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I'm open minded to the idea of government regulation in this sort of area. However, I'm against hamfisted solutions like simply banning/taxing incandescent, or giving a credit to compact flourescent. Instead drive at the source: penalize lighting fixtures who are less efficient than X. The article claims that incandescent bulbs only convert 5% of the energy they consume into light. Assuming that's accurate, say something like, "any lighting fixture/bulb/whatever that converts less than 10% of the input energy into light is gets a tax penalty." This means that if someone somehow invents a super efficient incandescent bulb, it will correctly get the same benefits that CF bulbs do. Conversely, a company can't make really cheap but grossly inefficient CF bulbs and avoid the penalty. Even better, if you make it a sliding scale, it will continue to encourage increasingly efficient bulbs.

(This is similar to the stupid tax credits for hybrid cars that leads to insanity like a hybrid SUV that gets 27/32 MPG gets a tax break while the traditional gas engine compact car that gets 32/43 doesn't. Don't reward the technology, reward results.)

And when used with FlexFuel, [GM full size SUVs are] using less fossil fuels - even including the fully burdened fossil fuel costs of ethanol - than Prius and Civic hybrid drivers, in addition to contributing to lower overall greenhouse gas emissions.

And when used with FlexFuel, [GM full size SUVs are] using less fossil fuels - even including the fully burdened fossil fuel costs of ethanol - than Prius and Civic hybrid drivers, in addition to contributing to lower overall greenhouse gas emissions.

And when used with FlexFuel, [GM full size SUVs are] using less fossil fuels - even including the fully burdened fossil fuel costs of ethanol - than Prius and Civic hybrid drivers, in addition to contributing to lower overall greenhouse gas emissions.

And when used with FlexFuel, [GM full size SUVs are] using less fossil fuels - even including the fully burdened fossil fuel costs of ethanol - than Prius and Civic hybrid drivers, in addition to contributing to lower overall greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, the reason few people get the EPA estimate (for any car) is that few people drive like this. I compared the top graph on that page to my own commute (which covers a longer distance and has close to the same number of stops). But the EPA test covers about 30 minutes; I can make my trip in 20 to 25 minutes, but given the longer distance, if I drove a similar pattern to the test, it would take me about 40 minutes. Most likely, driving like the test would get me 55 to 60 MPG, but I don't have the time to waste and I would irritate a lot of other drivers (as it is, I get about 40 MPG). Timing traffic lights so that people could drive a constant 45 MPH would have four effects:

1. Less gasoline usage by the entire population of a city.

2. Less pollution.

3. People would get where they are going faster.

4. People would be a lot less irritated.

You truly are lucky to have those factors on your side.

From http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addGu estVehicle (thanks Shivetya!)
Average User MPG 1996 Honda Civic: 37.8
Average User MPG 2006 Prius: 47.3
That's a significant difference. Plus the Prius is a much nicer car, you aren't just paying for fuel economy. Good point on the batteries.

Am I missing something, or are those two bottom links the same thing?

The only link I found in a brief overview of the site is this:

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.htm

The EPA numbers haven't been representative/useful for ages. Every car owner so interested has had to determine their own average mileage, usually via their gas receipts or instant-economy displays on their dashboard.

The City/Highway system doesn't allow for the type of accurate planning that is needed, I'd rather see a Typical rating that is based off of some algorithm that averages city/highway driving on level ground and leaves the rest to the consumer. When I plot cross country flights, I have a known fuel burn-rate I can depend on. With my car, I have to drive until the gauge gets low.

For example, my 1999 Buick Regal has a Typical mileage of 22mpg. That's for my (now mostly) city driving with a touch of highway thrown in. If I spend a lot of time downtown, it might be 17mpg-ish. If I'm on a cross-country trip at a reasonable speed (eg, not 45mph) then I see 26-29mpg. These numbers are based off exact experience. While writing this, I googled to find my 'official mpg' and got this: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/15081.shtm l

This site does exactly what I'm suggesting. The official city mileage is 18, the official highway is 27. That's great, but the ACTUAL mileage that I see is the same as what these folks figured off of average spread: 21mpg.

I don't care what my theoretical mileage is, I care what the practical/typical mileage is. For my car, it's 21-22mpg. Dropping the City/Highway trick in favor of something like this gives a more USEFUL number, even if it's at the expense of losing bragging points from a theoretical highway-only number.

