DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Brassmask on January 18, 2008, 09:53:00 PM
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How low will the market have to go in order to make you people understand that the whole of the country is not doing as well as the Haves are doing?
When that market drops below 12,000 next week some time and people start wigging out even more, then it is going to drop even lower.
I suppose what we're figuring out is no one will start understanding that this country's economy can't run on fast food, coca cola and computers or basically shuffling piles of money around.
Bush the Moron got something right the other night in his cringe-worthy interview with ABC. Higher oil prices will destroy this country which means the Middle East has us by the short hairs.
Y'all better get with the program and come to Jesus and realize that Hummers should be burned like Beatles records in the '60's and the auto industry needs to be turning to making cars that run on compressed air or hydrogen TODAY and not in oh maybe hopefully 20 -30 years, we'll see.
It's time to collectively circle the economic wagons or the America you guys love so much will go the way of the dodo and the Mayans.
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I guess we will need photo id to storm the castle.
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It might be nice to mind your one business a lot more, Brass. I do not have a Hummer, I have a Honda Civic and two Toyotas. That being the case, it simply is NOT you and anyone's esle's business to tell someone who DOES have a Hummer to get rid of it. If you told me, I would tell you to mind your on business.
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It might be nice to mind your onw business a lot more, Brass. I do not have a Hummer, I have a Honda Civic and two Toyotas. That being the case, it simply is NOT you and anyone's esle's business to tell someone who DOES have a Hummer to get rid of it. If you told me, I would tell you to mind your on business.
Professor,
Minding one's own business is one thing, and caring about the environment is still another. It's no one's business what they want to do, but it is everyone's business when it comes to going "hog wild", he's right on this one. I don't agree with Brass on a lot of issues, but Hummers are a waste in so many ways. Seems like the more we build, the more we want....and the cycle goes on and on....We need to go the other direction and fast.
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Brass is making a classic mistake.
He is trying to change a situation by shaming, ridiculing and lampooning the very people he needs to persuade that more efficient vehicles are a sound idea, that respect for the environment is in the listener self interest and that sustainable alternative energy is the future.
Conservation is a grass roots thing. It starts at home. It starts with choices based on needs. I doubt anyone in this forum owns a hummer. So why the generic rant? I don't doubt that many in this forum get better miles per gallon than brass. Some of us compensate by driving less or telecommuting. Others conserve by using less electricity or water or recycle what we use. It is all interconnected. And it all helps. It is all about scale. Facilitate, don't mandate.
The rant wasn't about America. It was a dart thrown at Bush, theists and the middle class. Maybe it plays well in some circles but to me it was more about the ranter than the target of his diatribe.
Maybe it was just venting, tilting at windmills, meaningless lecture in quest of some false validation.
My question is does it do more harm than good.
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My question is does it do more harm than good.
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My answer is that it probably does neither. It's not like this forum is populated by Hummer owners or even if it were that they would follow Brass's advice.
No one can follow Brass's advice to trade any vehicle in for one that runs on Hydrogen or compressed air, as there are none.
It would be nice if we had that option.
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Brass is making a classic mistake.
Classic Brass, this is true. But he holds to his convictions. Interesting, how one can read the lines and then between the lines there lies an entirely"classic Brassie".
He is trying to change a situation by shaming, ridiculing and lampooning the very people he needs to persuade that more efficient vehicles are a sound idea, that respect for the environment is in the listener self interest and that sustainable alternative energy is the future.
So, why are we shooting the messanger? Seems to me that the issue of more efficent vehicles persuades on its own.
Conservation is a grass roots thing. It starts at home. It starts with choices based on needs.
YEs, it's grass root, but it sure helps when a grocery clerk actually tells the costumer NOT to use plastic because of the environment, reminding her of that little fact.
We need change in this world environmentally and I think it's time we start paying attention to all the ideas out there, even if they are a bit self serving. The point was, for me, the enviornment, not another titty tatty riff someone has with Brass on board.
