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The SUV Is Dethroned
Wired's Autopia blog documents what we all knew was coming: rising gas prices have killed off the SUV. Auto industry watchers had predicted that the gas guzzlers in the "light truck" category would lose the ascendancy by 2010; no one expected their reign to end in a month, in the spring of 2008. Toyota, GM, Ford, and now Nissan have announced they will scale back truck and SUV production and ramp up that of smaller passenger cars. Of course there will always be a market for this class of vehicle, but its days on the top of the sales charts are done. "'All of our previous assumptions on the full-size pickup truck segment are off the table,' Bob Carter, Toyota division sales chief said last week during a conference call with reporters. Translation — we have no idea how low they'll go."
Still, I have to see it to believe it. The current generation of SUVs will inevitable end up in the hands of young drivers. Those will be even less aware of the extra dangers a SUV presents while being in traffic. The SUV craze will have a significant impact for the years to come.
I urge anyone who owns an SUV and/or considers buying one to read "Big And Bad" by Malcolm Gladwel.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Not via regulation or per-category taxes that artificially manipulate, but by consumers adjusting their buying habits as costs change. If SUVs are too expensive to own, people will stop buying them and trade to more fuel-efficient vehicles. Is that really too crazy to ask?
Also interesting to see whether the trend of people sensing safety while in those large vehicles will continue... Not so easy to go back to sedans while there are so many dangerous SUVs (tanks) out there on the roads, eh?
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!
you can keep your prius and save enough gas so i can continue to run over baby seals with my H2.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
In having 2 Texas oil men (Bush & Cheney) running this country.
...good riddance.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
I use my Ranger mostly as a commuter vehicle, but we need a truck for weekend projects like landscaping and hauling stuff. I'd never even consider commuting with a gas guzzler like an F-150.
I hope they figure this out before they close their last Ranger lines down.
John
Trucks and SUVs should have been the first vehicles to realize the slow gains of hybrid technologies. Who wouldn't want the extra torque in a vehicle sold on it's ability to tow? Would wouldn't want the ability to produce electricty on demand with optional factory inverter in a machine sold on it's ability work anywhere, play anywhere? And who wouldn't want to pay less at the pump thanks to a smart engine which turns off cylinders it doesn't need given the task at hand. The car companies, particularly American ones, didn't understand what wealth is, and didn't try to return it to their customers. At least the Japanese companies have the excuse of not understanding the peculiarities of the American lifestyle, and had to chase down a once booming economic segment of their market.
That the car manufactures executives don't owe shareholders money, much less recieve compensation at all, is an afront to anyone who's ever put in 15 minutes of honest work in their life.
I can't seem to remember where I found them, but I remember seeing a "trike" with two wheels in front and one behind. It was basically a motorcycle with a personal cabin that was AC cooled. Not bad looking.
I wouldn't mind driving one of those for my daily commute.
Life is not for the lazy.
The end of the SUV...being used as a soccer-mom's vehicle of choice, yes. And about time too. Of course, they won't go away anytime soon - lots of people actually do need a rigid-frame, 4WD vehicle (e.g. several hundred thousand Australian and NZ farmers). The right tool for the right job, as always!
http://www.teslamotors.com/
Over the last ten years cars have gotten so big, normal people can't ride their bikes on the same roads. A $5/gallon diet seems to be curing the problem.
The SUV is the end result of American car maker plans from the late 1960s. In order to keep their growth they had to sell larger, ever more expensive cars. The gas crisis of the mid 70s and air polution studies only partly derailed those plans. Regulation helped a lot. 20 years of cheap gas followed by corrupt government and import restrictions gave us the SUV craze. Further corruption gave us really expensive gas, which is going to solve the problem.
Further regulation is needed to avoid the inevitable resurgence of these monsters. We all deserve better road safety and air quality.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
All these companies have to do is change them over to a serial hybrid esp for trucks. The reason is that the serial hybrid is perfect for working as a generator. A construction worker can drive to the job site and then use their batteries/hybrid as power for the job sites.
My guess is that one of these companies will get smart and soon deliver just this. It should have enough batteries to last at least 10-20 miles and 2 small generator-motors. The reason for 2 is that the likelihood of 2 motors dying are slim. And only one would be needed to cruise a truck with load. From a business POV, it would make sense to buy these if they could reduce their delivery costs or have dual use on them. From the automakers POV, the 2 small generators-motors may be the exact type that is going in their cars. IOW, fewer number of unique parts. Heck, the truck could use 2 motors identical from 1 taken from a car hybrid.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Destruction derbies are going to be so awesome in a couple months time, once value of the bigger SUVs drops to scrap value. They still have those things, don't they? I always saw them advertised on TV when I lived in Alabama in the 80's.
Ryan Fenton
Okay, twitter, let me see if I can follow your logic:
The problem was caused by government, government, and then government. Demonstrating the common affliction of irrational faith in government, your solution is now more government!
They just call them "crossovers" now. Seriously, it's all marketing.
Proof
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
I never realized that I was psychic, but how could Detroit not have seen this coming?
Up here in the Great White North it's been a constant barrage of news stories: truck plants closing unexpectedly in Ontario, tens of thousands out of work. Apparently neither GM nor Ford actually anticipated a) fuel prices rising this high and b) consumers actually (gasp!) shopping for fuel economy as a result. Almost as if the 1970s never happened.
The other interesting thing is that hybrids are just about sold out entirely in western Canada. Months long waiting lists. Not so surprising, as I'm sure the auto industry never produced *that* many compared to regular cars. What is surprising is that Honda Civics are also sold out all over the place.
All of this followed by nightly news stories of these poor SUV drivers who are scrambling to replace their vehicles - only to discover the resale is next to nothing (I heard a report claiming used SUV prices are down 30% in the past month or two alone), and smaller vehicles are getting hard to find. Again, DUH. Economists, the oil industry - damn near everyone has been predicting this for YEARS. Everyone except the auto industry. I hope Ford and GM go bankrupt for their shortsightedness.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Fine. Really.
The world should have maybe a fifty year supply of these vehicles if we count the ones currently on the road, in the showrooms, and in the manufacturing pipeline. Would it not make more sense to treat them as a resource to be conserved rather than a liability to be lived with? What I'm suggesting is that manufacturers quit making them and shut down the production lines in an orderly fashion. The ones actually on the road that aren't being used in an application where they make sense be bought at a fair price. The vehicles themselves be mothballed, stored someplace in the Mojave or Sahara and gradually be released to market over many decades.
That won't happen of course because the human race is far to silly, stupid, arrogant and poorly led to pull it off. But it seems worth thinking about why it won't happen or even considered as a desirable option.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I see new Jeeps everywhere and few new trucks. I guess the smaller (baby) trucks - which are what sells in the rest of the world - will dethrone the full size trucks in the USA.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm not surprised. For the month of May '08, the Honda Civic dethroned the Ford F-150 as the best selling U.S. vehicle. The F-150 was the best selling vehicle in the U.S. for the past 17 years.
Ford saw it's SUV and truck sales drop a whopping 44% last month. That's huge.
> lots of people actually do need a rigid-frame, 4WD vehicle (e.g. several hundred thousand Australian and NZ farmers).
In Australia there is a tax break on SUVs (aka 4WD) supposed to help primary producers, but the same tax break is given to hordes of suburban 4WD's driven by Mum picking up the groceries and running the kids around. Besides the massive amounts of petrol they gulp down, they're basically a small truck which in the hand of bad drivers (there are many) are killers. Five-year-old Bethany Holder was run over in her school grounds by one Mrs Joan Waterhouse. Waterhouse was driving too fast in an area where the kids heads wouldn't even show up above the bonnet. Unless you regularly go off-road (once a year doesn't count), you don't need a vehicle like this. http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/The-right-to-drive-is-not-a-right-to-kill/2005/05/18/1116361614901.html
The government never removed the SUV/4WD tax break for fear of alienating SUV/4WD owners.
Good Riddance to the SUV/4WD. We've known petrol was going to keep climbing in price, but our short-sighted governments never moved alternate transportation (public or electric). Finally high fuel prices are doing what our government wouldn't. At least those who keep driving a gas guzzler can pay a tax on their stupidity.
I can't wait for the SUV prices to drop. Currently I have a Nissan Xterra and as much as I love the truck I need something larger to take the gf and her two kids on long trips. I figure once the Escalades/Armadas drop to 10-20K for a 2002-2006/- models (in a year or so) its time to buy one. I just has to sit in my drive way and on a long weekend/holiday I'll transfer over my insurance to it and drive in comfort.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I started an oil company. My Jeep gets 14 litres per hundred clicks and I laugh all the way to the bank with the oil cheques.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
All those Excursions, Suburbans, Escalades(SCSI controller cards), Tahoes, etc are irritating to be around from inside a '99 Honda Civic. Especially when I have a bumper/trunk sticker that reads:"Draft SUV driver first"! Surprisingly only one SUV driver has tailed me for a bit, and one other that honked at me while passing, its not too bad. Really, its surprising that I'm not being side swiped on a regular basis!
What's the point of an SUV to drive through the city? That's like buying a sports car to drive a few blocks in a crowded city. The machine (SUV) was built for the purpose of being a sports utility vehicle. If you need large passenger seating, there are minivans. If you need to haul load, there are trucks. If your commuting, there are sedans and compacts.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Larger government only makes more holes for corruption to hide in. Laws in this way are a lot like computer code, the more complex they become the more places bugs can hide.
If you want to cut down on corruption, simplify the laws and reduce the role of government.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
What happened to the bill and the money we paid for making all state owned vehicles run on clean energy by 2010? Was this just a California bill because now I don't remember.
Here's a list of government problems, mostly anti-trust issues and corporate welfare:
Regulation that makes sense:
The contnued availability of cheap cars from Japan show that the technology to do all of the above has been around for more than 30 years and it's not terribly expansive. Instead of promoting such things, government has been busy supporting companies that rip us all off. That's a crime.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
...which is why they spent so much money in the 1990's developing the hybrid, when all the other car manufacturers thought they were nuts. There's a lot to be said for long-term thinking, which is partially why they are mopping the floor with the detroit automakers in so many areas.
US petrol prices are not all that high compared to other western countries. Its just that US made cars are not effecient.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
This is going to cost me karma, but goddammit it has to be said.
"If SUVs are too expensive to own, people will stop buying them and trade to more fuel-efficient vehicles."