And in the end, what's more important?

From the EPA site itself http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/420f06009.htm#fuele stimates

A site to enter your own observed information http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addGu estVehicle

or lookup what others have recorded http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addGu estVehicle

From the EPA site itself http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/420f06009.htm#fuele stimates

A site to enter your own observed information http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addGu estVehicle

or lookup what others have recorded http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addGu estVehicle

the crossfire went twice as far on the same tank of gas

The Crossfire might go twice as far on a single tank, but it might also have a tank twice as big. In other words, the Elantra almost certainly gets more miles per gallon. And by "almost certainly," I mean it actually does.

Besides, if you really want to save gas (and money), what you actually want is an early-nineties compact like the Honda CRX HF or Geo Metro XFi. Each gets over 50 MPG! And no, they were not hybrids or diesels or anything expensive and fancy like that. In fact, each of them can now be found for $2000 or less (the CRX is more expensive than the Metro, beecause its desirable to ricers).

the crossfire went twice as far on the same tank of gas

The Crossfire might go twice as far on a single tank, but it might also have a tank twice as big. In other words, the Elantra almost certainly gets more miles per gallon. And by "almost certainly," I mean it actually does.

Besides, if you really want to save gas (and money), what you actually want is an early-nineties compact like the Honda CRX HF or Geo Metro XFi. Each gets over 50 MPG! And no, they were not hybrids or diesels or anything expensive and fancy like that. In fact, each of them can now be found for $2000 or less (the CRX is more expensive than the Metro, beecause its desirable to ricers).

the crossfire went twice as far on the same tank of gas

The Crossfire might go twice as far on a single tank, but it might also have a tank twice as big. In other words, the Elantra almost certainly gets more miles per gallon. And by "almost certainly," I mean it actually does.

Besides, if you really want to save gas (and money), what you actually want is an early-nineties compact like the Honda CRX HF or Geo Metro XFi. Each gets over 50 MPG! And no, they were not hybrids or diesels or anything expensive and fancy like that. In fact, each of them can now be found for $2000 or less (the CRX is more expensive than the Metro, beecause its desirable to ricers).

the crossfire went twice as far on the same tank of gas

The Crossfire might go twice as far on a single tank, but it might also have a tank twice as big. In other words, the Elantra almost certainly gets more miles per gallon. And by "almost certainly," I mean it actually does.

Besides, if you really want to save gas (and money), what you actually want is an early-nineties compact like the Honda CRX HF or Geo Metro XFi. Each gets over 50 MPG! And no, they were not hybrids or diesels or anything expensive and fancy like that. In fact, each of them can now be found for $2000 or less (the CRX is more expensive than the Metro, beecause its desirable to ricers).

As a general comment, the arguably stupid part of the fixation on SUVs is that if everyone stopped driving them tomorrow and drove a Prius instead, it would have a negligible impact on oil consumption in the US. That fixation is fundamentally misplaced. The only way you'll make a difference is if people stop driving generally. Which means more telecommuting and smaller suburbs, something I am okay with on both accounts. Whining about SUVs is pissing in the ocean because it ignores the major causes of fuel consumption.

What mathematics are you relying on to come to this conclusion? Or is your definition of "negligible" much more broad than mine? Let's run with what the article gives us: over half of the purchases made today are SUVs or minivans (53% as of this year). A quick run to the government's fuel economy website shows the breakdown of all 2006 SUV fuel mileage. Eyeballing it, let's say the average highway fuel economy is 21 mpg. A quick peek at the minivan class shows them to be around 24 mpg, but I want to stick with SUVs for the time being. Now let's do the same thing for small sedans. (Your example used a Prius, but I don't want to include hybrids.) The average highway fuel economy here is easily well over 30 mpg highway, but let's just say it's 31 mpg for the sake of argument. The article then goes on to tell us that each car saw an average of 11,856 miles last year. Breaking it down, this comes to 564.9 gallons for the SUVs, and 382.5 gallons for the small cars.

