Cars are everywhere. There are millions of cars on the road today, and over 150,000 new ones are made daily. But, a lot of people limit their automotive knowledge to which pedals do what, how to use the blinkers and which side of the car the gas tank is on. Let these simple automotive facts open your eyes to a world you may not have known existed.
1. The average car has over 30,000 pieces:
Adding up every screw, bolt, wire, seat, spring, engine component, etc., the average car has over 30,000 individual pieces that make it up. Some have more, some less, but that just goes to show how many things we can’t see.
2. One horsepower is not actually the power of one horse:
Horsepower is the term used to rate how much power something has. James Watt, the same Watt that light bulbs are rated by, to rate the power of something, created it a long time ago. One horsepower is actually equal to 33,000 foot-pounds per minute. If that means even less to you, don’t worry. Just imagine a horse moving something that weighs 1,000 pounds 33 feet in one minute.
3. It doesn’t take much gas to get an engine going:
The average car only needs about half an ounce of gas to get started. Obviously it takes more than half an ounce to keep the car going, but the initial start only needs about half an ounce. To put that into perspective, a shot of alcohol at a bar is about one ounce.
4. Your car tells you which side the gas tank lid is on:
This is a simple one, but a lot of people don’t know about this one. Next time you get in a car, look at the fuel gauge and it will have a small little arrow pointing either left or right. The direction that the arrow is pointing is the side of the car that the lid to the gas filler cap is. Now you can refuel any car with confidence.
5. Running your car low on gas is bad for it:
Even though gasoline is clear when you look at it, there are actually very small pieces of dirt and other junk that are in it. Those particles settle to the bottom of your gas tank, along with any rust or other contaminant that might find a way into the tank. So when you run a car low on gas, or even worse, out of gas, those particles can get sucked up by the fuel pump and damage, or destroy, critical parts of the fuel system and engine. A good rule-of-thumb is to not let your car get below one-quarter of a tank if you can help it.
6. Diesel and gas are similar, but totally different:
Most vehicles are run on gasoline, but some cars, and a lot of trucks, are run on diesel. Think of diesel as that cousin that you have that lifts weights a lot, but doesn’t have very many manners. Diesel is a less-refined relative of gasoline. That means that there is more power in diesel than there would be in the same amount of gas. Gasoline is burned by it being combined with air, compressed and ignited by a spark. Diesel is only mixed with air and compressed until it explodes. There is no spark in diesel engines. That’s why diesels are used mostly in trucks. They have a lot more power relative to size.
7. Everything on newer cars is controlled by a computer:
From the engine and transmission, the windshield wipers, windows, radio, speed, cruise control, steering, brakes and really anything you can imagine is controlled by a computer. So when you push the button to roll the windows down, the button sends a signal to a computer asking if it can open the window, and if the computer says that it’s ok to roll the window down, it goes down. Crazy that everything else works the same way.
8. There is metal in your tires all the time:
Everyone knows that getting a nail in your tire will cause it to go flat, but a lot of people don’t know that tires are actually partially made of metal. There are bundles of wires in your tires that give it a round shape and a stronger structure. The more wires, the stronger the tire.
9. Car batteries are filled with liquid:
While there have been dry-chemical batteries recently, batteries have been filled with a liquid and metal plates. Most batteries are lead-acid batteries, with lead plates in a solution of a sulfur acid and water. The power comes from the chemical reaction between the water, lead and acid. Car batteries are “dead” when the sulfur from the acid sticks to the lead plates and the reaction cannot take place. When the battery is being charged again after being dead, the sulfur is being removed from the plates and mixed back in with the solution allowing the reaction to take place again.
10. Older cars did not come standard with seat belts:
When cars began to be mass-produced, seat belts were not mandatory by law. They were an option that could be added on to your car. And even when seat belts began to be pre-installed on new cars, a lot of people would just tuck them into the seats and ignore them. It wasn’t until around the 1980s that seat belt laws began to appear. Now it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle without a seat belt.
11. Modern cars are so quiet that they fake engine noise:
More and more cars being designed today are so quiet that manufacturers are playing engine noises through the speakers of the car so that the driver can be immersed in their driving experience. The idea being that someone can have a quiet car when they want to talk with their passengers, or have a louder car when they want to enjoy driving. So some newer cars come with a system that plays a computer generated sound of an engine through the speakers of the car. Kind of strange.
With this new knowledge, you can walk confidently into the world knowing that you know a little more about cars than the average driver.