What your short sighted mind doesn't seem to comprehend is the regulatory function of the government. It can define the rules and
levels out the playing field when the free market fails to regulate itself.
SUV's are the epitome of consumer irresponsibility with these behemoths causing problems related to pollution as well as road safety and Political Instability
With the "free market" continuously failing to address these "externalities" it is a surprise to me that no action has been taken before in the past. These asshole vehicles should have been taxed the fuck out of ages ago to make them as expensive and unattractive as possible
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
In the long run gas prices can do nothing but rise; that is unless and until we find a better replacement. Eventually we will reach peak oil and prices will increase and increase because demand will still be going up but all of a sudden supply starts going down. We will reach peak oil probably in my lifetime and there are people who predict that we have reached it already (no one really knows how much oil is in the ground.)
I guess I am worried that the current high price may in part be due to people speculating that we have reached peak oil (or that at least supply can no longer match demand.) If people buy oil futures in speculation of an oil shock that may not be as big as expected then prices will fall again.
If prices fall then people might go back to old habits and then when they rise again people might just expect prices to drop again like it did in 2008.
I guess I am hoping for a nice steady rise so we can switch to renewable sources as quickly as and painlessly as possible. Of course if we were to pass regulation to encourage a switch to a better energy source before we reach peak oil then we would make the transition a lot less painfully than we would if we just wait for peak oil and then let the market force the change. Yes the free market will make sure that eventually we will all be using renewable resources. The only question is what will the economy be like by then? Will we have a middle class at all at that point? The sooner we get to work ending the oil age and going on to something better then the better off we will all be in the long run.
Over a month ago, I asked if my visitors if they liked SUV or not with a simple poll. Currently, 6 like it and 8 don't like it. I am sure that will change after this post. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
..the tuning and performance guys will develop cams and engine management kits that trade max horsepower for economy?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Has Netcraft confirmed this yet?
If you want to cut down on corruption, simplify the laws and reduce the role of government. Nonsense. Regulations are the most effective compensator for corruption that the social democrats have at their disposal. Getting rid of them is like removing all the bounds checking and input sanitizing in your code, on the premise that fewer lines of code means fewer places to check for bugs. While that's certainly true, it's stupid. Without that oversight, any bugs that slip through will be disastrous.
I'm an anarchist. If you want to get rid of corruption in high places, I say we start by getting rid of high places, and then we can worry about getting rid of all the arcane laws governing them. (A bonfire or landfill will work at that point.)
Read a book, you damn Libertarian Party geeks! Maybe you'll learn how to argue more effectively against government, so Joe Public will stop looking at you like you've sprouted antennae and started speaking pig latin.
A couple years ago I was crossing a parking lot heading for a store, and a decent-sized Ford SUV passed near me, and there was something strange about it that took me a second to put my finger on, then it hit me (what was strange about it, not the SUV ): it was completely silent.
Looking closer, I saw that it was a hybrid. I wonder if they still make those? If not, they'd better get them back in production.
Overall, I think these pronouncements of the SUV's demise are a bit premature. It may be fair to say that the SUV as we know it is dead - or at least dying - but there will be others. Hybrid SUVs. Maybe even purely electric ones that you plug in it night. Fuel-cell SUVs. Possibly factory-made bio-diesel SUVs. Heck, the military has been into multi-fuel diesel vehicles for decades, they're not hard to make. Auto makers whine a lot about how they can't meet newer, stricter emissions and fuel economy regulations, but they always seem to manage to do it. This time it's market forces rather than the government dictating an improvement in fuel economy for SUVs, and I'm sure they will rise to the challenge.
Irony: Using a sock-puppet account to complain about other people's dishonesty.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
They're not SUV's. Those are gas guzzling behemoths driven by people who have no respect for the environment or their fellow man.
They're "crossovers". Didn't you get the memo?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Where does the environment fit in? All that burned gas produces a lot of CO2. CO2 is bad, but not immediately so. Your free market won't save you or your kids from cancer.
In a perfect world, the free market is a pretty good idea. In a world where most of the inhabitants are irresponsible, arrogant and self-centered assholes, it just doesn't work that well.
The vast majority of responders are taking this matter of fact tact with their commnetary, talking about how impractical they are, how "inapporpriate" they are for most of their common uses, etc.
I guess it sounds real practical and smart to only stick to the stats and tangibles... but they are completely missing the HUGE point of SUV's to ALOT of people:
they are a status symbol.
People buy these to havw the best looking biggest vehicle out there. They are the same as sports cars, but justifyable to a family, dad, and even mom. Rich people will still buy them, they will continue to be low gas mileage, expensive to drive, and maybe not the best vehicle for the job.
But cmon, they are still the safest for the people inside, haul a ton of shit, are the best cars to drive from Los anegels to vegas in with a group of people, etc.
Would I buy one? No way... but It's naive to just do all this "im so practical" talk... it doesnt aknowledge the real market reasoning.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
An anarchist who supports big government... Next up, a vegan espouses the virtues of pork chops.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
No regulation is needed. The market responded. They very well could come back as oil companies develop the Bakken Valley. Even with increased demand, we have new technology to get to oil that we couldn't get to before.
Besides, who are you to say who drives what? I really hate someone telling me what to do with my money on completely legal activities.
Well, I live in Highlands ranch, CO but need to transport at times 7 ppl, or 4 ppl and 3 dogs. In addition, need to be able to drive nicely in the snow and up in mountains. And I do need to haul large loads around as well as doing a bit of trailering. And we do not want to have several cars as it will mean more in costs than 1 car and rental is out of the question. Exactly what do you recommend?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I drive a Nissan Terrano (AU/NZ version of the Pathfinder). I have it for the cargo space and because I can take it offroad when I want/need (on a fairly regular basis). If I was just hauling stuff around I would get a pickup and I've had various small cars, but this is actually as cheap or cheaper to run than most of them...
Since it's a diesel, it already has an advantage in the fuel efficiency department and I have also run it on a mix of diesel and various vegetable oils (used and unused), so the price goes down even more...
I would like a diesel hybrid, but since they're a fairly niche product (pretty much military only so far) I think it'll be a few years before they appear in the affordable price bracket.
[All Your Fish Are Belong To Us]
Simply getting rid of the irresponsible party is not the solution.
Now let's look at the phenomenon of governance. First, you have to recognize that humans, as long as they form societies, will experience the phenomenon of governance. There can be relatively less and more of it, but what's more important is, is there a democratic control over this governance, or is it done by private parties?
Governance is any kind of decision that affects multitudes in significant ways. If you look at it this way, you can see that many corporations and the banking system are all engages in various forms of governance already, and they are not democratic institutions. So the government was conceived as a counterbalance to this type of private power.
So if you propose to throw away our central government, essentially you are proposing to shift governance into private hands. That will result in more ad-hoc, more nonsensical decisions being made, more tyranny, more despotism and so on. All you have to do is to look back to the history when most of the power was undemocratic and concentrated in the few private hands. Sure, there was free market back then too, you know? Even back in the days of czars and kings there was free market, but people were not happy. Go figure.
While SUV sales may flatten out or even drop, those of us that own them will not stop driving them.
And, when push comes to shove on the highway, we will survive while the Civic drive bites the dust. Too many hot rod kids out there driving like assholes. I plan to walk away from the head-on.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The moment you simplify things several asshats will try to interpret "do not put dog in microwave" as "well, they didn't say anything about a cat, did they?" or "well, it's not just a microwave, it's also an oven!". You can't just say "well, you KNOW what I mean".
wtf with all this twitter cr@p??? almost every article now has someone claiming someone to be twitter or a sockpuppet of twitter...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I find the economics of this sudden SUV abandonment to be completely absurd. First of all, no one wants them. Second, everyone who has one suddenly wants out of it. So the economic answer is of course that the bottom falls out and they sell for pennies on the dollar.
Very few people are actually doing the math.
One thing that is important to understand: GM, Ford, and Chrysler have been selling these things with 0% financing and allowing 0% down for some time now. As a buyer, taking this offer is a good idea, even if you can afford to pay cash. Most people can't though, and the financing is the only thing that allows them to afford the vehicle.
As we all know, any new car depreciates the moment you drive it off the lot. So everyone taking these 0%/0-down deals is upside-down on their vehicle on day one. (Whereas someone with a "traditional" car loan where 20% of the money or so was used as a down payment would still be right-side-up on day one).
Now you have the current energy crisis on top of it, and a sudden spike of 30% in gas prices has eroded another 30% of equity for a guy who wasn't right-side-up to begin with.
Small cars are hot now, and they're in shorter supply. So manufacturers don't need to offer 0% loans on them.
So here's what the idiots do: sell the SUV at any price, get a smaller car. Eat the negative equity. Go from a 0% loan into a 6% loan.
Example:
You have a 2007 Chevy Tahoe. It gets 17mpg city/highway combined according to the new 2008 EPA numbers. 1 year old, 0% loan on $40,000 for 5 years. You've paid back $8,000, owe $32,000. It's worth $20,000 on the market if you're lucky. $12,000 in negative equity there.
Buy a 2008 Honda Accord, 4 cylinder. EPA combined mileage = 24mpg.
According to the fueleconomy.gov site, the Tahoe will cost $3475/year @ 15k miles per year. The Accord will be $2464/year. So it will take roughly TWELVE YEARS or 180,000 miles to overcome the negative equity alone. Heaven forbid we include sales tax and depreciation on the new vehicle into the equation.
Even if you bought a Prius (46mpg, $1282/yr) it'd take 65k miles, or 5.5 years, to make up the difference.
Moral of the story: keep the gas guzzler.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
You're confusing simplicity with brevity. While there is overlap, they are not equivalent.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
http://slashdot.org/~willyhill/journal/204399
I agree it gets old... but then, he's the one gaming the system with nine accounts.
If you have any doubts about it, just look at "westbake"'s posting history. Comprised mostly of "I agree with this post" replies to twitter and his other sockpuppets. It's quite the little army, but he's not very good at pretending.
More importantly, he uses mod points he gets on some accounts to prop up the others (and mod other people down).
Don't worry twitter, if push comes to shove and your point is invalidated (as usual), you can just blame this on Microsoft or the RIAA (as usual) and walk away holding your fist up (as usual).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I haven't read all the posts, so even if it's been posted or not, the following deserves note -- we waste more fuel via poor technique versus whether there are or are not too many SUVs out there on the roads.