So some proportion of 53% of new cars purchased consume 564.9 gallons a year. Looking at the road, I think we can safely say that more SUVs are sold than minivans, so let's say 2/3rds of 53% of new cars are SUVs, or approximately 36%. According to the study, the ratio of vehicles-to-people in the US is 1.178 to 1, and considering that the population of the US is around 270 million, we're looking at roughly 318 million vehicles. Clearly not all of these are personal vehicles, but let's assume 75% of them are, so now we're at 238.5 million vehicles. Considering that the rate of SUV purchase has decreased over the past five years, I think it's safe to say that our ratio (36%) is a fair one to apply to the entire population, rather than just new cars purchased. So we can say that 85.88 million vehicles in the US consume 564.9 gallons of gasoline per year, on average. This equates to 48,511,465,380 gallons of fuel a year. (Keep in mind that total US consumption of gasoline per year is around 146 billion gallons.) If ALL of them, tomorrow, were to start driving small sedans, that number would become 32,847,646,500. That switch would effectively curtail fuel consumption in the US by 15 billion gallons of gasoline per year. A 42-gallon barrel of oil only produces 19.5 gallons of gasoline, so some quick math shows us that this would cut our oil barrel consumption by 769,230,769 barrels a year. According to recent statistics, total US oil consumption is around 22 million barrels of oil per day, so over a year that's 8,030,000,000 barrels. In essence we're talking about a 10% drop of total oil consumption. That is by no means "negligible." And this is without considering hybrid vehicles or truly fuel efficient small sedans (which easily average 35 mpg highway).

Admittedly I make quite a few assumptions in my statistics, but I don't think what I have proposed and the actual reality are too divided here. Improving fuel efficiency will make a dramatic and immediate impact on our fuel consumption. Whether or not this will be countered by increased amounts of driving has yet to be seen, but it's untrue to say that fuel efficiency is a negligible part of the equation.

SUV bashing isn't even all that accurate. Sports cars trade mileage for performance. For example, the Audi A6 sedan gets 22mpg (combined)--the same as the Toyota Highlander SUV. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/

According to the govt, a diesel 1985 Nissan Sentracould get 50mpg, but the highest gasoline powered vehicle only got 39mpg. This must be the Honda that you're referring to. It got 54mpg in 1985. The extra weight for the various common safety features (airbags, engineered crumple zones, side impact beams, etc) certainly reduces the mpg for cars produced since then, but I've also noticed that Japanese cars are getting bigger too. The subcompacts of today don't seem as small as the ones made 20 years ago. Hybrids will induce some pain a few years down the road when the batteries & other parts start getting worn out.

According to the govt, a diesel 1985 Nissan Sentracould get 50mpg, but the highest gasoline powered vehicle only got 39mpg. This must be the Honda that you're referring to. It got 54mpg in 1985. The extra weight for the various common safety features (airbags, engineered crumple zones, side impact beams, etc) certainly reduces the mpg for cars produced since then, but I've also noticed that Japanese cars are getting bigger too. The subcompacts of today don't seem as small as the ones made 20 years ago. Hybrids will induce some pain a few years down the road when the batteries & other parts start getting worn out.

How, exactly, does General Motors (or any other car maker) benefit by selling you a car that gets worse gas mileage?

GM doesn't. Ford, however, who has large financial stakes in the fuel provision industry, does.

They are not in the oil business

Actually, it's the other way around. The oil business has been buying significant voting interest in vehicle manufacturers, and when looked at from their perspective (and the size of their wallets,) it makes a hell of a lot of sense. GM has actively resisted the practice, putting several poison pills into their corporate bylaws designed specifically to prevent this sort of manipulation. Funny how GM has been making America's most fuel efficient cars for the last ten years.

Now, the well-educated conspiracy theorist will suggest that this is just because GM knew peak oil was coming and didn't want to get dragged down with the other ship (and that's probably true; they've been experimenting with alternative fuels for decades,) but the point remains.

and even the slightest hint of collusion with the oil industry in that regard would have the NHTSA crawling up their ass with a microscope

The current laws allow parent "umbrella organizations" which already existed to purchase stakes in both oil and cars, provided they're otherwise diversified. Why do you think Chrysler started so many weird side businesses (my favorite example of which is a roofing materials manufacturing company) ?

Granted it's only a fraction of what up-front consumption rate manipulation would allow, but it's better than zero, from their persective.

Hell, they're already up their ass with a microscope with CAFE regulations

Yep. And current regulations are being tightened to prevent this sort of malarky. However, oil has a very powerful lobbying industry, which slows reform down, and has a lot of very, very smart lawyers who find loopholes to let them pull it off legally for a few more years each time.

