Mercedes To Phase Out Gasoline By 2015

arbitraryaardvark sends in a story a couple of weeks back in Yahoo's Ecogeek blog, reporting that Mercedes will phase out petroleum-powered cars by 2015 (mirror), and notes: "Story is unconfirmed but well sourced." "In less than 7 years, Mercedes-Benz plans to ditch petroleum-powered vehicles from its lineup. Focusing on electric, fuel cell, and biofuels, the company is revving up research in alternative fuel sources and efficiency."

Comments

Re:In other news

[bsDaemon]

the USA only seems to import the luxury cars from Europe. In Spain and Italy, I have seen Mercedes-Benz garbage trucks, which shocked the hell out of my the first time when I was 15. Trips since then, barely noticed.

But the thing about a lot of Mercedes and BMWs and stuff -- especially the older ones: turbo diesel engines. Can't any diesel engine run biodisel unmodified? That was my understanding.

Re:and US car companies ?

[LandDolphin]

We can have them going out of business, now can we? Congress will just have the US tax payers keep them floating like we do the airlines.

Re:Thank god!

[digitrev]

You missed the key point of my post. I said for urban centers. I was aiming for a system like that for just intracity travel. For intercity, some suburban, and rural transportation, cars are obviously the best option. I just thought that getting people in cities to be less dependent on them (while in the city, when they want to leave, go for it) would save huge amounts of money. I've heard an apocryphal story that New York City has more cars than parking spots.

To summarize:

• If you live in a city, such as Ottawa, Toronto, New York, Buffalo, etc... - take a bus, take a subway, take a taxi-like system.
• If you live near a city, such as a suburb - have park-and-rides to get into the city, make it cost money to get into the city, or have the taxi-like system come out to get you.
• If you live in a rural area - keep your car.

My point is not to get rid of cars, I understand that. My point is to give people better alternatives for urban transportation.

Re:The electric car you want is ready now:

[Smeagel]

Because electric motors get nearly 100% efficiency from the electricity put into them, and power plants get CONSIDERABLY more energy out of fuel than gasoline car engines do (and usually use higher energy fuels than gasoline as well). Compared to $4 a gallon for really inefficient burning, it does cost close to zero dollars.

On TOP of this, Tesla is looking into distributing solar panels for your roof with the car that would be able to generate about 50 miles a day in energy. So if you travel less than 50 miles a day you would be driving completely for free.

Also maintenance of an electric motor is significantly cheaper than that of a traditional gas engine in a car, due to significantly less moving parts and not constantly trying to harness mini-explosions for power.

Re:The electric car you want is ready now:

[JDWTopGuy]

And those cars are frequently a better solution to the MPG problem, when compared to new hybrid and electric cars. Buying a new car has a huge impact on the environment, as does discarding old cars.

In order:
1. Change your driving habits to achieve better mileage out of the car you already own. ($0)
2. Fix and maintain your existing car to get the best mileage out of it. ($0-500)
2. Buy a reasonable used car that is more efficient than your current car if your actual fuel savings will pay for the car in a reasonable amount of time. ($500+)
3. Buy a new car, following the same rules as the above. Unless your current vehicle is a semi that gets 7 MPG on diesel, this probably isn't a realistic cost-effective solution. ($10,000+)

Now, if you want to buy a car anyway, that's fine, but the fallacy of buying a different car to save tons of money on gas is ridiculous. Unless you're buying a $500 beater, chances are low that you'll really save any money.

I think most people are pretty short-sighted when it comes to finances and they think that paying less at each fill-up means they're saving money, even though they may have spent $4,000 on another car and are paying more in auto insurance.

Now, I'll admit that I don't really care about the environmental impact of buying new cars. If you want one, buy one. That just means more cheap used cars for me to play with.

What amuses me is that people who claim to care about the environment would trade in their old reliable Volvos (blatant stereotype ftw) for a new Prius. The environmental effect of that used car happened a good 5-25+ years ago most likely, and the ongoing effects of driving it (if maintained properly) are negligible compared to the production of a single Prius.

Buying used cars is environmentally-friendly and an excellent and effective form of recycling that requires no additional energy. YMPGMV.