I can drive most peoples car for a week and get 25-35% better mileage by technique. If I told you you could get 25-35% better mileage with a doo-dad that cost 100$, I'd be rich.
But people don't like to be told how to drive. Oh, sure, they'll pay 75$ for a half-hour with the club pro in order to drop one or two strokes a round, but if you could save them $500 a year on fuel (or a half-hour or more in their time, per day), few want to listen.
Crazy, indeed.
Just remember -- Anyone going slower than you is an idiot; anyone going faster is a maniac.
----
I drive a 5.7L V8 SUV and get "book" mileage - or better - out if it, reliably. This on a 210K mile motor. And I only need brakes every 60K miles or so (this is with a 2 1/2 ton truck). Technique works.
-- Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
we'll just invade another country with huge oil resources and it'll all turn out well. Nothing to worry about really. Just wait for "Mission Accomplished".
+1000 Troll to this article in general
"In order to keep their growth they had to sell larger, ever more expensive cars."
Er, what? I call bullshit on this one; there are far better ways to improve growth, such as mechanisation, expanding market penetration (the US auto market wasn't saturated in the 60s) and general efficiency measures. This strategy may be what the US auto firms pursued, but then they needed protectionist trade barriers to avoid competition from Japan just to stay afloat.
It's an interesting observation of human behavior that back the Bush Administration was first starting to do these big government / cronyism / erosion of civil rights / foreign occupation things⦠which are truly not in our best interest, these small government conservatives were virtually silent. Now that the administration is unpopular and it's looking like there will be a historic republican failure in the 2008 elections theyâ(TM)ve come out of the woodworks with their complaints.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
> If you want to cut down on corruption, simplify the laws and reduce the role of government.
...) than the USA, that still score lower on corruption? (hint: scandinavia, central europe, ...)
Huh? Have a look at this map linked from this page. See the many countries with a "larger government" (= real social welfare, good public schools,
Apparently, you haven't heard of the concept of "Rapture".
This endlessly copied AP story has sounded like fiction ever since the first blogger copied it weeks ago. Every day gas goes up another 20%, car loans & credit lines get another 20% cheaper. For anything to happen, the money supply needs to stop growing just as fast as gas inflation.
That is the dumbest thing I have read in a while. It's like saying to cut down on murder, get rid of the laws that make murder illegal. Sure, you can do that, but people will still kill each other. Reducing the role of government will merely shift the corruption to the marketplace. In other words, the inequity/unequal representation/influence, which is the very problem with corruption, will still exist without any check or balance.
The "role" of government is not the problem in corruption cases; the problem is money and lack of checks and balances and lack of transparency.
I can't believe I'm still feeding AC trolls, but here goes... You seem to be neglecting a word that is in BOTH OF YOUR LINKS. That word would be "perception". Are you going to quote a Family Feud survey in your next response? Are you going to log in so you can take the credit/blame for what you say?
SURVEY SAYS... *DING* NO.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
HAHAHA!
Good work.
Well people being that dumb are also the type who starts a campfire with gasoline - they will usually be removed from the gene pool in quite spectacular manners and end up being fun reading for the rest of us.
I am against big government and also against Greenpeace and other enviro-hippies, but I still believe that SUVS should be somewhat higher taxed. Externalities should be accounted for in the price of a car.
Or, to put it simply, your freedom to buy whatever car you want is limited by my freedom of driving in a road without smoke-producing body-crushing multi-ton tanks.
Unless you stay out of public roads and clean the smoke produced by your car, you get to pay for the damage you cause.
I am fully aware what that study is called. To cite the article: "TI writes in their FAQ on the CPI that "residents' viewpoints correlate well with those of experts abroad. In the past, the experts surveyed in the CPI sources were often business people from industrialised countries; the viewpoint of less developed countries was underrepresented. This has changed over time, giving increasingly voice to respondents from emerging market economies."
Or take a look at the wikipedia article on political corruption: "The argument that corruption necessarily follows from the opportunity is weakened by the existence of countries with low to non-existent corruption but large public sectors, like the Nordic countries.".
If you know of more reliable data than the CPI, feel free to post a link.
By your analogy... the solution to software bugs is to not write software.
There is more to it for a handful of us. I commute in a 1996 2WD Ford F150 inline-6 300. It is a nice compromise for me as a daily driver because the inline-six gets pretty good mileage yet retains MASSIVE torque for towing and hauling. As a helpful person, I almost always stop for stranded people for problems ranging from flat tires to mud or snow entrapment. I keep rope, straps and chains as well as a jack and a set of tools in my truck. My in-laws laugh at me because I have a rotating orange strobe light mounted on it, but I would rather be laughed at then ironed out on the highway. Also, people automatically assume that you are important and/or belong when you have a flashing light on your truck. Cops wave you through and people pull over to let you by.
Friends and family that own gas-sipping little munchkin cars are constantly enlisting my services as a man who owns a functional truck. Whether they are moving, cleaning out a basement or hauling a load of firewood, they all know who to call... the man with the truck.
I also own a 1979 Ford Bronco with a 351m bored over 20 with a 850CFM Holley Truck Avenger carburetor, snorkel and smokestack sitting on DANA-60's, 36" SuperSwampers and air-auto-lockers, lifted etc., rigged for both plow and tow. It gets about six miles to the gallon. The floorboards are above the average knee, and if I am careful, I can drive it pretty much anywhere (got to watch out for little efficient cars). It is mainly a toy, A MONSTER TRUCK!1!11!!, but once again, it has special abilities that are needed:
We have had A LOT of HORRIBLE FLOODING here in Indiana, surpassing our record from 1913. DHS, National Guard, Marines, Coast Guard and every available resource have been chucked into the disaster maelstrom that is flooded Indiana. The nearest competition for my Bronco is a fire truck or a Caterpillar when it comes to submerged mobility. That big fat bastard gleefully contributed to global warming all the way down to Franklin, to Martinsville, and to rural points south as we teamed up to get people out of the water. Nobody can see your carbon footprint under five feet of water, septic runoff and synthetic flotsam. None of the people in the little bed of the bronco seemed to mind the CO2 streaming from my exhaust stack.
Everybody hates a truck owner, until:
(a) it snows a lot
(b) it floods
(c) they are moving
(d) they drive into a ditch
(e) they need a truck but only have a little munchkin car
My father also uses his powers and torques for good in his 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe. He was down there with me, in the muck, but his new-fangled electronics cannot withstand submergence. His next purchase will he the Tahoe Hybrid, which outperforms its predecessor in torque and horsepower. These new trucks cannot replace their predecessors, though, because they are too complex and fragile.
That said, any 4WD owner that does not use his extraordinary capability as part of the solution--is part of the problem. Soccer moms must die.
Some of the rudest drivers I have ever encountered were in munchkin hybrids. The rest of them were women driving SUVs.
FairTax baby!
My current car has over it's lifespan (a few months less than 2 years since I purchased it) cost me approximatly $2200 in gas, getting an median of about 25 mpg, which isn't bad considering that it's a 4 door sedan non-hyrid. That's 19k miles since I purchased it. I can tag on another $1100 in parts, services, and miscellaneous expenses related to the vehicle, though not insurance. It cost me about $4500. A similar quality/mileage used hybrid, tough to find even 2 years ago, was approximatly $10000. I don't hazard a guess what it would be now.
My SUV I had prior was a smaller one, I averaged about 19 mpg (median 19.2 in the spreadsheet) in it. I sold it mainly because it required a full set of struts and the steering needed a lot of work; It had 220k miles on it, I had purchased it with 70k, so I think I got my 4 grand out of it. I sold it on the curb for $500 to a guy who uses it to carry lawnmowers in his business(it had the towing package, which I never used).
Note that my results may not be typical. The entire time I owned the SUV, I never had the brakes replaced. The last 3 times I had them checked I was 'are you realllly sure they are fine, I've put 100k on them'. I don't remember the SUV's EPA mileage ratings, but my current car is 20/24.
Gas for the same period/mileage on my SUV would have been: $2900.
For a 45 mpg hybrid: $1200
Now let's set the wayback machine the wrong way for $6 a gallon. I pull down about 11k miles a year, more or less.
at 11k a year:
SUV: $3500
current Car: $2600
Hybrid 45: $1500
(rounded of course, I'm lazy)
It would cost me 5 years worth of gas to purchase the equivilant hybrid over my sedan. I imagine I can get the equivilant suv for about $1000 less, so figure about 3 years for the SUV to equal the payout.
Where am I going with this? I dunno. Though I will say most people don't think that far ahead. (also, most people will be paying interest on a large car purchase like the hybrid mentioned above.)
this would solve the software patent problem...
Balderdash!
ALl of the hybrid SUVs are parallel systems. In efficient in terms of fuel. You want to go with a serial hybrid which NONE of the manufactures have. Now, Chevy made an avalanche recharge their batteries, but that was it. Basically, it is horrible designed.
Yeah, luxury trucks (other than an el Camino) and a luxury SUV have never made sense to me either. Back in the 60's, we had a jeep wagoner (back when they were decent cars) and a chevy blazer. The wagoneer was used for plowing with as well as hauling us around. The blazer my father used to get to o'hare (he was a pilot). What was interesting is that the blazer was the size of a tahoo, but had a simple back seat, that pulled out easily. Times have changed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The article could have been written in 1973, with "SUV" replaced by "gaz guzzler". I'm old enought to remember.
Exactly the same thing happened with the first oil crisis. American car industry was caught with their pants down when the oil prices rose dramatically, and the Japanese makers ate their lunch...
>> You mean, the simpler they are, the fewer factors they can take into account, and the easier it is to make a buffer overflow.
That is only true about common legal system. Somehow countries with civil legal system have understandable laws and have little oversight.
This happened ages ago in Europe, because of energy taxes... That raised the gas prices so high that people buy environment friendly cars...
In Denmark you get a discount for the registration fee if your car is environment friendly... And in Denmark the registration fee is generally 200% of the cars value...
This is good as it drives environment friendly development. But you Americans obviously don't care about environment.
By the way, fuel prices in Denmark is a lot higher than that of yours, today a liter gasoline in Denmark costs 12 DKK, that equal to 9,44 USD â gal.
Regulation of the free marked is needed, because you Americans are very late in the game for a better environment...
- Irresponsibly late, not something to be proved of!