We've been waging this war since the 1960s. We're winning, but it's slow going.

On top of that, they have no vested interest in the fuel production industry to begin with.

Even if there wasn't a formal interest, the oil marketplace is served by a very few producers, almost none of whom are significantly subject to US corporate law. Look where the oil is coming from: Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia. These are not bastions against commercial corruption.

Granted ExxonMobil is prevented from behaving this way, but ExxonMobil is essentially a ginormous middleman in the way that McDonalds is. The producers are the problem here, not the refiners. To follow the McDonalds parallel, you're looking at the resteraunt when you should be looking at the cattle ranchers.

Think about it rationally: if Ford had found a way to make a regular car get 80mpg using some Magic Carburetor Technology (to reference the urban legend in its 70's form), they could make a killing in the marketplace.

In 1940, Tucker released an automobile that got almost 40 miles per gallon. His top of the line model, the Tucker '48, got 36. Ford's best fuel economy in 2006 was the Ford Escape Hybrid, which got 33 miles per gallon. Do you honestly believe that there's been no progress in the last 60 years?

Besides, 80 mpg isn't actually unreasonable. The problem is getting 80mpg in a car at over 25 miles per hour, in a vehicle with amenities that will sell (the weight of the car is significant,) which is built in a way that if there's an accident, not everyone dies. To give you a sense of scale, Suzuki makes and sells a motorcycle that gets 216 miles per gallon. On one 11-gallon tank, you can make it from Las Vegas to Washington DC. That's not fringe science.

If you make a car out of composite fiberg

I recently purchased an HP Slimline computer to reduce my consumption of electricity, so I can offset the massive carbon output of my H3 SUV.

The 2006 Hummer H1 Alpha is supposed to get around 12 mpg. The H2 gets about the same, which is especially pathetic because it's a chevy tahoe. The H3 gets around 17 (combined) and as such it's the least apt model of hummer you could have picked. Actually, the funny thing is, the Tahoe gets about 17mpg as well, and that's what the hummer H2 is based upon.

I'm sure speed limits are an inconvenience to people who can safely and skilfully drive at 100mph

> That 250 mile range estimate is probably at significantly lower speeds.

"The LiIon tzero will drive 250 miles in left lane traffic, in LA that means 75-80 mph.
Alan Cocconi (AC Propulsion founder and chief engineer) drove it to San Diego and back
without charging. On any type of standardized drive cycle it will go over 300 miles." link

> If I remember right, electric motor efficiency and power typically increase with load,
> but fall off with speed

"Efficiency: 90% average, 80% at peak power" torque chart

> 1000 pounds of batteries...are equivalent to about 1.5 gallons of gas (6.3 pounds/gal).
> Divide that by an efficiency of around 30% and you've got a 32:1 energy density ratio
> in favor of gasoline.

Internal combustion vehicles are about 15% tank-to-wheel energy-efficient. link
An all-electric vehicle is about 44% tank-to-wheels energy-efficient. link
The car's web site puts its efficiency at 2.2km/MJ, vs. 0.6km/MJ for the gas cars (see here).

So an electric vehicle needs to carry about 30% the energy of a gas vehicle.

Another way to look at this is to compare to the Lotus Elise, which consensus is saying is the closest regular car on the market. The Elise gets 25mpg, and so would need 10 gallons -- 63 pounds -- to travel 250 miles, giving us a ratio of 16-to-1 in required weight.

The fuel tanks on this Peterbilt model range from 40 to 150 gallons, with an apparent midpoint of 83 gallons, giving us 525 pounds of gas or 8320 pounds of batteries. The suspensions seem to cluster around 40,000 pounds, suggesting that batteries would need to replace about 20% of the max weight capacity of a truck in order to get the same mileage as a tank of gas (although that's not taking into account weight savings in the engine and similar components).

That's a lot -- it's probably 25-30% of the freight capacity of the truck. Batteries are dense, though, so it'll take up little of the truck's volume, potentially making the result feasible for cargo that is more limited by volume than by weight. Still, I think it offers a good argument that long-haul trucking is likely to stay a liquid-fuelled activity for the forseeable future.

by paying an extra 1.6 cent/kwhr ... I am almost completely green for $120 a year.

