| Author | Message | ||
     Ferris_von_bueller |
Not to worry.... in about 2 1/2 to 3 years... when the election is heating up You mean for the Presidential election. Congressional elections are about one year away and can't some soon enough. As for your premise that things will have improved by then, I'm taking the pessimistic view - nothing can get this train back on the tracks. Interest rates are already at historic lows and gas is about $2.25/gallon round here and it doesn't appear to be stimulating the economy. | ||
| Chadhargis |
My diesel Grand Cherokee can tow 7600lbs. It gets 24mpg with my heavy foot (70 to 80mph) and returns 20mpg towing two bikes on my trailer at the same speeds. Diesel is the way to go, but our lovely EPA over regulates NOx emissions, giving diesels a very hard way to go. | ||
| Rocketsprink |
"Rocketsprink... a Saab 9-3 (say 2001 with about 90 k miles) will cost about $6000, will get 33mpg highway, and has threaded bosses already in the bumper for a $80 hitch mount that will pull 2000 pounds." That would be great. If my toy hauler didn't weight twice that unloaded. | ||
| Gnx423 |
I think ill go back to 1984 technology and pick up a chevette or the pontiac counter part. PONTIAC 1000 4cyl 1.8L M5 36, city 53 highway, 43 combined. Maybe a bit more roomy than a smart car. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
I wish that diesel didn't carry a premium price tag. The best way to keep that from happening is to have diesel offerings from several different manufacturers available. I just wish the Big Three sold the same models in the US that they do in Europe. | ||
| Froggy |
Right....
Not if they only slate it for something like a dozen vehicles, like many small exotic brands like Pagani.
Back then, cars were a luxury and were very expensive. Only the rich had them. The rich didn't like the gasoline cars as much because they were noisy, smelly, and less reliable. When Ford came out with the cheap and affordable Model T, well the rest was history.  | ||
| Froggy |
No, they just weren't safe to start with. There is a video from a show (I think 5th gear), they took a old beatup Volvo and crashed it into some modern micro car, and the driver of the Volvo wouldn't of done so well while the small car driver would of sustained only minor injuries. Modern cars are heavier due to government regulations. They keep making the auto manufacturers add things that add weight. Have you seen a new car in the last few years that didn't have a driver airbag? You won't. The average airbag adds about 40lbs to a vehicles weight. Some minivans have over a 10 airbags throughout the cabin. Needless to say the car turns into a giant bubble in a wreck, but it does its job perfectly. | ||
| Court |
It's a funny world . . . I get paid mileage at work. My F-150, which I love, gets somewhere around (I don't really track it) 15 MPG. Through a weird set of economies (some I confess skewed in my favor . . . shhhh) I "pays" for me to get a Porsche Cayman in that with the number of miles I drive I can make the lease payments from the fuel savings. I love a good recession. It was good today to hear that heating prices this winter are predicted to be the lowest in 5 years. I'd like to add a small car but would sure keep the F-150 for when I needed to haul. Ford outdid themselves with the F-150. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
Court, I was in Holland a couple of months back & diesel prices aren't much more than here in France, I put enough of the stuff in my tanks to know. Diesel there runs about €1.10ish per litre depending where you buy, supermarket or service station on the motorway etc, the dollar is currently running at around 1.46 to the euro. So at 3.785 litre to a US gal, & at $1.60 the litre, that comes out around 6 dollars a gallon. There may be some regional varion but no more than 5-10% Gas is more expensive generally in Europe but that's by no means certain, different countries different tax tarifs, UK diesel is dearer than gas, spanish diesel is way cheaper than here in France, Germany's prices are about the same for both fuels. But nobody in Europe is paying $17 a gallon it would be illegal under EU trading agreements. | ||
| Court |
Then I stand corrected. I'm sure it was my poor interpretation of my Dutch guests. It appears, from what you say, that you pay roughly twice what we pay. I suspect that Americans habits, since few quit smoking with cigarettes now at $10.50 a pack, would change if fuel prices doubled. I must confess that when we had the leap in gas prices is was disconcerting to see $110 in a 1/2 ton pickup. I used to drive over the road tractor-trailers (International Transtar) and it'd scare me to see the fuel bill on one of those these days! | ||
| Halffast |
Why does anyone think electric power is the answer when it comes to cars?  Electricity is a secondary source of energy, generated by using a primary source (coal 49%, natural gas 18%, nuclear 19%, etc). How does burning coal help? It just redistributes the pollution to the point of production instead of the point of consumption. Nuclear generated electricity would be better but the powers that be don't like nuclear. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
OTR rigs are hugely more efficient these days. A cabover Volvo FH series 440hp with 12sp auto box, will get around 7 mpg generally, depending on load & terrain, we have some that are triple shifted running light loads that are getting well over 8! We're running 5 axle rigs, 4x2 unit with a tri-axle semi, running big-singles. Gross weight 40t or 44t on railhead work. Max speed restricted to 56 mph (more or less, wink). When it comes to diesel technology, the road haulage industry is always cutting edge, profit margins being what they are & with such a large proportion of costs being fuel, they have to be. I've generally found that stuff that's new on a rig today filters down & gets reduced in size to be on passenger vehicles within about 4-5 years. | ||