I think there's a nice futurama episode that sums up my opinion on suv's: Farnsworth, upon creating a variant of Bender for Mom's corp, complained that it's not fuel efficient, that it damages the environment and that it won't pass current regulations for robots. The big corporate overlord/lady promptly replied: "We'll market it as a sport utility robot." Go Bender, buy a suv.
http://www.think.no/
There are some luxury SUVs (read: FX50, X6) that can get to 60 in around seven seconds and hustle through the quarter mile in less than fourteen seconds. What I always found amazing is that people would buy them even when gas was over two dollars a gallon and they still sold at three dollars.
I have as of last week seen new SUVs on the road. People are adjusting to the gas prices already and they will give up their lattes and expensive cell phone plans for cheaper ones. Giving up the car is a bigger step than most will take, there are many ways to adjust their expenditures to drive what they want.
Still, series hybrid technology will usher in a new age of the SUV and they will probably not be small ones
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Hmm,
At least in Europe I have a VW Polo Blue Motion cost around 4k less, so 8k USD, less than a Prius. Produces less CO2 per 100km without the need for the pesky batteries.
Worst case we are seeing 56 US mpg in and around town and 66 US mpg along the motor way. (66 / 80 UK miles per gallon)
Mind you my next car will hopefully be a desiel hybrid which will happily do 100 UK MPG.
Sure get a 1500cc motorbike(1500cc is what car engines are) you get high Fuel consumption. A 200cc bike can easily do 40kmpl in normal conditions(urban city mix) a 125cc bike can do 70-80kmpl with ease. I used to drive a 150cc bike which gave me 55-60kmpl and I often used to go at 60 miles/hour.
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OK, if you have a huge trailer to haul around on a regular basis, you might need a big engine. But, for the daily commute, I would make the case that 100-120 HP is enough to power a standard-sized sedan. This means an engine displacement of 1.6-2.0 liters, not the huge 3 liter engine that you often see in American sedans. My moderately-sized French-made station wagon has a 1.6 liter engine, giving me a fuel consumption of 0.07 l/km (it's a 2000 model, a newer one would probably be 0.06 or even 0.05 l/km) - this is 47 mpg in US terms. No need for hybrids, just moderately sized standard diesel or gasoline engines.
While true, you can't run a country with the equivalent of a four-function calculator. There is a balance.
A strawman argument on slashdot... Next up, an ad hominem.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
These are automotive hard times. Rising costs of fuel, not being able to drive the heavy but "save" tanks. Where will it end?
So I had to come up with a cunning plan for my next car. Nowadays it has to be light. Much lighter than SUVs. Say around 1'250 lbs.
And it must suit a geek well. And be fast when required by rising testosterone levels.
So I went for one of these. As a kit of course with 210 bhp and a mere 1'250 lbs.
Soon I will be much greener than most of you. Well much faster anyway.
Not shitting you guys I had the money to burn and the geek will to build.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
The problem with simply allowing the free market to decide the prices of things that are critical to the infrastructure of living (since gasoline/diesel is used in the transportation of ALL goods and services) is that those that "have", have the result of inflating ALL prices because they deplete supply through excess and inflate prices for everyone. There should have been some sort of additional tax on gas guzzlers beside just the incremental additional fuel costs. Those taxes could have been used to subsidize the cost of fuel used by more fuel efficient vehicles. THEN, the "free market" would have decided years ago that a 4 person family didn't need a gas guzzling SUV to haul the kids around town. Years of gas gluzzers has left the United States with an inventory of vehicles that will remain on the roads and will continue to make not just gas but all goods and services that much more expensive for the rest of us even though most SUV owners can afford $4 or $5/gallon gas. It's just that there's a lot of the other folks out there that can't afford the higher prices of that other "staple" called food.
If you have right of way and the other guy doesn't stop, then by definition it's his fault. Neddledick.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seems to me that just like when Socrates was made to drink hemlock, the popular voice is failing to think things through, and there is more than a hint of envy in some of the comments.
/. or pr0n).
First: SUVs can be entirely practical. One reason people like me pay a lot of money for an SUV, money that I could spend on three new cameras a year, is that they are so practical. I can put all my camera gear and light stands into the back, drive to a photo shoot, and get to the shooting area over mud and grass. In winter, I can get to my cottage every weekend via unpaved roads and through thick Canadian snow. I can put a barbecue (assembled!) or chairs in the back. And I do all these things - frequently. When my son goes to university 500km away in a month or so, I will pile all his stuff in the truck. There is simply no substitute. That's why I have an SUV, and always will. (I never thought I'd say that until I bought my first one, after getting stuck in the snow once too often). If you'd like to give me a ticket to California and a green card, fine. I'll drive a little convertible spider. Otherwise, SUV it is.
Then there's the "you are destroying the environment" thing. Yes, SUVs use more energy. You might even argue they use energy unnecessarily. But unless we live in 1960s Cultural Revolution China, we are ALLOWED to use energy unnecessarily. Ever stopped to think how much energy churches use (And God doesn't even exist - talk about unnecessary!)? Or sports? I bet sports and churches use more than all the SUVs in North America. Or libraries? Ballet? Having children? Wearing sneakers? Taking holidays? All a total waste of the environment. No more spring break then. And the Internet? I bet many of you who enter self-righteous comments here use more energy daily than I do (I only use my SUV when I need to, not when I feel like
The Internet and PCs are behind California's brownouts, not SUVs.
So before you start self-righteously judging other people, think. You might be next.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
The thing that makes SUVs so dangerous is that all that torque and traction is totally out of proportion with the rest of the handling (ie. there isn't any). You swerve it, you flip. You brake ... and ... wait .... those 6000lbs take an awful long time to stop.
This is why so many SUVs go off the roads every time it snows. 4WD means you can accelerate well so you scoot along the freeway pretty much as normal. First sign of trouble, you've got nothing. No brakes, no steering, so guess what happens next...?
No sig today...
How did the human race possible survive before 1990? Astonishing how we could have lived with just cars!
If you own one and you're upside down in your loan, then yes. Otherwise if you don't have one now, you have an opportunity to get one cheaper than the increase cost of gas over a several years ownership time. Of course at the end of that break even period you're screwed though. But the key to that is to get biggest one you can, and, if you're self employed, you can get up to $24,000 in tax deductions for 'farm' vehicles over 6000 lbs.
Gee, who woulda thunk it? For-profit corporations responding to consumer demands in order to maximize revenue and shareholder value? THE HORROR!
The SUV is far from dead, however, and it is idiotic to declare "victory" over them. SUVs are entirely practical vehicles that have their uses. I cannot use my Mazda to load up 6 road bikes on the roof, put 4 people in it, our luggage in the back, all while towing a 5000lb trailer containing, among other things, the team support vehicle (which happens to BE the Mazda).
The self-righteous environmental nitwits would have us all living in caves or something. We're not supposed to drive. We're not supposed to eat. We're not supposed to have light or heat or a/c in our homes. We're supposed to live in caves so that Algore can fly his Gulfstream to India to give a speech to 100 people while leaving all the lights on in his 15000 square foot mansion in Tennessee that uses 30x the energy of an average home. We're supposed to hail him for reducing it to 15x.
Hypocritical morons..
I've yet to see any distinction between a "crossover" and an SUV, other than the fact that SUV's are typically based off a truck frame (though not always) and "crossovers" are based on a car frame. They still end up being almost the same vehicle, because once you break 4,000 lb's, an extra 200 lb's to make it an SUV instead of a "crossover" is pretty meaningless, especially when it comes to gas mileage.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I love my UAV. Whether I'm climbing the cliffs of the 285 on ramp, or cutting through pedestrian crowds at the mall, I always ride safe and secure in my 3mpg Urban Assault Vehicle. Every morning I pull my rig into the parking lot, take up my usual 6 parking spaces, crushing all econo hybrids in my way, and repel down from the cab to the sidewalk below. And every day on my way home I stop and fill up the 600 gallon tanks, one on each side, and stock up on ammo. I will pick the carcass of your smart car out of my enormous tire treads! All your road belongs to me!
I would like to suggest a scenario where large SUV'S could be really beneficial to the single males out there. Lets assume that we have a Ford dealer in town that is overstocked with, say V10 Excursions that get about 7 MPG. Let's also assume that this dealer has an attractive female sales person. Thirdly, let us assume that you are a single male, that being a Slashdot geek does not do so well in meeting females of fun and games at the local bar scene.
...... in the VIP area of a strip club.
Customer: WOW! I am interested in one of those big powerful giant size SUV's that you have lined up, out there.
Cute lady salesperson: Oh, really? Are you really interested in buying one?
Customer: Well, maybe, can we go for a test drive?
Cute lady salesperson: Sure!
{ while on the test drive }
Customer: Gee, I like this, but with gas the way it is, how can you convince me to buy this rolling tribute to oil companies?
I will leave the rest to your imagination, however from a strict probability assessment, I think the customer has a better chance of some adult fun in this encounter, than say
So, like I said, SUV's have their uses.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
For all of the people in this thread who seem to despise SUVs ...
I wonder how many of them have 3 kids (all in carseats) and, oh, I dunno, have to go visit grandma & grandpa who live 350 miles away.
Small cars are great, but minivans and SUVs fit a certain niche. They're not economical vehicles for in-city driving -- take public transit, bicycle, or get a Smart Fortwo if you want to hop around town in an environmentally-friendly way.
But some SUVs can achieve reasonably satisfactory mileage on the highway and can make an otherwise long trip into something that is much more manageable for both parents & children.
SUVs can also bring some comfort to the safety-minded. Where we live, moose & deer on the highways can be a significant danger, and I'd rather be driving a 3400lb 5*-rated SUV with my kids in the car than my 12 year old 1900lb Saturn SL-2.
I think that the death of the SUV has been greatly exaggerated. I sincerely hope that we see fewer of these cars used in regular "trip-to-the-mall" type of driving, but as long-haul family-movers, they're great.
>And where I grew up, thinking solely of your own needs with no regard
>whatsoever for how it might impact others was considered to be a 'might selfish.
Firstly, I don't own a SUV.
When I buy a car, the sole consideration is _me_.
It's _my_ money to buy it, it's going to be _my_ money to make it go. Thus when I buy a car it's going to do exactly what I want it to do, within the limits of my pocketbook and the law.
If I want to buy a car because it looks cool, that's my prerogative. If I want to buy a car because it's bigger and more likely to protect me in a crash, that's my prerogative. If I want to buy a car because it can go off-road even though I will never drive it there, that is my prerogative.
