My chunk of the planet was suppose to be underwater 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, last year, in 3 years, and in 7 years. We are a naive species that does not understand climate or how and why it changes.
Somehow I feel that in our world the majority of corporations don't make direct comparisons to their competitors that often, preferring to use "competing brands" or something of that variety instead.
Avoiding a lawsuit is easy in that case: The Intel lawyer would have to make the argument that Pentium PCs are, in fact, harmful. Which would have opened a whole new can of worms.
Hard to see how Intel could sue over a statement like that.
The reason many companies say "competing brands" is because they don't want to mention an alternative, because it increases the mindshare of the other brand.
I like how you say "the dealer made sure not to volunteer any extra info" as if this was a secret and the dealer somehow scammed your friend into buying a brand new car at the height of a chip shortage and record high car prices.
The lifetime difference of premium gas financially is next to nothing.
It’s been a thing. My car is 20 years old and requires it. Engines with higher compression require higher octane fuel to reduce pre-detonation and pinging. Using low-octane fuel in one of them can cause game-ending physical damage to the engine.
Many more modern cars can sense lower-octane fuel and adjust for it, at the cost of power and efficiency (i.e., mileage).
Some vehicles, especially ones with OEM performance tuning, run high compression ratios or forced induction. Higher octane gas allows for more compression within the piston before ignition. I had a 2003 Toyota Matrix that redlined at 9100 rpm and used their fancy Toyota variant of VTEC that would dynamically swap the camshafts on the engines past a certain RPM. Although the engine was naturally aspirated (no turbo), it had the compression ratio of 11.5:1, which is pretty high for an economy vehicle (1.8L)
The octane rating you see on gas indicates the pressure at which gasoline will combust. Engines tuned to a higher compression to ignite require higher octane level gasoline. Using something other than what the engine is tuned to might put a lot of extra wear or degrade performance of the engine.
The gasoline will ignite before it is supposed to, forcing the piston back down before it has travelled all the way to the top of it's stroke. The engine will destroy itself. You can hear "knocking" coming from the engine when this is happening. It's worse than it sounds.
I know this is definitely true of older engines that aren't controlled by fancy software, but I suspect at least many consumer cars are capable of adjusting to the difference. I could be wildly wrong here though, and wouldn't want to test it myself.
All the comments are giving unequivocal yes’s, I’ll note that some cars (my buddy’s Subaru) will say they require premium but work just fine without. Currently going 240k miles still strong.
A car with knock sensor will detect lower-quality fuel and pull back timing. This will usually limit your power, but not damage your car. My car manual even explicitly states that it won't affect engine lifetime.
Full disclosure, I still use premium anyway because I want to keep the car for a long time and I don't fully believe this disclaimer.
Generally you'll get worse fuel economy due to the ECU and knock sensor detecting the lower grade fuel and pulling ignition timing out. It's unlikely you'd even save money at the pump
Wow really? That is hard to believe given half the US drains through it. I can't find anything on Google on the subject though maybe I am using the wrong search terms.
My serious and simple response would be, why are you turning against law abiding citizens instead of focusing on the psycho criminal that was known to police prior to the event?
It is a layered security approach. Like when a system is hacked, law abiding users have to go through hoops with crazy passwords, 2 factor auth, etc. to deal with the psycho hacker.
