Slashdot Mirror
Hybrid/Electric Vehicles: Should I Buy?
nissin writes "I'm ready to buy my first vehicle, and would like to hear your experiences with either hybrid or electric vehicles. Are they a good alternative to conventional vehicles, or just a geek toy? Do they perform well in the city? How about on long road trips? I am also interested in hearing about other alternative, yet practical, forms of transportation that I may have missed."
Personally, I am going to give the technology a few years to mature. I remember reading recently about GM dropping a line of Hybrid cars because the EPA in California banned a particular type of appliance required for re-charging the vehicle. I think it will soon take hold, but I am giving it a bit of time for many of these details to be sorted out.
Wait a few more years, you will be grateful. The advantages of having new technology early are many, but so are the drawbacks. I understand that this is not a "new" technology in the strictest sense, but it is not a mature one. I am waiting, and I would advise you to do so also.
Considering a hybrid is something like $40,000 canadian, and I just bought a 1987 Honda Civic for $900 that gets 40+mpg and runs perfect, I would spend my money elsewhere. But I'm cheap.
and what good would that do in this era? Have you noticed the cost of natural gas lately? Did you know that it is going WAY up?
.02
Buy a smaller car that gets great gas mileage (ie Saturns are a good example) that doesn't cost much money (Saturn SL-series cars (before the ugly Ion's) were under 12k).
That's my worthless
If you like getting 55 MPG, that is. :)
Alternative fuels are necessary for national security, in my opinion.
1) The US defeated Japan and Germany chiefly by starving them of oil. The Japanese and Germans had jet fighter planes sitting on the tarmac, ready to pulverize the best we had in the air, but they had no oil to fly them. One day the same thing could happen to America.
2) The environmental impact of fossil fuels, of course, is horrible.
3) With alternative fuels, we wouldn't need to be in the Middle East at all.
Alternative, renewable fuel resources will take us a long way towards national and personal independence.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Being more maneuverable and closer to the ground, compact cars are generally safer for people inside _and_ outside the car.
People who believe that SPUTES are safer really need to get a grip on reality.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
Yeah, as soon as those tonka toys get enough power to pull my trailers and haul my family at the same time, I'll be able to get rid of that gas guzzler. My pet peeve is people who think they understand my motive behind owning an SUV!
Whenever you switch from one car to another, you
have to get used to the new car.
Compared to most other vehicles, the Toyota Prius'
brakes can seem a little "grabby." After a short
time driving, you get used to it.
Heck, I'd rather have "grabby" brakes compared to
"mushy" brakes any day, for safety reasons!
-mrv
I just puchased a '87 Subaru 4wd wagon for $1400 for most of the reasons you just mentioned:
1. Montana winters
2. Room for passangers
3. Room for cargo
4. Doing my part to NOT FUND OIL WARS
What I really hate about all of the "super trucks" is trying to see past them at intersections.
SUVS: Safer for the owners, more dangerous for everyone else on the road.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Crippling??? Puh-lease... I get so sick of hearing people complain about the price of gas. Over the labor day weekend, one of the generic TV anchors here in Indy made a comment like, "yeah, with prices this high I'm staying home this weekend."
I'm sorry, but the price of gas has very little to do with the total cost of going on a trip. Let's say you've got a car that gets 20 mpg, and you want to head to the beach for the weekend (say, 800 mile round trip). You're looking at 40 gallons of gas, so if the price jumped 50 cents a gallon, you're out a whopping $20. Will that make or break your vacation plans? Hardly.
For all the moaning and groaning, the bottom line is that people's habits haven't really changed much. Look at fuel economy standards, which haven't really gone anywhere in the last 15 years. I say, creep up the gas tax until habits change and people actually start focusing on fuel economy. There are plenty of good things that money could go towards (reducing budget deficits, improving & investing in civil infrastructure, etc.).
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
How's that again? You must have taken a very different econ class from any I ever did.
The "supply" of oil is a function of the price. Higher prices mean more oil becomes economically recoverable. If the demand for oil drops, the oil that is cheapest to pump gets pumped. The rest sits in the ground.
Of course, the problem is that the cheapest oil to pump isn't governed by free market forces, it is price controlled (OPEC), so requiring less isn't necessarily going to mean much downward pressure on the price, but it certainly won't cause the price to go up.
Maybe you are thinking of economies of scale, but oil production is so far beyond the point where that is changing.