When other people start helping me pay my car bills, I'll start considering their opinions about what to buy.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Seems to me that major car manufacturers want us to think that 30+ mpg is something miraculous, and requires a $60K heavy, complicated, hard-to-maintain, hybrid.
Does anybody remember those inexpensive, boxy looking, 40+ mpg, hatchbacks? What ever happened to those? Here is what I mean:
1973 Honda Civic rated 40mpg/hwyy
1986 VW Golf diesle rated 40mpg/hwy *
1989 Geo Metro was rated at 49mpg/hwy
1992 Ford Festiva rated at 41mpg/hwy
* I got over 50mpg driving from Florida to New Jersey, while running the air conditioner.
I having been reading about 60mpg Tata Nano, which will probably cost $3700. At a top speed of 60mph, it may not be practical for the USA. But, what about something that gets 40mpg, and costs $8000?
I suppose the closest thing to an economy car today is the Toyota Yaris - 36mpg/hwy and costs about $12K. Why not strip that down? Make it a lighter, cheaper, hatchback? Remember, Honda made a 40mpg car 35 years ago.
My kids have more disposable income than I do to pay for the gas :-(
Dropping 2nd hand value doesn't really bother me because I have no intention of selling it before it dies. I can't afford the $35K to replace my tow vehicle with something acceptable to you and its replacement won't get that much better mileage. We've done the math and it doesn't make any sense to replace it with a smaller more fuel efficient vehicle when you take into account the payments and extra insurance. Add to that the environmental cost of a new vehicle and you have almost no justification to replace. I'll keep my gas sucking pig thank you very much. Yeah, it is the last car to leave the driveway but everyone likes driving it and the thing is pretty handy.
It was just over eight years ago that Slashdotters and LinuxPPC users came out in massive support for me when a drunk driver in a Chevy Tahoe tried to kill me. I still have the folder full of cards you sent -- it's half a foot thick! Thanks. :-)
- Jason.
-- haaz.
There are 2 type of people posting on this thread. One type is who are against people buying Fuel guzzlers when they don't need them. The other type are those who just have an agenda against any vehicle thats not a sedan/hatch/minivan. You belong to second category. for example CRV. It gives 23mpg as compared to honda accord which gives 24mpg. In all respects its a very good handling safe vehicle with crumple zones and ample safety. But still you label the owner as trying to prove something. By your logic anybody who buys a good looking/butch looking/non VW beetle looking vehicle is trying to compensate for something/trying to tackle midlife crisis guy. Thats not the case. The problem is that America still buys a lot of "I am a truck but I will call myself a SUV" vehicles. There are lot of monoque chasis construction all time AWD crossovers which are good looking, offer a higher seating position, handle well, and give good gas mileage(Atleast better than minivans)
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In the UK diesel is $10 a gallon, and some people still drive SUVs. Still, I have seen a lot of SUVs with for sale signs recently at a third of the price they would have been worth six months ago.
Yeah! Let private corporations take that power. They can be trusted to use it wisely and in the interests of everyone!
I don't. If/when gas prices go down, SUVs will be back. Car sales in general are down, people are jumping to hasty conclusions about the demise of the SUV.
Yes the price of gas makes owning an SUV or truck much less affordable but there is a huge demand for them!
:)
:)
I bought a car because it was affordable and had low gas mileage... guess what? I HATE IT!!!! Zero down and no interest sounded great.
But when I drive to work in this crap box every day with the seats that are just a tad too narrow, the seat belt buckle digs into my hip, and my arms are in a slightly unnatural position when I drive I cant help wishing I'd just bought the damn Toyota truck I wanted
A few weeks ago my car battery died and I had to drive my F150 to meet with a client instead. My wife gets to drive it all the time because she only works 10 miles from home and I have a 35 mile commute each way. What a joy...I forgot how damn comfortable it was to drive! If it got better gas mileage I'd go buy another one.
As I read the totally ridiculous recommendations of people here I can't help wondering if you've been drinking too much enviro-coolaid
Obviously people LIKE SUV's because they're not impractical ugly death traps. They're big, they're comfortable, and they have enough power to get things done. Do people NEED them to drive around town? Most probably don't. But you don't need your hybrid to drive around town either.
Where does your snobbery end? You're feeling all high and mighty because you bought a hybrid that emits less polution than a SUV.. why don't you just walk to work or take the bus then?
A motorcycle gets much better gas mileage than any four wheeled vehicle how can you justify using a car when it's just you driving to work most of the time? You could just RENT a car when you need to get a bunch of groceries or better yet get a trailer to haul around behind your motorcycle. If you need to bring a passenger then get a side car or have them sit behind you.
Do you see where I'm going here? Don't assume that because you're feeling good with the illusion that you're saving the environment that you're better than the guy that needs a Truck or SUV because he lives a different life than you.
The problem isn't that SUV's are bad. They're not...people love them! It's that they get horrible gas mileage doing things they shouldn't. If they came out with an SUV with an efficiency mode that let you run it on 4 cylinders when driving around town and 8 when you're hauling the boat out of the lake then I'd go buy one right now.
Apparently, you haven't heard of the concept of "Rapture".
I have, and it's why I'm eating cars!I am not a crackpot.
How is this comment insightful in any way? It was meant to be nothing more than inflamatory taunting, the prototypical example of a troll. Also, I don't say this because I drive an SUV. I actually drive a Celica that gets 35 MPG. I just fail to see any reason for such a spiteful post to be labeled insightful.
My compact MPV (Toyota Corolla Verso) drinks 6.1L (diesel) per 100 km, and still has room for strapping in 3 child seat across the back seat and plenty of torque for hauling trailers. On the other hand I only need to commute 30 km, so.... 4 cylinders isn't the end of the world.
The problem with bikes is, they are too fast for the sidewalks, and too slow for the streets.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I own a midsize SUV and love it. Yes the gas mileage is not great, but without the 4WD and extra ground clearance in the winter I would not make it far. I owned a 2WD compact (with snow tires) when I was younger and I was always getting stuck. You can keep them. Yup the resale value is going down, who cares - I'll just pay less property tax now. I've tried a subaru, better, but not the same. I've done the extra car thing and that doesn't pay. I can buy a lot of gas for the maintenance, taxes, and insurance I would have paid on the extra car, not to mention the time and hassle of the extra maintenance.
Most SUVs are offenders in many categories, but singling them out isn't the answer either. I commute in a Toyota Yaris, but I own a Jeep Wrangler as a "recreation vehicle" and for the winters. The Jeep is lifted and rides on mud tires, but driven conservatively I can get 20mpg in it. One of my neighbors drives a newish Mustang and gets 16 mpg. A friend with a pickup gets the same. The guy down the street with an RX-8 gets about 18. It isn't only SUVs that are consuming large amounts of fuel, and I've never heard anyone make a convincing argument that they "need" a Corvette. At least you can carpool in an SUV.
You people have way too much anger over a car. Doesnâ(TM)t every manufacturer make dozens of models to appeal try and appeal to everyone. If you donâ(TM)t like the SUV, then shut up and go drive whatever it is you like. There are jerks that drive every make and model of car that do stupid things on the road, so singling out SUV drivers as to root of all evil on the streets is pretty ignorant.
Delusion: Thinking you know who's online.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Funny how people try to guess reasons why other people do things, and usually get it wrong.
I am in the UK and have a Jeep Cherokee 4.0l. Here's why I bought it.
I am not interested in "fashion" or performance. I rumble along at about 100kph on motorways, with the trucks. I am a professional safety engineer and a member of the Pedestrians Association for Road Safety. (Is this fitting your preconceived ideas so far - anyone?).
I have always bought large estate cars - as I am always carrying a lot of stuff (in the last fortnight about 4 cu.m. of hedge cuttings, furniture, rubble and a 20" mower).
I tend to buy cars about 3 years old and keep them for about 10. I maintain and repair them myself. So I want a car that is reliable, easy to work on and does not rust.
I had always wanted an American car because they are large, have understressed engines that just rumble on for ever, and I had heard that they are galvanised against rust, unlike British cars were. But in the past there has been no dealership support in the UK for US cars.
Then 12 years ago I saw Cherokees being sold - with regular dealership backing. I saw it as a large comfortable tough galvanised estate car to replace my seriously rusting Volvo. I was not even interested in the 4WD feature at the time.
But having bought one I found other advantages. I can get underneath it for maintenace without jacking it up. I can pull into a muddy field gateway to read a map or for a coffee break without getting stuck, even in the wettest weather.
It has now done 220,000 miles and is by far the most reliable vehicle I have ever had. It's tatty and its re-sale value is zero, but I don't care. It will go on.
As for fuel consumption/pollution, I rarely go into towns with it and I strongly believe in urban public transport anyway. Bulk freight should be on rail. I am for road pricing and higher fuel prices - something needs to be done about the absurd levels of traffic, and the SUV issue is a mere diversion. Some of my work colleagues commute 60-80 miles each way in their Euro-bubbles. Anyway, why has no-one here mentioned Jevon's Paradox?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conservation#Jevons_paradox
Meanwhile, traffic lights are springing up like mushrooms around Bristol, unco-ordinated with each other and constantly bringing 20-30 cars from 30 or 40mph to a halt and leaving them all idling for up to 2-3 minutes - very often just because a cyclist illegally using the pavement has pressed a pedestrian crossing button. I used practically to live on a bike but would never have dreamed of doing that. How about looking for some energy savings there for a start?
I am just waiting for the govt. to pay off my huge SUV loan like they did my mortgage.
I'm not sure where the corruption comes in. We are where we are thanks to democracy and the more-or-less free market. In the 1970's, we had two nasty oil crunches, and people in the U.S. responded by reducing the size of their cars -- for a while. But oil prices -- pretty cheap by world standards -- went down, and consumers started demanding more powerful and larger cars. When we bought our minivan 11 years ago, gasoline prices were pretty low, and within a year or so, they were so low in constant dollars that there was no economic justification for me to keep my old VW around. People responded by buying even bigger motor vehicles and building houses farther out. We voted out the regulators in 1994 and elected people who told us we could have our cake and eat it, too.
Now the rest of the world wants to live like Americans, and fuel prices are through the roof. I think it's really a matter of the chickens coming home to roost. Remember Mencken:
When/if fuel prices go down again, expect large car sales to rise again. As a species, we are quick to forget lessons learned.