Wow, when did the Amish hit slashdot? Given a 200w power supply consumes 144kWh/mo assuming a 30-day month, that's $28/year for the PC alone. If you honestly think you're running a truck and a house on four and a quarter modest PCs' worth of power, then you need to replace your calculator. Apparently it's getting bad results on all the low voltage.

(Don't even try to tell me it's a margin issue. I'm measuring margin size. $120 margin / 144 * 12 * (365.25/360) is the margin size.)

For a sense of scale, at this margin, the average air conditioner will consume about $270 per year. A Toyota Prius gets about 10 kilowatt hours per gallon of gasoline (search for "500w of battery drain"), and the government says it gets 55 mpg, so even if your pickup was actually an efficient car, your 1.6 cent per kilowatt hour margin will consume (10/55)*1.6 = 0.18 kilowatt hours per mile. The government cites national gas price averages every Monday, which yesterday was $2.97. Therefore, you will burn $120 of margin in (12000 / 0.1818 / 297.3) = 221.99 miles. This means that if you have no power drain at all in your house - you don't even have anything plugged in and turned off - then you drive on average 0.6077 miles per day. Most people drive more than that just getting to the grocery store twice a month.

(I actually did the math as one big equation, to get around rounding error. If you do it yourself based on my averages above, you're gonna see 0.586. I didn't feel like writing out everything to 20 places.)

Yeah, dude, you're a bastion of cheap green energy. Time to check your numbers.

The Toyota RAV4EV was produced until 2004. I leaned about this because it is helpfully listed on a government fuel economy site under 2004, SUV.

Notice it is the equivalent of a 111mpg car as far as cost goes. With photovoltaic or wind powered recharger that's zero emissions. And at 80-120 miles on a charge it is pretty respectable for city commuting.

Only available for consumer purchase from 2002 to 2004 at select LA and San Francisco Toyota dealers. Generally demand far outstripped supply despite no advertising.

Since most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels, an all-electric car would most likely be worse than one burning the fuel directly. I have never heard of a perfectly efficient method of transmitting electricty from where it was produced to where it was needed (e.g. charge up the car). Ergo, there would be a net increase in "environmental badness" to use the e-car vs what we have now.

In the real world, it doesn't always work this way. For one thing, burning fossil fuels in a powerplant is much more efficient than in a small engine. For another, about 20% of the electric power in the US comes from nuclear, hydroelectric, and other non-CO2-emitting sources. Even with transmission loss, storage battery loss, and conversion loss, electric vehicles can put a lot less carbon in the atmosphere than a gas vehicle. Do a comparison between a 2001 Toyota RAV4 EV and the comparable gas model, and there's a substantial decrease in fuel economy. A lot of this is dependent on the powerplant(s) and power gird in question, though.

Basic thermodynamics can lead you down some sensible, but totally wrong, thought paths. Thermodynamically speaking, hybrid vehicles should be ridiculously inefficient. We convert mechanical energy to electrical energy, convert the electrical energy into chemical energy in a storage battery, and then reverse the whole process to get mechanical energy again. And yet it all comes out ahead, because so much of the vehicle's mechanical energy is ordinarily lost forever through braking.

People might just do that if the fuel cells have a lifespan of a year.
...of course, maybe they're not telling people how long the cells last because they suck. (the cells, not the people)

Losses in electric transmission are typically less than 10% from power plant to outlet. Steam-turbine power plants convert the chemical energy of coal or oil to heat (by burning) and then to electricity through an engine cycle that is limited to 35% efficiency or so, but combined-cycle gas turbines can be 60% efficient by making use of mechanical as well as thermal output from the chemical fuel. Batteries typically return over 90% of their charging energy for use. Electric motors are also very efficient, though you'll get some losses with the drivetrain (as you do with an internal combustion engine as well). And regenerative braking is very natural with electric vehicles, so the losses from braking may go away almost completely. So even with coal steam turbine generators as the source you're still getting well over 25% from the initial chemical energy to the energy supplied to move your car (minus drivetrain losses). With internal combustion engines you're lucky to get 20%.

U235+n=> (Xe,Zr,Cr,Ru..)+3n +heat . Would be preferred method ;)

As for efficiency. Gasoline powered cars are in overall about 15% efficient.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml

The electricity tranportation is over 98% efficient. The electrical engines are over 90% efficient, and can be done without gearbox and regenerate at braking. And the batteries have upto 95% efficiency.

