Simply Amazing! (The Promises, Not the Gas Savings)

[jzab]

Published in the New York Times on 06 Aug 2006. I thought this might be interesting in these times of high fuel prices.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency maintains a full laboratory where it will gladly test a miraculous fuel-saving device for $30,000. But so far, the biggest customer of the lab has been the Federal Trade Commission, which uses it to debunk false advertising claims.

Such claims of astounding mileage gains have increased as gizmos promising gas savings -- some newly hatched and others a fresh twist on old themes -- have proliferated, draining the pockets of gullible drivers seeking relief from high gasoline prices. From clamp-on magnets to water sprays, from air spinners and vaporizers to fuel vibrators and gas tank pills, gadgets promising higher mileage are not new.

For at least a century, tinkerers have tried everything from exhaust cutouts that bypassed the muffler to "cow magnets" (normally used to extract bits of metal from the digestive systems of ruminants) clamped to gasoline lines to mysteriously align the molecules in fuel.

The latest products have received a lift from the Internet and television infomercials. But while the inventiveness of the marketing has improved, the success of the devices has not.

"We tested about 100 products, a little more than a hundred, and we can boil them down to saying that they don't work," John Millett, an E.P.A. spokesman, said.

The F.T.C. lists the results of its tests at the E.P.A. lab on its consumer protection Web site, www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/autos/gasave.pdf. If the F.T.C. decides a product is falsely advertised it can take action against the company selling it.

The E.P.A. reviews the chemicals used in gasoline additives, to ensure that what comes out of the tailpipe is no more harmful than emissions from regular fuel. It then issues a registration letter.

This letter does not constitute approval or endorsement, but marketers often use it to claim E.P.A. "certification."

Some fuel or oil additives can be a problem for engines and fuel systems. Additives displace protective chemicals in gasoline and engine oil; some may corrode fuel pumps or gas tanks, or make flexible fuel hoses and fittings brittle. Instead of enhancing engine life and economy, users might shorten their car's life.

A senior editor at Popular Mechanics magazine, Mike Allen, found results similar to those obtained by the E.P.A. when he took a crateful of fuel-saving contraptions to a Texas testing lab to check their effectiveness. "None of them improved fuel economy, several of them increased fuel consumption and most of them cost horsepower," Mr. Allen said in an interview.

To test the gizmos, Mr. Allen used a pair of chassis dynamometers made available by the Universal Technical Institute, a Houston vocational school. A dynamometer is a machine that measures the power output of a running vehicle on rollers to allow its wheels to spin as though they were rolling along pavement.

When fuel consumption was carefully measured, first without and then with the so-called "enhancers" -- everything from the Fuel Atomizer 2000, a gadget that took fuel through a big loop of copper tubing to vaporize it and pump it back into the engine, to the Electronic Engine Ionizer, a device that is supposed to feed energy back and forth to one cylinder or another through clip-on wires.

Some gadgets were hard to install; others were hazardous. "This device had something they called `capacitor blocks,' " Mr. Allen said of the Electronic Engine Ionizer. "They melted and dripped onto the adjustment bolt and caught fire."

Another device, the AquaTune, cost $399 and resulted in 20 less horsepower and a 20 percent drop in mileage.

Mr. Allen reported on his findings in the magazine's September 2005 issue. He recalled recently that after a week of testing he had gained respect not for the technology involved, but for the persuasive skills of promoters.

He pointed out that any carmaker that could honestly promise economy gains of 300 percent, 30 percent or even 3 percent would be doing that rather than offering cash incentives to sell vehicles in a brutally competitive global market.

Auto companies employ some of the world's top engineers, and they are desperate for an edge in the economy sweepstakes. "The possibility that some guy who's tinkering in his back yard is going to come up with it is really remote," Mr. Allen said.

Why do people who have spent tens of thousands of dollars on a well-engineered car believe that the $100 Fuel Genie, the $198 Platinum Gas Saver or the $70 TornadoFuelSaver might reap huge benefits?

On ABC News's "20/20," the inventor of the Platinum Gas Saver asserted that skepticism over his product was partly because of a smear campaign by the tobacco industry -- and he then posted on his Web site a brash "as seen on" reference to the newsmagazine.

Dr. Carl Haugtvedt, a social psychologist who is an associate professor of marketing logistics at Ohio State University, said that the kind of faith that draws consumers to gadgets like these was actually important to human mental health. Part of the attraction stems from hopefulness and a willingness to trust that something can improve a painful situation. Another factor is self-delusion, which protects the ego by letting a person overlook bad decisions.

"You could admit to yourself that you were wrong, you wasted this money, you burned this money, say `I'm an idiot,' " Dr. Haugtvedt said. "That's very tough on the self."

People who are hopeful enough to try out a fuel-economy enhancer will look for any positive sign they can find to convince themselves that they made a good decision. They may put the device in their car and, at the same time, get a tune-up -- something suggested in the installation instructions with many devices. Or, because the owners are paying more attention to their cars, they may realize that their tires are underinflated and add some air. Then, each time they add fuel at the gas pump, they attribute any mileage gain to the device.

Consumer Reports' experts are accustomed to such consumer behavior. David Champion, director of automobile testing, urges people to be aware of how cars work so they can be wiser buyers. When the magazine recently tested the Fuel Genie, the TornadoFuelSaver and the Platinum Gas Saver, it found they had no effect.

"We read the instructions extremely well, followed them to the absolute letter, and did a fuel-economy run," Mr. Champion said. The drives were done using fuel meters spliced into the gasoline lines to measure the volume of fuel consumed, and the same test runs used to evaluate new cars were performed. "They didn't make any difference at all," he said.

Mr. Champion said drivers should look beyond the powerful advertising behind the devices and, instead, modify their driving. "Drive as if you've got a cup of coffee on your dashboard and you don't want to spill it," he said. "No heavy acceleration, no heavy braking."

Mr. Allen, at Popular Mechanics, has an alternate solution. "If you want to save gas," he said, "stay home."