Lest anyone write me off as being a car nut, I'll point out that I biked to work this morning and have commuted by bicycle when possible for my entire working life.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
The eco freeks are dancing in the streets over this one. How dare someone drive something that large. I hope someone produces a hydrogen based Denali so we can all tell them to shut the hell up.
I wish this lame argument would die already. Does it ever make any sense? Let's try it in a few different circumstances:
The problem was caused by people, so the solution can't involve people.
The problem was caused by doctors, so the solution can't involve doctors.
The problem was caused by software engineers, so the solution can't involve software engineers.
Guess not!
All this SUV bashing, but geeks are essentially the same as the person who insists on buying a giant car and doesn't really need it.
Look at all the geeks who constantly upgrade their computers for no reason, who have kilowatt power supplies just to run the latest ATI or NVidia card, who rush out and buy the newest video card as soon as it appears. Same mindset.
Personally, I expect the price for gas to hover in the $2.50 to $3.25 range for the next decade. Of course that was the price when I purchased my hybrid, so I don't expect the light truck category to have the popularity it did have, but sales will pick up again (unfortunately).
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Independent suspension is not a feature of an off-road vehicle. Who told you it was an off road vehicle? Most of the SUVs on the market, including the one in question, are a poor choice for off-roading.
anyway ? a freaking special UTILITY vehicle, thats generally designed sturdy as to go around easily in bushland, drives around 4-10 km daily tracks in a goddamn city.
it was a stupid concept, more to do with making up for deficiencies in one's own ego by driving a badass looking/huge vehicle than any kind of reasonable need.
Read radical news here
the percentage of 'geeks' rushing to buying latest card as soon as it goes out in the market is a percentage that is nonexistent compared to people who use high-end cards. they are the 'billionaires' of the gaming world. their individual usage doesnt mean anything. as for the rest, their purchase of top end cards stems from an actual need - new games demand much from hardware. its irrelevant when compared to the concept of a single mom/youngster driving a few ton vehicle to supermarket and back.
Read radical news here
Loved the episode http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/show/episodes/series10episode4.shtml/ where they decided to teach "a lesson for the people of Surrey, who think they need a 4x4 just because they live up a lane that sometimes has leaves on it" by driving 1,000 miles across Botswana including the vast openness and primordial sludge of the Makgadikgadi salt pans, the choking dust of the Kalahari Desert, and the treacherous rivers and hungry wildlife of the Okavango Delta in two-wheel drive cars they bought locally for no more than £1,500.
Best part -- the two vehicles with the least problems were a tiny Kadett (whose only real problem was when they accidentally submerged the entire engine in a river) and a 1970's Volkswagen Beetle (which had zero problems).
This is long overdue.
Almost everybody alive, at least most of the SUV drivers, have known for a long time that gas is running out and that fossil fuel use is polluting their children's future, not to mention putting money into the pocket of our political enemies. Then there is the issue of the safety of SUVs both for the drivers and for other vehicles on the road. This news is simply about the free market getting people to do what they should have done long ago if they had any concept of a future.
Personally, if I had the money to spend on a status symbol I wouldn't buy a big blocky vehicle that looks like a mobile garden shed. I would get a nice sleek curvy sports car.
There are some people who need trucks or defacto trucks. Almost everyone else can get by with a car or a station wagon.
I'm sorry for their temporary inconvenience at owning these vehicles, but they knew it was coming, they knew it was a bad habit, and they are going to live.
I work in car sales at a Nissan dealership in Maryland, and I definitely notice a trend of my customers being much more gas-mileage minded. Sometimes the first question they ask me when they look at a car is, "how's the gas mileage on this thing?" Nissan's new crossover offering, the Rogue, is pretty much flying out the door. (I think it's built on an Altima platform, though it pretty much looks like a mini-Murano. It gets similar gas mileage to an Altima.) Versas (similar to the Toyota Yaris/Honda Fit) are popular as well, since they're compact fuel-sippers, and the hatchback version seems more popular than the sedan. Sentras also seem to be popular, though I've only sold one myself. The gas mileage on those things is actually decent, though the newest reiteration is pretty big - close to the size of a '90s Altima. I had a lady trade in her 2005 Dodge Durango for a Murano on Saturday, and I had a customer yesterday that wanted to trade in his Ford Ranger for an Altima Coupe. I've also somehow managed to sell an XTerra, but it was for a woman who liked to go offroading and camping, and needed something that could tow. I have yet to see a Nissan Quest, Titan, Frontier or Armada get sold though. BTW, I'm not trying to push Nissans on y'all -- I actually drive an Acura RSX myself, and I get 28mpg on local roads. I'm young, poor, and drive a car that requires premium gas, so I've gotten a lot more concious of how my driving habits affect my gas mileage (shift at 2000rpm, coast to red lights and stop signs, etc). My dad sold off his SUV (an Acura MDX) because he realized he never drove it (as we had four cars in the house for three people), and he rarely needed to haul anything once I went to college. He sold it to a suburban soccer-mom earlier this year.
I'm work in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area. I still see plenty of SUVs and minivans on the surrounding highways. I'm guessing it is because
1. There are a lot of rich people in this area
2. A lot of status conscious people in this area
3. A lot of people willing to live beyond their means
4. Simply that high gas prices haven't been high enough, long enough for people to get around
to dumping their SUVs and minivans.
Hopefully gas prices will stay higher long enough to completely give these dead end vehicles a complete death.
Now I just need the third job to afford the 50k for one of those bad boys ;)
I'm rather confused by this whole sudden spike in oil. The news media keeps blaming it on China/India/developing economies. I can't say for China but in India fuel has always been expensive and the cars are built for maximum gas mileage. Plus doubling of oil due to industry is unheard of in just a few months.
Then come the speculators, here's where I'm befuddled. With the airlines and massive corporations like GM, Ford etc and such going into bankruptcy; how is it that there was no pressure from these sectors to keep the fuel prices down? I'm seeing layoffs and bankruptcies all around.
Shouldn't the balance in market have prevented such a huge blast in fuel prices? What's going on here?
Disclaimer: The above is a genuine question, and not intended as troll/flamebait in any way.
if you have the money to buy a suv, you have the money to pay for its gas.
in italy gas is 1.5 euros/litre and the number of suvs is increasing like crazy.
For the record, not all SUVs have bad mileage.
I get better mileage in my 2007 Tucson ( around 27 mpg ) than my wife does in her 2000 Neon ( around 25 mpg) , which is 1/2 the size and weight of a car - the reason being of course better, modern engineering.
Fortunately, these young people will not be able to afford to drive these out of their driveway.
Ah a clueless tree hugger. The thing is, fuel is one of the lowest components of vehicle cost. The fact that fuel went up by 33% this year is bad for car owners, but merely means I pay $20 more for gas each week.
I've evened out my budget by stopping giving to ecological charities. It all works out even for me. If fuel prices go up more, I'll probably cut down all my charitable giving.
Bummer.
And all it took was a global fuel crisis to make people slow down a little bit! I guess we can expect them off the road when gasoline isn't available at all.
Nothing against the vehicles themselves, they're very useful, just overused. For most people it's like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, driving themselves to work in a 6-seater that could haul a boat.
It's a terrible time for it, but I actually plan to get a small car soon. For now I ride a ~500cc motorbike to work in summer, and take the bus in winter so I'm not just jeering from the sidelines while not doing anything.
And for the people going on about running computers wasting power - true, but you know you're probably not drawing half your power supply's ability, and it's still far less waste than a pretty good car, right? Look at the "virtual mpg" ratings for plug-in hybrids.
Many saw this outcome, not the specific details, but we still couldn't get out in front of the problem. SUV is the symbol of inefficient energy use in America, because it represented a relationship with the planet's resources that says, "if I can afford the upfront cost who are you to tell me I can't have it." We need to actively limit private automobile ownership that is anything less than absolutely necessary for business, or public transport.
I think a nice first step would be for cities with urban density like New York, Chicago, Vienna, London and have more than adequate public transport is just to go ahead and ban private passenger cars within the city. Limit vehicles to Taxis, Buses, and Delivery vehicles. Make all remaining vehicles subject to tough regulation.
Outside the cities raise fuel standards for private cars to at least 30 mpg, and start changing land use to concentrate people into cities so public transportation and foot traffic is viable.
With some radical changes over the next five to ten years we can really start to rein in energy prices, curb greenhouse gas emissions, and breathe a little easier. From there we should look to invest in state-of-the-art public transport that moves us quickly, cleanly, and quietly.
Seriously - it will only be a matter of time, and you will get "conversion" kits to yank out the large petrol engine and replace it with some or other battery powered electric engine.
So, the fuel problem is now solved, and you still sit with the other problems mentioned here.
Need an ISP in South Africa?
It's always been fashion vs. utility for this one. Very few people actually need the size and off-road capability of the typical SUV. If they have any off-road capability at all; a lot of them have obviously never even been on a gravel road.
The people who need pickups and things will continue to have them and use them. The people who don't, won't. Few people actually need anything bigger than a Corolla or a Golf.
I ride the bus to work, but have a little van (an L300 Mitsubishi Delica) for weekends. I bought it with an eye to camping, and carrying cameras and telescopes and things up mountains. It does this very well, and has proven unstoppable in snow.
Diesel is currently $CDN 1.47 a litre here. That's 0.93 Euros.
...laura
I'm an atheist, so I don't feel a biblical compulsion to protect the planet. However, I'd love if "stewardship" - the idea that we act as caretakers of God's Creation - gained more traction in American Christian circles. And there are some Christians that embrace stewardship and sustainability as part of their Christian duties. (See testimony of Joseph Sheldon, a Christian biologist, to the House Committee on Resources.)
However, stewardship hasn't really caught on in the States. We had one professedly devout Christian - James Watt - as Secretary of the Interior, and he was essentially a fox guarding the henhouse. Take a look at his track record, and some of his quotes, to get an idea of the more traditional Christian conservative view of environmentalism. (Such as: "If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.")
For all we know the moon may be as conscious as a poet or a realtor, and extremely weary of its monotonous round. - HLM
Sorry to break it to the hippie crowd, but while SUV sales may be declining in the US, they're booming in Venezuela thanks to government subsidized fuel prices. Also, light truck sales continue to run strong in the US, and continue to increase on a yearly basis in Australia.
The need for large vehicles is, in many places, a fact of life. While this may put a crimp on SUV sales in large cities, it's certainly not going to be the death-knell of large vehicles. Not by a long shot.