I think that this makes a lot of sense. Taxing gasoline at a rate that pays for road maintenence and construction would make the automobile compete on a more level playing field. Conservatives seem to complain an awful lot about the subsidization of Amtrac or passenger rail service(at least in America,) but the subsidization of the automobile costs a lot more. In a free market the cost of externalities (hidden factors) would be decreased so they could compete on a purely economic basis. Right now taxpayers (some of whom don't drive) pay a lot of money that doesn't show up in the cost of operating a car. I could even go as far as to say that the cost of the war in Iraq should be passed on almost entirely in the form of gasoline taxes. I know, I know freedom and WMD and all that kind of crap. Yada yada yada. It's just kind of odd that everytime a Texas oil millionaire becomes president we go invade Iraq. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
"Petrol" is two letters shorter than "gasoline" and is less ambiguous than "gas".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Got the same car. Love it. Not too long ago I read some article (in Ars Technica) about how driving the HCH changes the way you drive. It's absolutely true. I'm from a country where people drive with intent to kill. Stop signs are taken as suggestions. Always drove fast, recklessly and (my wife would argue) stupidly. I was brought up that way, sorry. Anyway, since I got the HCH my only goal while driving is to maximize the mileage. This model comes with an instantaneous mileage reading and a cumulative one. So now I rarely go over 68 mph. I'm getting 57~58 mpg on the road, and around 48 in the city (I have the manual shift one - another cultural hangup). There's just one thing that I started doing that is definitely moronic. I tend to lock on big semis and tailgate them to improve the mileage even more. Feel like Lance Armstrong. Except he's not retarded, I think. Anyway the technology on these guys is pretty awesome. You get to a stop sign, and the engine stops. Start rolling again and the engine starts as you press the accelerator. A thing of beauty. Plus it's really quiet, and if you choose to ignore it, you would never know that you are not driving just a regular Civic. Finally, you get an obnoxious smug feeling when the idiots on the SUV zoom by you. (Though you could hit 100 mph if you were not so compulsively trying to break the barrier of 60 mpg).
"The dash gauges are a pretty informative mix of what's going on. It has a instant mpg bar that goes up n down as you drive, as well as displaying the overall mpg for a trip mileage. (2 of these). One I have on total vehicle mileage so I can see what I'm getting as I continue driving. The other I use for various trips to see what different types of driving produce fuel economy wise."
:)
:)
My parent's 1988 Ford Aerostar had all that. My dad's 95 VW Jetta had that, as does my brother's 2000 Jetta. I'm sort of amused that most people haven't had this kind of thing for years.
I think you missed a key point - he's not talking about mileage, he's talking about a REALTIME miles-per-gallon display. That is the instantaneous mpg your vehicle is traveling at a moment in time. I have a 2000 Jetta with every option, and unless he added it afterwards, your brother does NOT have this option.
On a different note on this feature, the only cars I've seen with a real-time mpg display before the hybrids started coming out was all the BMWs (that I've driven) for the last decade or so. It is a very handy feature that I think more cars SHOULD have. It's amazing to see how little changing your highway speed in a BMW M3, for example, makes the different between a constant 20mpg on the highway and between a constant 25-30mpg.
It's also very amusing to watch your realtime mpg when you're jaunting around a racetrack. If you want to see how hard you're really driving the car, it's alot more telling to watch the mpg instead of the speedometer or even the tach. I still get a thrill everytime I blip the throttle to downshift to third at turn 11 at Thunderhill and watch the mpg dial spike from 20 to almost zero in an instant.
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
Hybrid electrics are NOT a joke. What makes you think that you could make an even better hybrid if you had a little TDI engine in it?
Check out the Volkswagon Lupo. 90 MPG, without hybrid. Now, imagine cutting the size of that engine in half, and making it a hybrid. That'd probably push it over the 100 MPG mark, while cutting emissions. Pretty decent.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I would disagree. A hybrid car can save money in some other ways too:
I for one think a good start to the SUV problem is regulation. Hear me out:
Now the upshot of the truck/passenger vehicle classification dualism is that SUV's are exempt from having to meet milage and emissions standards for passenger vehicles. Therefore most SUVs have more horsepower for a comparable displacement. Yet since they're licensed as a passenger vehicle, the SUV gets cheap car plates and registration. This simply must stop! Either it's a car, or it's a truck. They can't have it both ways.
Secondly and perhaps more controversially, I believe that a new license class should be created for large SUVs. There are simply too many people unqualified to handle a 7000+ pound vehicle treating these things like big sports car! When I wanted to ride a motorcycle, I had to get a special certification on my license, and so should it be for large SUVs.
You're kidding, right? The reality is that we essentially burn subsidized fuel in this country. In other countries, the tax man adds a bit to the cost of fuel. Go figure, Western Europe and Scandinavia seem to put more focus on population health and a clean environment than profits in the auto and oil industries. Charging extra for the fuel does a couple things, it is a disincentive to waste fuel. It helps pay for some of the hidden costs associated with burning fossil fuels.
The US is not serious about reducing emissions. We are also not charged the true cost of fuel. By that I mean that we, as consumers, do not pay for the cleanup costs, or the healthcare costs that petroleum based fuels cause.
