If I want to leave the NTU  I take the SBS bus to Boon Lay, and get on the MRT  Both are airconditioned, and neither needs a schedule. The trains run every 7 minutes from Boon Lay, and the buses at least every 10 minutes from campus.   It was amazing to me to see that none of the 30 bus lines at Boon Lay interchange shows a schedule, indicating they come frequently enough that a schedule is not needed.   Public transport in Singapore is  cashless: rides are charged to your EZlink card, which is contactless, using RF at 13.56 MHz.  The card works within 3 cm, so you can keep it in your wallet.  The card costs S$15, and comes with a S$7 credit to start.  You can top up the EZlink at any MRT station. It typically takes me around S$2 to travel across town on a combination of buses and MRT.

I have three toilets in my house, and each uses 3.5 gallons per flush.  Despite all that water, I even need to flush twice sometimes.   I don’t know when these toilets were made.  You can’t buy toilets that use more than 1.6 gallons/flush today.

I recently bought a Mansfield Quantum One toilet from Home Depot.   It uses only 1.o gallon/flush.   The flush uses a combination of suction pressure and water push to remove waste, in a milder way than airplane toilets.    The noise is startling if you are used to a normal gravity flush. The flush mostly works, but ocassionally I still have to flush twice.  However, it refills quickly.

The Quantum One is considered a high effficiency toilet, which makes me eligible for the rebate offered by the Santa Clara Valley water district.

3rd Honda Civic

I now own my 3rd Honda Civic in 20 years. Its a 2005 model, EX “special edition”. My previous Civics include a 1987 DX hatchback and a 1997 DX Sedan. My current Civic has 1.7L, four-cylinder VTEC engine, generating 125 HP. The power to displacement ratio is 125/1.7 = 73. The newer Civics (2007) use more advanced valve timing to generate 140 HP from a 1.8 L engine, for a 78 HP/L. However, the city mileage, which is where it counts for me, did not improve in 2007 due to the larger engine displacement. The 2007 model is rated at 30MPG in the city, with some journalists estimating 27 MPG in real-world driving. In contrast, my ‘05 Civic gets 10% better mileage, achieving 29-30 MPG regularly, in stop-and-go city driving. In a recent drive from Santa Clara to El Capitan State Beach in Santa Barbara, I measured 394 miles on 9.5 gallons, or 41.4 MPG, the best mileage I’ve ever had. I had an even better result on a recent trip from June Lake (east of Yosemite) to Santa Clara, driving 363 miles on 8.1 gallons, which is 44.8 miles per gallon! This is even more impressive considering the car was fully loaded with camping gear, while driving on winding mountain roads with the A/C on much of the time.