Having owned both, I have to completely disagree with you!
The old full-size station wagons got horribly bad gas mileage, generally had poor acceleration and handling, and were very impractical to park. (Ever parallel park a full-size wagon from the mid 80's? I have... You'll waste a lot of gas just driving up and down streets to find a long enough empty space to fit it in, among other things!) The house I live in now doesn't even have a garage deep enough to fit a full-size wagon in it.
The SUV was a welcome improvement on the station wagon, in many ways. It wasn't simply an attempt to make it "cool" to drive around (though I agree, that wound up a nice side-effect). It was really a better all-around concept. (Remember all the people who had to buy those plastic "clamshell" cargo carriers to strap to the top of their wagons, for vacation trips? SUVs don't usually need that nonsense, because they're tall enough to fit things in without resorting to putting them up on the roof.)
Nice try, twitter, you're not fooling anyone!
All of my vehicles are trucks or SUVs. I love each and everyone of them. All but one is paid off and that one wraps up in a year. I don't plan to sell any of them. So resale value is irrelevant to me. I will chuckle with glee as I watch the smug among you vie for the false economy presented in the form of hybrids. Go ahead, pay a "premium" for your in demand vehicles. Whatever ROI those vehicles purported to deliver will evaporate like sub $3/gal gas. My trucks are huge, comfortable, powerful, reliable, haul and pull like nobody's business. When winter arrives I'm sure I'll be helping drag them little 'useless' eco-boxes out of the slop as I've done in the past. I just won't do it free of charge this time ;)
The automakers should start suing consumers who don't buy their product in the form factor they want to make.
The conspiracy theorist in me says the US tow ratings are artificially low to bolster truck and SUV sales unnecessarily. Actually, it's because Americans are so goddamned FAT!
Admittedly, SUVs are often driven by people who don't need them, and wrecked by people who confuse their SUV with a sports car and try to drive it inappropriately. Such stupid behavior deserves criticism. However, let's not lose sight of the fact that a lot of people NEED an SUV for their work.
I drive an SUV. I will continue to drive the SUV regardless of how high the price of fuel goes, for one simple reason. I need a vehicle that can haul five working men, a boat load of tools and tow a construction trailer full of materials. But the high fuel prices are severely hurting my ability to make a living.
Carried to the ultimate extreme, the high fuel prices are going to cause me to stop working, stop employing tradesmen, stop buying construction materials, and so on. I am of an age and financial ability to simply retire and stop fighting the battles. Who has benefited by my parking my SUV? The unemployed working men?
I have been looking to buy a hybrid SUV. There aren't any! Toyota Highlander can't tow a wet napkin. The Ford Escape ditto. These vehicles cannot, by any stretch of the imagination be called an SUV.
The Chevy Tahoe seems to be vaporware, although I saw an ad for a dealer that claims to have one a few days ago. Even so, it can only tow about half a workload. My current SUV tows 10,000 lbs. Up a long steep hill. In the snow. Chevy claims 6000 lbs towing for the Tahoe Hybrid. Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it. When they actually start delivering them.
Yeah, the high prices are chasing away the soccer-mom crowd. But those big Escalades you SUV haters love to hate so well?
News flash for ya. Anyone who can afford an Escalade isn't going to pay any attention at all to fuel prices.
Further, some Soccer-moms really do need them. Try hauling around a bunch of kids and all their sports equipment if ya don't believe me. Minivans? Maybe. But a mini-van can't match a real SUV if you really need to haul stuff. The smaller crossovers might make a reasonable compromise, but they are not really SUVs, and in fact are far closer to a mini-van than an SUV.
But pity the poor working man who needs a real SUV, or even worse a real truck. He's in real pain, or more likely just plain out of work.
An SUV is a safe vehicle, all you SUV haters notwithstanding. Yeah, try to drive them like a sports car, and you can roll em over sometimes. That's a bad thing. Rolling any vehicle is a bad thing. Not limited to SUVs. Drive them sensibly and that's not an issue. Rolling a vehicle bespeaks a bad/stupid/incompetent driver. Lots of vehicles roll over real easy, not just SUVs. You must respect ANY vehicle's performance envelop.
If I am destined to hit an immovable object anytime soon, I hope I do so in my SUV, and not the little crackerbox family car I drive when I'm not working. For that matter, if I am going to be in a vehicle that rolls over, I'd chose the SUV any time over the car. But SUV haters aside, reasonably competent drivers rarely hit things, and rarely roll over.
Stony
The old full-size station wagon got horrible gas mileage as did all other full-size cars at the time. Car makers could have kept the concept while improving the efficiency and driveability. But they instead chose to repackage it into something taller, heavier, with often less interior space but similar exterior dimensions*, that were prone to rollover, hard to see past, caused more damage to others in crashes, and had poor gas mileage. But hey, they gave the impression of the rugged outdoor sporty life!
As for stowing extra stuff on trips - a minivan is better than an SUV, and what's wrong with using roof racks and cargo carriers for those few occasions you're carrying extra stuff? Better to have removable cargo carrying devices than every single day be moving around big empty space.
Anyway, I think the SUV represents great marketing of a poorly designed compromise. You happen to like the concept. With gas prices going the way they are, people are going to have to make adjustments. I prefer bikes to cars anyway.
* Ford Explorer 4-door wheelbase: 111 inches. 1970's Chevy Malibu wagon wheelbase: 108 inches.
I think the dodge magnum did a good job of making the station wagon sexy again.
The problem is the tax structure is what killed off the station wagon, and it's harmed the magnum too.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Heh. Pretty funny.
Seriously, though, it's not a case of "supporting" big government, but rather being realistic about the way it functions.
If you want to talk to the public about the problems of government, try to avoid making arguments that boil down to "regulatory oversight creates more corruption than it fixes! honest!" because it'll turn people away. They know better, and you ought to, as well. This is why Libertarian Party candidates run for president and lose.
Think of government as a big, ugly, rickety, overengineered machine that occasionally injures people. Over the years, while we anarchists have been saying this thing needs to be dismantled so we can build something better, the social democrats have said "Oh, no. It just needs a few tweaks here and there and it'll work great!"
So every so often, they add another piece on that tries to fix some problem. A lot of fixes help with one problem, but often create a different problem somewhere else. The net effect over the long run, however, is to make this sputtering pile of crap work well enough for most people to tolerate it. (I mean hey, it injures only half as many people these days, and it now spits out disability benefit cards for them with its benefit cardomaticalyzer! The interest-ratometer tends to pin people to the ground and crush them, but the welfarotron ensures they have enough air to breath, so they can almost lead a normal life!)
While making the machine more tolerable has made things correspondingly more difficult for us, the anarchists, it was an improvement for the people as a whole.
(..and then, along comes a Libertarian Party guy, who's been reading the kind of revisionist history that crops up over at Mises.org, and says "HEY! I bet this machine used to run AWESOME before all those compensators and correctors got added to it!")
Trying to rip out these corrections would let people see how badly government functions without them, which that (A) would hurt people, which makes it unethical, and (B) will then cause those people to decide that you were either stupid or wrong, and that they want their old system back. So you eventually end up accomplishing nothing except strengthening the system you think you're fighting...which is about what I expect when it comes to the bozos in the Libertarian Party.
I have a 1971 VW bug in my garage that I'm currently restoring. It's tech straight from the 1930's. Even with its horrible Dc of 0.46 it can get 30+ mpg. A project run recently by a VW mag managed to build a motor capable of 38+ mpg.
But... If I had to choose which car to get in a head on collision in, a 2008 Yaris or a 1971 Bug, I'd pick the Yaris. The airbags, crush zones, sculpted dash, and passive safety systems are a quantum leap ahead. Those items add weight, and cost money. That's why a Yaris costs $12k and only gets 36mpg.
I would, but I already posted. These are good points.
I don't even live in a large city in the US...there was a time in my life a few years ago when my car got stolen and I just didn't buy another one. Rode a bicycle everywhere I went...and got looked at like I was from another planet when I told people that I did that.
"you rode here from WHERE?"
"it's only 15 miles"
"15 MILES!?!?!"
There were places that I just couldn't go on my bike because there was no safe way to get there. This isn't taken into account when planning roads/routes in most cities...esp smaller midwestern/southern cities.
I would also add another point....in most of the US it gets HOT in the summertime (90 something degrees and 90% humidity for most of the summer here)....so probably hot and humid depending on where you are. Where I live if I rode to work in the summertime I would need to take a shower when I got there, which isn't an option.
Hopefully $4 a gallon is changing this....but I hear that gas is expected to go back down to $3 and stay there for a while. I don't think that $3 a gallon hurts enough to spur change. I want to put my tinfoil hat on over this point, but I will resist the urge.
...consumption isn't all that low - I own an 800CC sport-bike, not a fuel efficient low CC commuter and have never got lower than 42mpg in the city.
... don't look forward to arriving all drenched at work - I drive in a climate that rains an average of 150 days a year. I wear full protective water proof gear like the 6 other guys I work with who ride every day and stay very dry and warm.
...feel safe surrounded by steel cage - Exactly the kind of responses made by the guzzling SUV drivers or big a$$ american cars that they feel safer with all that extra unnecessary metal and weight
...not practical to strap 2 kids, a wife - that's what the family car is for. Driving the family and extra passengers, not for commuting. I'm saving as much in gas over driving the family car to more than cover the payments (if I had them) and insurance on the motorcycle.All comments (over 900) summarized below:
1) Some people need to drive an SUV and do so
2) Some people drive SUVs that don't need to
3) Everyone on Slashdot thinks they are the perfect judge of everyone else.
I live in CA. My office is about 2 miles from work. I don't need an SUV for weather and yet I have one in order go get out of the clusterfuck called Silicon Valley. Gas is not a problem since it still costs me less than $100/month (that is right, per month) to fill up and drive. If I go on a trip, it costs me around $300-400 to drive. The cost of gas, food and entertainment adds up to less than $1k for two people driving somewhere in the boonies. This is less than what I would pay to fly myself and my significant other to Hawaii or any other vacation destination.
My car has desert pinstripes. That is something that you won't see too often on any shiny cars. I have traversed many paths in the Sierras and spent time on the back roads of Death Valley and Nevada. And that is something that you cannot do in a Civic or a Prius. Many places that I visit require differential locks, armor (skid plates), at least 9" of clearance under the rear diff and rock sliders just to get through a trail. This equipment costs money as does good camping gear. But that is what life is about!