This URL explains, a little bit, about how the cost of gasoline effetively hasn't changed in the US in the last 30 years. If you only go back 25 years, its arguable that the cost has dropped, and significantly. The price per gallon in the US first hit a dollar in the late 70s. As long as I've been driving (17 years), its barely changed. Compare that to the changes in wages. Or the change in real estate values. Or the cost of the vehicles we're driving. Gas is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP.
"In 10 years he will pay $5k more. Person who bought hybrid already paid ~$4k more when he bought the car, and will pay at least ~$1k more for more expensive service."
Factor in the effect of T.W.A.T on oil prices over the next decade as big oil 'investment' goes up in smoke - the savings look far sweeter.
Also factor in the fact hat whatever % of your drive time is dead slow or sat still if you city drive - which still burns gas as you chug at the lights - mileage is not the best starting point.
And here is what people dont get - ITS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY!
You cant put a price on our childrens future.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Me, I have to scope my vehicle for the worst case scenario (seven passengers and a trailer) and then live with the surplus capacity the rest of the time.
Wow, I know what you mean. I'm still making payments on the personal jet. Gotta visit Europe sometimes, after all.
Seriously, you're over 25, right? Price out rentals, and see how it adds up against the purchase price and gas prices of the SUV. Try out hotwire.com, and/or sign up with the various rental agencies to get their cheapest online prices. If your vacation every year is to spend a month on the road with you, the spouse, and your 5 kids, what you're saying could make sense.
If you usually *fly* somewhere for your vacations, though, it doesn't make sense. If you only need the trailer twice a year, to schlep your kid's stuff to college and back, it doesn't make sense.
I obviously don't know your personal situation... but there are actually surprisingly few people out there for whom an SUV is really logical. But how many people really have the self-awareness to just skip the rationalizations and say, "it is worth $xxxxx, angry stares from the tree-huggers, and a greater risk of killing someone to me to avoid driving a station wagon or minivan, and/or to feel bigger than anyone else on the road."
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
Well, let's examine this whole "SUV - penis envy" meme rationally.
Mom and Dad and the 2.7 kids go out to buy a car. 1.7 of those kids are still in carseats, so the sedan goes out the window. Is it possible? Yes, but not desirable. So we're looking at something that has more space.
They all walk past the minivans because of the enormous stigma built up against them by young men, reluctant to be labeled as married with children. Ditto x 10 station wagons. So we're looking at Explorers, Envoys, etc.
A quick look at shows that the fuel economies of a 2002 Ford Winstar are roughly the same as an Explorer (17/23 vs. 17/21) (there may be some wide divergence between other models, this is Slashdot quality research). Even the Expedition is only a few mpg lower. So why are minivans spared the ire?
I think really what all this is about is culture. There are two cultures in America, the urban and the rural. Urban culturites find themselves immeasurably superior to the rurals. This is somehow hard coded into the human genome, because you can find it all the way back to Ancient Greece.
Sure, a couple of arguments get pitched up about fuel efficiency, traffic, parking spaces, but when you feel that bitterness, that resentment about seeing an SUV, what you're really resenting is the declared culture of the driver.
It works both ways by the way. I'm a rural, and it makes me sick to see a Hummer decked out with leather interior. It's as much a cultural violation to me.
Anyway, this whole penis envy thing comes from the culture clash. You see similar attitudes towards other rural tokens such as guns, pickup trucks, etc. I think it comes from a feeling that rurals are closer to a level of basic survival ~ basic masculinity, and a resentment of that. So when you see a rural token, AND see that token as a false one, you make this whole pocket Freudian association.
Don't own an SUV: can't afford one. I would own a Hummvee if I could. Only the H1, though; the H2s look like school buses to me.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
plus it's socially responsible, and high ground level ozone levels leads to more asthma hospitalizations.
Not that anyone seems to give a rat's ass about the air we breathe, all the arguments here are about horsepower and saving money.
Driving non-agressively in my 1997 2.2L standard .34 CD (not spectacular at all).
2-door Dodge Neon I get 41 highway and 33 city -- and the car was very cheap to buy, there are no modifications and the car has 132hp and a
In the end, the Prius, for example, can only do at most 10% better then that so it does not justify twice the cost. I bet if I made my Neon as aerodynamic as the Prius (.26 CD) and put on the same tires (less rolling resistance) I could get near the same gas mileage as the Prius.
Gas mileage is also *heavily* dependant on driving style due to the laws of conservation of energy -- the top things overall that I found increase it are:
1) Standard transmission -- almost all cars with a
standard get better gas mileage then an
automatic.
2) Drive 55 -- Going from 75mph on the highways to
55 increased gas mileage by 26%!
3) Anticipate lights (let the car roll to slow
down when you see a red light ahead of time
rather then breaking at the last minute) saves
a lot, too.
4) Coast down hills
5) Accelerate slowly
If you follow these rules and buy a compact car you'll get near the hybrid's gas mileage with no fancy technology.