| Court |
>>>Nuclear generated electricity would be better but the powers that be don't like nuclear. Formerly (about 10 years ago) true. 63 permits for Nukes have been dusted off and the price are being bid up. Nuclear power is the reason that New York City has the lowest Carbon Footprint in America. This message is brought to you using power generated by clean, safe, nuclear power. Now . . . I'm off for a noon meeting at the office. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
I'm off too, got a Buell to rebuild in the garage. | ||
| Crackhead |
i wounder when plant #3 comes online at Calvert Cliffs. | ||
| Midknyte |
Electricity is a secondary source of energy, generated by using a primary source (coal 49%, natural gas 18%, nuclear 19%, etc). How does burning coal help? It just redistributes the pollution to the point of production instead of the point of consumption... Most of the time... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon  | ||
| Froggy |
Economies of scale. Any type of large power plant is more efficient and pollutes less than enough gas/diesel cars combined to equal that powerplants output. Also, pollution would be more concentrated and can be dealt with. But yea, nuclear is the way to go, I am glad I live in that 19% slice. | ||
| Chadhargis |
Froggy, you should have let me take you over to Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear plants. Tennessee have two reactors, and there is one in Huntsville, AL just south of the Tennessee border. We love our nuclear power here. You were only a couple of hours from Oak Ridge, home of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where the first atomic bombs were built. http://www.tva.gov/sites/sequoyah.htm http://www.tva.gov/sites/wattsbarnuc.htm http://www.tva.gov/sites/brownsferry.htm | ||
| Froggy |
Nice! Good to know. I live 9 miles from the Indian Point nuclear facility. We need more nukes, not less. | ||
| Paw |
Check out this link on the rise and fall of the electric car...The internal combustion engine and oil killed the electric car...If it was not for those two major factors just think where electric cars could be at today. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsel ectrica.htm | ||
| Crackhead |
i think a fuel cell car will replace ICE in the next 20 years. The major selling point is less maintenance then ICE and refillable just like gas stations. You could even have a refill station at your house. | ||
| Hootowl |
Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is only an energy currency. Why would you want to turn fossil fuels into electricity, then into hydrogen, then back into electricity? | ||
| Court |
>>>>where the first atomic bombs were built. Too Cool . . . I am reading this in the Plasma Physics Lab at Columbia! | ||
| Xl1200r |
Why would you want to turn fossil fuels into electricity, then into hydrogen, then back into electricity? Yup. Everyone hears that Hydrogen is the most abundant element on earth and it can be used for a fuel (whether in fuel cells or in an ICE). What they don't hear is that most of it (at lest the "easily accessible" parts of it) are trapped in water, which require heat, electricity, or both to split and you won't get the same amount of power out of recombining it (like you would in a fuel cell or ICE) as you spent splitting it in the first place. Physics are a bitch. To make hydrogen work, we either need to stumble across some freakishly easy way to split it (physics says this can't happen, though), or we need to create it using heat or electricty that we're either already using for something or is a by product, or through some more natural means. I think the temperature needed to split water is something like 1700 degrees celsius (going of memory so I could be off, but I know it's WAY friggin hot). Is a volcano hot enough to produce this? Could we use the heat from that that otherwise goes to waste to create hydrogen? Or could the hot air be used to turn a turbine to create electricity? Truely green energy needs to come from something we have but aren't using - wind, sun, water - and our use of it can't interfere with the livlyhood of ourselves or other animals. Solar farms take up land, wind and water can disturb animals and flow patterns. Slippery slope. | ||
| Hootowl |
Hydrogen can also be extracted from natural gas (which is where we get most of the hydrogen used today) so if you want to hurt the "big bad oil companies" converting to hydrogen is not the way to do it. Also, the heavy metals in the fuel cells are scarce. We can't build enough cells to put one in every car. It's a neat idea, but it doesn't scale. | ||
| Midknyte |
These things are ingenious. http://www.stirlingenergy.com/ | ||
| Chadhargis |
Court, look up K-25 and Y-12.....they are in Oak Ridge, TN....You'll learn lots about what they did in relation to creating the atomic bombs. | ||
| Timberwolf211 |
I have a friend that works at the oak ridge facility. He loves it! | ||
| Slaughter |
The primary source of hydrogen used in industry IS from cracking natural gas. When they split off the hydrogen, where is all that Carbon going... natural gas is after all, another hydrocarbon. | ||
| Court |
I rode by Oak Ridge a couple years ago . . . one of my favorite places to read about when I was a geek in training . . . it's a gorgeous area!  Here's where I was today when I read that . . .kinda cool. |