Some people collect Star Wars figures and spend all their money on big TVs, absolutely fucking useless gaming consoles and nice lawns. I prefer to get out and enjoy the nature at its best. So yeah, I guess I'll stick with an SUV.
I look forward to the price dropping so I don't have to compete with deranged city drivers and soccer moms in the used SUV market. I have 3 kids entering their teens, tow a trailer every weekend for my job, and live on 20+ acres in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where I need 4/all wheel drive.
I'd love a front wheel drive car for the winter (and gas), and have thought about getting a car and a normal pickup. I'm not close to rich though, and I have no desire to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt just to save 20 bucks a week in gas money.
Unless we return to a time when I can travel by horse with a lute on my back, I will need an SUV for the next 10-15 years.
I think the lack of popularity of SUVs in Europe has a lot to do with the high price of gas there, plus some countries there have carbon taxes dependent on the size of the car's engine when you buy the car.
>We actually are helping pay your car bills because we get to pay for
>pollution and road damage even though we may not drive at all... so start considering my opinion.
Since you pay no more for those things than I do myself, it's a wash.
And since I'm also paying gasoline taxes to support the infrastructure, your opinion is worth even less.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
And by leg room and cabin space, they are all still drastically inferior to my 20-year-old Volkswagen Vanagon.
But that doesn't really have anything to do with the argument you're making, it's just me being bitter because manufacturers chasing higher profit margins flooded the market with space-inefficient front-engine, front-wheel-drive designs based on sedan chassis. Anybody wanting something with a stronger chassis had no choice but an even more space-inefficient SUV, which also only came into existence because it leveraged truck production capacity, not because it was a sane design for a utility vehicle.
>Unfortunately, you "Conservative/Libertarian types" don't live in vacuum,
>nor on some remote island. Your "choice" has an impact on others. What you
>"choose" to consume (or not) impacts everyone else. Aggregated, your "choices"
>either help solve the problem... on contribute to it.
As the owner of a car the sole responsibility to society is to maintain and operate the vehicle as proscribed by law.
Within this limitation, people are free to choose whatever vehicle they like based on whatever criteria they like within the means of their pocket book.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The new Camry is a TANK. It's as big as a Crown Victoria! One online review says "I stuck to local streets during my Camry Hybrid test drive and averaged 30 MPG," which is only slightly better than my non-hybrid Corolla. I suppose the hybrid Camry would be a great investment for a taxi company or somebody else who needs the trunk space, but anybody else should steer clear.
Unless your demand is otherwise, smaller is still better. Don't get fooled by the "hybrid" marketing game - compare the hybrid's MPG to a smaller car. If I were shopping for a car right now, I'd be looking at the hybrid Civic, the Prius, or (more likely) a 15-year-old crapper that does 30+MPG highway as a holdout for an all-electric car or plug-in hybrid (without voided warranty), which should be coming out in the next few years, e.g. Chevy Volt, AXP winner(s), 2010 Prius (maybe).
Looking at minimizing your carbon footprint, hybrids aren't even an option; the environmental cost of creating the battery is never going to offset the efficiency of a nice light-weight sedan. Wired had a nice article about this called "Don't Buy that New Prius!" a short while ago.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I don't understand your point. Are you saying his points are invalid because he purportedly used a different username to the one you think he should use? Is this point I am making any less true because I am posting as AC because I can't be stuffed logging in?
When will we see the return of Mini trucks? Yanno, the Chevy S10, The original Toyota pickup, the mazda b2000 (iirc) truck? etc. Small trucks, modest, fuel saving engines, and you can run them into the ground and back. The problem with the truck market in the US is, there are no new small trucks, they're all huge, GM's new models are ugly and huge, Ford's done with this market, and Toyota makes huge trucks now as well.
:)
I'd love to have a newer, diesel powered mini truck with 4WD to take dirt bikes out to the desert, anything bigger than that will need to be refueled constantly. Plus I could take the little bastard out to play on the dunes as well
I have a 1999 Chevy Malibu--I get an average of 20 mpg, and spend about $160 monthly on gas (I drive 12 miles each way to and from work).
Even if I were to buy something that got _double_ that (40 mpg), I'd save only $90 monthly on gas.
I have yet to find a car with a sub-$90 monthly payment. Thus, I'm keeping my car until it dies, and only then will I buy the most efficient car possible.
The moral here? Don't rush out and buy an appropriately sized vehicle "just" because of the price of gas. I didn't rush out and buy an SUV when it was $1, and I didn't rush out and buy a Toyota Yaris when it hit $3.
FYI, I didn't really have a choice over the car: it was given to my wife new for her 18th birthday.
Why would you think a turbo would *help* traction. Your logic is...interesting.
*waves hand* I walk to work.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
well, the 'puter in my Mazda puts me at ~ 70 mpg when coasting in neutral at 20 mph, and something similar when in gear. At 65 mph that would put me at over 200 mpg for neutral(the 'puter goes offscale at 99mpg). If I was driving over mountain passes each day it might be worth it to figure out which is more efficient, but for normal commuting the difference in fuel consumption will be negligable. It's all burned while accelerating/maintaining speed, not while coasting and braking. If I coast for 2 miles a day in neutral at an average of 100mpg, vs the engine burning NO gas at all for those same miles it would save me all of 7 gallons a year. A new clutch will cost me close to a grand, putting extra wear on it to save 20 or 40 dollars a year is penny wise/pound foolish. For braking moderately I let the engine brake the car til the rpms get low, then just take it out of gear. I'm not sure about shifting at lower RPMs either. It means shifting well below the torque peak when your engine is not at its most efficient for accelerating. You end up having to put your foot down further to accelerate at all, and then you have to keep it there longer to get up to speed. The 'puter says I do better when I use a lighter foot and stay in a lower gear a bit longer, shifting in the high 2000's rather than the low 2000's (2.3l 4 cyl, 5sp manual). It might be more applicable if you're driving 6+cylinders.
Ya maroon.
I grew up in NE Indiana. It flooded 1 time in 20 years (1963-1983). And most of the people did not need any kind of 4wd during that flood.
I now live in Minnesota. I get around just fine in my mini-van....which hauls stuff for the office, kids, parents, etc... and 99% of the time, it's fine in the winter. What about that other 1%? Can you say SNOW DAY!!!!! If you're not a physician on-call, stay home when it snows more than 12" overnight. Make a fire. Roast marshmallows with the kids (they're not going to school and you don't have any other daycare options).
And not five years ago, before all the SUV drivers burned up the peak oil that us poor people could be using right now. . .
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
How many people really need a huge SUV to go to work and back? I can see for taking the whole family on vacation, but just driving yourself? Seems a little silly to me!
Funny how quickly and passionately the so-called libertarian Slashdotter community wants to tell people what to drive.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The wear on the clutch comes from shifting gears, not from staying in gears. Oh, and coasting in neutral is in many countries illegal. It's dangerous. It might not be where you live, check the law.
Sure, it isn't significant compared to the accelerating/braking parts of driving, but I was talking about saving as much as possible.
No, that's bad practice. You end up, shifting back to a higher RPM and then accelerating. Just pushing down the gas pedal is indeed dumb in that situation, but you've got control over your gears, so use them.
Mine says the inverse, but I know why: I have a 1.8l Turbo 4 cyl, 6sp manual. See that Turbo? That's why in higher RPMs my car uses more gas. The turbo kicks in... You have an atmospheric engine, no turbo in high RPMs, less gas used. It does seem to depend on the car, indeed.... If your car computer says so, by all means, drive that way.
BTW, water vapor makes up 95% of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. When the (local) atmosphere reaches saturation, it rains (read: adds fresh water to environment).
Everyone is harping on the evils of SUV's but the original article is about aspects of racing car design that can make for better (less polluting, more fuel efficient) cars.
My ideas:
1. Require all cars to have an 'instantaneous' fuel economy guage. One that tells you how many mpg you are getting right now. If well designed, it takes into account your change in speed.
2. Increase the CAFE limits. Use taxation to enforce them. E.g. for every mpg your fleet average is above the limit, your corporate income tax goes up 2%. For every mpg your fleet average is below the limits, your income tax rate drops.
3. All vehicles come with a trailer hitch. People are encouraged to use a trailer when they need extra hauling space. It's almost always more efficient.
4. Part of driver's ed is dealing with a trailer.
5. New road construction builds for higher pressure tires. (Higher pressure = smaller footprint = more load per inch tire width = higher road wear.)
Higher pressure = better gas mileage. There is a reason that big rigs run at 70 psi.
6. Modify the vehicle registration and insurance laws so that people aren't penalized for owning special purpose vehicles. (About 3 times per year I wish I had an old 3 ton farm grain truck. I can buy them for $1-2K. But it costs me $600 to insure it. And $100 to keep plates on it. Not worth it.)
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Construction details:
While race cars are one source of inspiration, much can also be learned from small aircraft. A Cessna 150 gets something like 13 mpg -- but it's moving at 125 mph, and has these big things sticking out in the breeze. I can't believe that a non-ducted air screw with half the path blocked by the cabin can be an efficient way to turn energy into momentum.
The three largest contributors to fuel economy:
1. GVW. More mass = more energy to change velocity. More friction.
2. Cross section. Above residential speeds, air resistance is the largest factor slowing you down. How 'bout a line of cars with the passenger compartment build like the cabin of a Cessna 180? Two narrow seats wide. Wheels outside the main cabin line for stability. Or even like a piper cub: 1 seat wide. Sure you couldn't use these for everything, but look how many miles are driven by single occupant cars.
3. Tire pressure. Look at the difference between the rolling resistance of a highway racing bike and a commuter tired mountain bike at half the air pressure.
Same thing works with cars. At one point I had a beater that was going to need new tires before winter anyway. So with each fill up, I put two more psi in the tires.
Fuel economy went up by 2% for each psi added. Of course the middle of the tread wore out pretty fast.
Sure right now tire pressure is part of the suspension system. Some serious engineering required. And if you make the tires too skinny, there are problems with stopping. (Higher friction per square inch means more heating, = tire melting = lower deceleration) On the other hand a skinnier tire has less problem in snow and is harder to hydroplane one wet roads.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
I am really looking forward to the huge drops in second hand values.
I wanted a little Jeep XJ beater, but it is worth waiting a while now to see if prices of bigger SUVs drops further! I might end up with something a lot more substantial for peanuts. Fun times ahead!!!