Washers and dryers are about to get a whole lot more efficient

The article:

* avoids the question of whether the new washers and dryers will be the same prices as the models they replace.

* does not address whether the new technology will be as reliable as what it replaces or the possibility of additional maintenance costs (extra cleaning, etc.)

* It only quotes what appear to be biased sources (and dismisses opposition as "conservative backlash" and uses the "Fox News" straw man)

My personal experiences with "efficient" appliances have not been positive, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

(minor edits for grammar)

It's good these appliances will be up to 40% more energy efficient and that washing machines will use 28% less water and supposedly perform to the same level as older equipment.

However I wonder if the DoE official's statement will actually hold up in practice. Sometimes the devil's in the detail. No doubt washing machines can be made more efficient yet achieve the same performance as present equipment on what could be deemed a nominal household washing load but I wonder how the performance will hold up on heavy loads.

By heavy loads I mean say washing well-soiled overalls and similar. I have enough difficulty now getting the dirt out of my overalls without taking a performance cut—a cut that may not manifest on a 'nominal' wash load. When washing overalls I often have to use an extra amount of heavy duty washing powder (containing lots of sodium percarbonate) and use a wash-then-soak-before-spin setting as well as an extra rinse cycle (to get rid of the remaining dirt and washing powder from the first rinse). Also, sometimes even now things have to be washed twice to get them clean.

In these circumstances I'd question how well a washing machine would perform with less water and with less energy going into the wash cycle.

Electric motors are already very efficient, so to achieve a reduction in power consumption less power will be supplied to the washing agitator, thus I'd need it to be demonstrated that the performance remains the same before I'd be convinced. If it's necessary to repeat the washing cycle and or use more washing powder then this defeats the purpose of such regulations.

We've seen such 'efficiencies' introduced before in the name of saving power. It's my understanding that the EC has limited domestic vacuum cleaners to 2,000 Watts to save power. I'm not in the EC but manufacturers who market to the EC have found it convenient to also market these 2,000 Watt machines where I am instead of the 2,200 and 2,400 Watt models they previously marketed here. The fact is these lower powered vacuum cleaners simply do not work as well as the earlier more powerful models.

Are there no companies out there making ultra-efficient household appliances even when they aren't being forced to?

Please trade some space for reliability and load size.