Improved fuel consumption through downsizing. Rhetoric or reality? An analysis of the Swedish new car fleet.

This paper describes how one often highlighted key strategy for reducing the fuel consumption of the personal car fleet is the so called downsizing of cars. This paper studies how the potentials for downsizing created by technical improvements, such as increased maximum specific torque and power, turbochargers, and gear shift have materialized in the actual new car market in Sweden. The authors conclude that the downsizing so far has been a lot of rhetoric and less of real savings.