This cracks me up. According to a Wall Street Journal article, a Detriot Hummer dealership is now installing the “Vortex Valve” (www.vortexvalve.com) on the H2 and H3 as a “Mileage Maximizer” claiming they’ll boost the fuel efficiency to 25mpg!
I’ve always felt the Vortex Valve, Turbonator, SpiralMax, or any other “non-moving vortex generator” was nothing more than snake oil for your car. I mean, can you really improve gas mileage and boost horsepower by changing the airflow before it enters the intake manifold? I mean, isn’t the intake manifold going to ‘reshape’ this air and change the flow to something completely different than the ‘swirling effect’ that these devices are supposed to give it? Well, I guess GM was thinking the same thing [from the WSJ article]:
Hummer’s Mr. Richards says that while GM hasn’t had a chance to examine the vehicles… “We spend years optimizing everything for performance, ride and handling, overall vehicle efficiency, durability and long-term reliability and to meet current and future emission standards,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of very smart engineers who have been doing this for their entire lives. If it were that simple, they would have already discovered it.“
No kidding. So would engineers at BMW, Ford, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and every other manufacturer. I mean, the Prius and Yaris from Toyota were designed specifically to save gas, and you don’t see any ‘non-moving vortex generators’ on them, do you?
The other part of this story that makes me laugh is that the Hummer Dealer is adding this option for $189.95. The Vortex Valve can be ordered directly from their website for less than half that. The sad part about this story? People are actually buying into it. They don’t say how much it has ‘ignited sales’ but they are considering adding this ‘option’ to Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles at their other area dealerships.
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