So with fossile fuel plants that are in range of 600MW can get efficiency of 60% . There is big difference here.
So its basicly that small scale method of turning fossile fuel to movement is so inefficient. And turning electricity to movement is so effient that its really noise compared to turning fuel to movement.

We should also consider the efficiency of transporting fossile fuel from oilfields to gas stations too compared to transporting fuel to a power plants, I think the difference there counter acts what ever is lots in transmission lines.

In overall we could assume that well designed electrical car with good electrical powerplant gets over 50% overall efficiency compared to gas engines 15%.

Also by having separated the energy generation from highly efficient energy usage the choice energy source can be changed more freely from fossile fuel to fissile fuel or something else entirely. So the choice of going for electrical cars at society level would be great in terms of efficiency.

Perhaps as simple as mandating each gas station to have electric outlet with restrictions on premium the gas station owners can take from electricity. The chicken/egg problem would be solved and the electric cars could become slowly more common. But personally I feel that without way to fill the batteries when needed I'll probably buy diesel car next.
Either one of those small ones that get 50 miles per gallon or one that can transport 7 persons with 40 miles per gallon.

TheLinkedArticlesDoesNotNecessaryReflectTheViewsOf ThePoster
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Jeps

TheLinkedArticlesDoesNotNecessaryReflectTheViewsOf ThePoster
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Jeps

I need to break out my bike again.

I think a lot of people could seriously improve their gas mileage. I've always gotten about six or seven mpg better than the rest of my family, even driving the same car.

* Have a stick-shift? Spend more time in higher gears. (When going downhill, I often throw it into neutral)
* Driving 55 instead of 75 will save you enormously. Driving 75 cuts many cars' fuel economy by a quarter. Remember kids, air drag goes up with the square of your speed.
* When coming to a red light, start slowing down well before you need to stop. If the light turns green, you may still be going 20MPH, which is far better than starting from a complete stop. The more accelerating and decelerating you do, the worse your mileage gets.
* Get yourself one of those 150MPG carburetors that the oil industry has been keeping under wraps. For $25, I'll send you the plans!

For more tips, check out fueleconomy.gov

designing an engine to run on sugar water will mean it won't run on gasoline.

Unless you use two engines. Mozilla Firefox in fact does have both a quirks mode and a standards mode.

Asking browsers to support both [broken and correct code] is asking them to read the webmasters' minds, and don't think Firefox has an extension for that yet.

Both Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer base use of quirks mode vs. standards mode on the presence and content of the document's <!DOCTYPE declaration. Analogy would be different shaped nozzles that plug into the gasoline tank or the sugar tank: round for gasoline or oval for sugar.

Of course, the workaround now is to have the filling stations stock both sugar and gasoline, and dispense the correct one based on the type of car you drive.

Another way of doing it is through a proxy that converts one form of fuel (or markup) into another at the refinery (or web server). Sugars can be converted into ethanol, and a gasoline engine can easily be modified to run on mixtures of gasoline and ethanol.

I'd rather have a porsche, but if I could seamlessly degrade my porsche to a camry's performance to get the extra mileage, on occasion I would.

Or, you just pick the right Porsche and get decent fuel economy[1] and serious performance too!

[1] Speaking as someone who drives a Civic Hybrid on a regular basis.

Next, how to mod your Porsche into a Toyota Camry.

Funny - but a terrible example.

Sure - a porsche looks cool, but if you're just going to the shops, its nicer to have a fuel range of 21 - 35 MPG rather then porsche's 17 - 25 MPG

I'd rather have a porsche, but if I could seamlessly degrade my porsche to a camry's performance to get the extra mileage, on occasion I would.

In just the same way, if I was forced to choose between os x & windows, I'd choose os x, but it would be nice to have a copy of windows hanging around in case I wanted to play some games.

Next, how to mod your Porsche into a Toyota Camry.

Funny - but a terrible example.

Sure - a porsche looks cool, but if you're just going to the shops, its nicer to have a fuel range of 21 - 35 MPG rather then porsche's 17 - 25 MPG

I'd rather have a porsche, but if I could seamlessly degrade my porsche to a camry's performance to get the extra mileage, on occasion I would.