I doubt anyone in this forum owns a hummer. So why the generic rant?
When did it become a matter of whether or not someone in this forum owns anything, BT? Brass cares about the enviornment. I hope. I know he's a bit on the edge when it comes to his ideas, but when it comes to anything about the enviornment, I do think we need to pay closer attention at all levels, and especially outside the 3DHS box.
Others conserve by using less electricity or water or recycle what we use. It is all interconnected. And it all helps. It is all about scale. Facilitate, don't mandate.
I agree that we need less mandating and more involvement, but all the while the air gets thicker and the wallets get thicker and the lungs get weaker and the land gets raped. YEs, it's all interconnected and if it means that some things are mandated, like a ban on smoking.....why not. It has helped me enjoy a meal, sit on a flight in peace, and walk into the teacher's lounge without gagging.
The rant wasn't about America. It was a dart thrown at Bush, theists and the middle class. Maybe it plays well in some circles but to me it was more about the ranter than the target of his diatribe.
I know how Brass rants. I do. But, can't a person respond on the point instead of the ranter? I was responding to the issue of Hummers in general. I hate them. I think they are a waste and a slap in the face of all of us who want to enjoy life.They are huge, massive pieces of crap. What's next.....a tank? The Jeep came out of WW2. There were billed as a very unsafe vehicle at one time in the maintream. .....Tipped over like a feather.
When is ranting about the environment, if one does so....against Bush?
I agree that Brass takes major issue against theist, and the Bush Admin. as do XO, MTee and others but I think everyone cares about waste and the destruction it creates in this country.
My question is does it do more harm than good.
How?
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So, why are we shooting the messanger? Seems to me that the issue of more efficent vehicles persuades on its own.
Ridiculing the recipient of the message rarely works. Do you ridicule your students to get them to learn?
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It might be nice to mind your onw business a lot more, Brass. I do not have a Hummer, I have a Honda Civic and two Toyotas. That being the case, it simply is NOT you and anyone's esle's business to tell someone who DOES have a Hummer to get rid of it. If you told me, I would tell you to mind your on business.
Professor,
Minding one's own business is one thing, and caring about the environment is still another. It's no one's business what they want to do, but it is everyone's business when it comes to going "hog wild", he's right on this one. I don't agree with Brass on a lot of issues, but Hummers are a waste in so many ways. Seems like the more we build, the more we want....and the cycle goes on and on....We need to go the other direction and fast.
I agree they are a waste, Cynthia and I wouldn't own one for several reasons, that being a primary one, but the fact remains that in this free society, anyone can and do make "dumb" choices.
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Brass is making a classic mistake.
He is trying to change a situation by shaming, ridiculing and lampooning the very people he needs to persuade that more efficient vehicles are a sound idea, that respect for the environment is in the listener self interest and that sustainable alternative energy is the future.
Conservation is a grass roots thing. It starts at home. It starts with choices based on needs. I doubt anyone in this forum owns a hummer. So why the generic rant? I don't doubt that many in this forum get better miles per gallon than brass. Some of us compensate by driving less or telecommuting. Others conserve by using less electricity or water or recycle what we use. It is all interconnected. And it all helps. It is all about scale. Facilitate, don't mandate.
The rant wasn't about America. It was a dart thrown at Bush, theists and the middle class. Maybe it plays well in some circles but to me it was more about the ranter than the target of his diatribe.
Maybe it was just venting, tilting at windmills, meaningless lecture in quest of some false validation.
My question is does it do more harm than good.
Really, those people are not deserving of coercion or pleas. They are deserving of criminalization.
You guys are so wrapped in your supposed love of freedom, you'll cut off your nose to spite your face by being "FREE!" while riding your freedom to the demise of what you are supposedly trying to defend your right to.
It is up to level-headed types like me to realize that you guys are sending us ALL to hell in a handbasket for your perverted view of freedom.