In just the same way, if I was forced to choose between os x & windows, I'd choose os x, but it would be nice to have a copy of windows hanging around in case I wanted to play some games.

People in marketing are often in conundrums trying to prove their marketing even works. Yet you have it nailed. People bought SUVs because of the strong marketing. That is far from a foregone conclusion.

Toyota's product mix is nice. The Prius specifically is in a class GM doesn't even bother to enter yet. But to compare the mpg of Toyota's cars versus GM SUVs is just stupid. Again, Toyota sells a TON of SUVs. How do theirs do compared to other's SUVs? And 4-cylinder trucks? Like GM doesn't sell 4-cylinder trucks? Note that GM sells 5 cylinder trucks in the same market space everyone else sells 6 cylinder and 8 cylinder trucks. Even the Hummer H3 is a 5 cylinder.

You crow about the Camry L4 fuel economy? How about the Pontiac G6 L4? It's not actually in the same car class, although the G6 has only 6% less space inside.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/21848.shtm l

GM does well on MPG. If you want to crap on a company for making inefficient SUVs and trucks, start with Ford.

But either way, none of this at all proves the point that domestic concentration on SUV sales is the reason they aren't selling cars now. Porsche sells SUVs now! Try blaming GM's profit problems on that!

GM's problems primarily come from labor costs, especially stupid contracts they signed with the UAW over a dozen years ago. And they're not even alone. Suppliers everywhere are having major problems, VW is speaking of laying off 20,000 (1/5th of their European workforce!).

And Japan isn't excempt either. Nissan failed as a company and was bought and revived by Renault. Mazda failed as a company and was bought and revived by Ford. Isuzu is near death. Mitsubishi used to be the #2 auto maker in Japan and is now very near failure.

The auto industry is nearing some serious consolidation, and not just in the US.

GM might make a couple of efficient show cars they sell a few thousand copies of, however the vast majority of their marketing effort went into SUVs and "light" (pickup) trucks. A couple years ago well over 50% percent of U.S. car sales were SUVs and light trucks due to this aggressive marketing.

Toyota is the opposite of this case they sell a few SUVs but most of the cars they actually sell have fuel efficient engines like the Corallas, 4 cylinder trucks, Priuses and to a lesser extent the Camery but even they are more efficient than V8 SUVs with a 32 mpg highway rating and ranking very good in C02 emissions.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/17759.shtm l

Do I wish the big 3s management had made wiser decisions? Obviously as someone who supports the idea of U.S. union labor I wish the big 3 auto makers had made smarter decisions but they didn't and now they (and all of us in Michigan) are going to pay the price.

And no I'm not an auto worker, or even in a union job, I'm a free lance web designer and landscaper, but I sincerely wish there were union IT jobs available as I think it would blunt the influence of over bearing pointy haired bosses and I would prefer a job with good benefits and job security over free lancing.

ObLinks: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/flextech.shtml/ and http://www.e85fuel.com/

"That's nonsense. Slashdot ran an article on this just recently. Global wind power in class 3 areas alone could generate 72 terawatts which is 60 times global consumption. Class 3 wind turbines are financially comparable to brown coal. North America has the greatest number of class 3 areas in the world."
You can not control the wind. Without good storage you will have issues also they are noisy and no one knows what will happen to the climate if you extract that level of energy from wind. If nothing else you will decrease the wind speed down wind of the turbines. Before you say nonesense remember that in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and into the 90s, Dams where considered the ultimate "clean" energy.

"But let's not stop at wind power. A home with solar panels for hot water (not the expensive, dirty and inefficient photovoltaic) saves 50% on heating costs. The panels pay for themselves in 5 years and have a 25 year lifetime. They are maintenance free (they are effectively just black plastic pipes behind glass sheets) and easy to repair when damaged (simple plumbing that a home handyman could do)." Been their and done that. And no they where maintenance hogs.
The cheap plastic ones that people use for pools seem to be okay but they do not hold up well to hurricanes and tend work well in the south which is where hurricanes tend to be. The South West may be more friendly to them but I don't know. In most warm areas you are better off using a heat recovery unit with your AC to heat water. It saves you double.

"But let's not stop at solar power and wind power and energy efficiency. Your SUV gets 10MPG yet a comfortable Subaru Legacy has equivalent seating and storage but gets 33MPG. Your average driver will save between $750 and $1250 per year while simultaneously slashing their automobile oil consumption by two thirds. That's financially sensible and environmentally friendlier."
No it doesn't http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/21063.shtm l. These are EPA numbers which means the highway mileage is taken at 55MPH. So it is way optimistic.
If you are going to rant you and publish numbers on Slashdot you should get them right.

Sure we should look at alternative energy but nothing is as clear cut as you make it out to be.

e85 might cost less but you get a lot less for it.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byfuel/FFV2000.shtm l

Ummm NO... In fact what you say makes no sense at all.
1. A lower compression ratio will lower your fuel economy! The highest compression ratio you can use will give you the best mileage.
2. It doesn't allow you to use a lower compression ratio it requires you to since it puts more fuel and air each cycle.
3. I till burn more fuel since a turbo will lower the efficiency of the engine.
A turbo is only useful to boost the performance of a small engine. This allows you to use a smaller engine but even that isn't always a good solution.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=mpgDa ta&vehicleID=20463&browser=true
You see a 2005 Corvette gets 28mpg highway.
While an Evolution Lancer gets only 26MPG and it only has a small 4 cylinder with a turbo. Yes the big old US v8 with now turbo makes more power and gets better mileage than a DOHC 4 with a turbo. A turbos has two functions. To make an engine make more power and to normalize for an increase in altitude.
The second is only really of value in an airplane.

You know, people keep saying that there are these super-high MPG diesels out there, but I'm just not seeing them. Maybe they're available in Europe, or something, but in the US, the absolute Diesel car with the highest fuel economy I can buy is something like Volkswagon's Jetta or Beetle Diesels, which only get ~45 MPG, which is 10% less than a Prius.

Here's the US EPA's ratings guide, in case you want to check:
    http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bestworst.shtml

Also keep in mind that air quality standards vary from country to country, so a very-high mileage car available for sale in another country might (read: most likely won't) be legal for sale in the US.

Don't forget the manufacture of the entire hybrid propulsion system, not just the batteries. There have been quite a few "total environmental impact" studies on automobiles that suggest the actual operation of a vehicle is responsible for roughly half or less (depending on what's being measured) of vehicle's total impact on the environment (see here for an example: http://www.ilea.org/lcas/macleanlave1998.html). Considering some of the highly manufacturing intensive (large electric motors, batteries, etc) included in hybrid vehicles compared to a standard internal combustion engine, I'm not sure who would win out. Sure, if you compare a Prius vs. a Suburban I'm sure the hybrid would win hands down, but what about a hybrid vs non-hybrid Accord? Or a Prius vs. any number of the highly efficienct diesels that are sold everyday in Europe? Maybe hybrids aren't so green after all. I for one, am getting pretty tired of everyone praising Toyota as the be-all, end-all green auto manufacturer. For a company so green, they sure have spent a lot of money in the last decade trying to build more large, fuel thirsty trucks for the American market. Not to mention, their fullsize pickups and SUV's don't exactly take top honors for fuel economy compared to domestic vehicles either. (Check the fuel economy comparator at Edmunds.com - http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/sbs.htm) Just my $.02

And we can call it, I don't know, the Gas-Guzzler Tax?

By surcharge I meant that hybrid cars are more expensive, not that there's a special tax on them. I think there should be a progressive tax on cars based on their impact on the environment: the higher the gas mileage, coupled with better emissions, the lower the tax. Thus, a Ford Expedition would carry, say, $10,000 in taxes while a Toyota Prius would carry about $500, and so forth. Of course, this would be politically untenable.

A Chevy S10, 2wd, with the 4 cylinder engine can get as much as 33 mpg on the highway. That is as good as many tiny cars. (Sure the Geo Metro got 45, but that is a rare exception) reference (Yes I know the reference lists 28mpg - I used to have a 1988 model that got 33, emission controls are tighter now accounting to the difference)

• Geo Metro gas milage, specifications, and prices
• Honda Insight gas milage, specifications, and prices
• Honda CRX HF gas milage, specifications, and prices

• Geo Metro gas milage, specifications, and prices
• Honda Insight gas milage, specifications, and prices
• Honda CRX HF gas milage, specifications, and prices

• Geo Metro gas milage, specifications, and prices
• Honda Insight gas milage, specifications, and prices
• Honda CRX HF gas milage, specifications, and prices