For you, "freedom" appears to mean doing whatever you want whenever you want to the detriment of anyone and everyone who doesn't like it. It involves defending those who are CLEARLY criminals, like Larry Craig (now being defended by the ACLU, btw), in order to prevent anyone from thinking that conservatives are pretty much petty, selfish children and should be, if not ignored, then absolutely prevented from having a seat of power.
Well, there is a groundswell of anger in America among level-headed folk and you fanatic sycophants are going down.
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It involves defending those who are CLEARLY criminals, like Larry Craig
What criminal act did he commit?
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For you, "freedom" appears to mean doing whatever you want whenever you want to the detriment of anyone and everyone who doesn't like it.
You mean, like modern day Liberalism??
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Brass is making a classic mistake.
He is trying to change a situation by shaming, ridiculing and lampooning the very people he needs to persuade that more efficient vehicles are a sound idea, that respect for the environment is in the listener self interest and that sustainable alternative energy is the future.
Conservation is a grass roots thing. It starts at home. It starts with choices based on needs. I doubt anyone in this forum owns a hummer. So why the generic rant? I don't doubt that many in this forum get better miles per gallon than brass. Some of us compensate by driving less or telecommuting. Others conserve by using less electricity or water or recycle what we use. It is all interconnected. And it all helps. It is all about scale. Facilitate, don't mandate.
The rant wasn't about America. It was a dart thrown at Bush, theists and the middle class. Maybe it plays well in some circles but to me it was more about the ranter than the target of his diatribe.
Maybe it was just venting, tilting at windmills, meaningless lecture in quest of some false validation.
My question is does it do more harm than good.
Really, those people are not deserving of coercion or pleas. They are deserving of criminalization.
You guys are so wrapped in your supposed love of freedom, you'll cut off your nose to spite your face by being "FREE!" while riding your freedom to the demise of what you are supposedly trying to defend your right to.
It is up to level-headed types like me to realize that you guys are sending us ALL to hell in a handbasket for your perverted view of freedom.
For you, "freedom" appears to mean doing whatever you want whenever you want to the detriment of anyone and everyone who doesn't like it. It involves defending those who are CLEARLY criminals, like Larry Craig (now being defended by the ACLU, btw), in order to prevent anyone from thinking that conservatives are pretty much petty, selfish children and should be, if not ignored, then absolutely prevented from having a seat of power.
Well, there is a groundswell of anger in America among level-headed folk and you fanatic sycophants are going down.
What a crock!
Have you changed out all your incandescent lightbulbs?
You trade in the van?
You install low flow water savers to your faucets and showers?
Do you carpool?
Have you reinsulated your house?
Get back to me when you have, preacher boy.
Criminalization, my ass.
BTW since when did you want to criminalize homosexual behavior?
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So, why are we shooting the messanger? Seems to me that the issue of more efficent vehicles persuades on its own.
Ridiculing the recipient of the message rarely works. Do you ridicule your students to get them to learn?
Why are you making this personal, Ami? Of course not. Is Brass a teacher in this scenario? No.
I wasn't supporting or denying that Brass ridicules others. I was simply stating that the man has his point in terms of the environmental issue.
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It might be nice to mind your onw business a lot more, Brass. I do not have a Hummer, I have a Honda Civic and two Toyotas. That being the case, it simply is NOT you and anyone's esle's business to tell someone who DOES have a Hummer to get rid of it. If you told me, I would tell you to mind your on business.
Professor,
Minding one's own business is one thing, and caring about the environment is still another. It's no one's business what they want to do, but it is everyone's business when it comes to going "hog wild", he's right on this one. I don't agree with Brass on a lot of issues, but Hummers are a waste in so many ways. Seems like the more we build, the more we want....and the cycle goes on and on....We need to go the other direction and fast.
I agree they are a waste, Cynthia and I wouldn't own one for several reasons, that being a primary one, but the fact remains that in this free society, anyone can and do make "dumb" choices.
And I do believe, Prof. that we can agree to agree' that it's ok to express a thought here, eh? I respect the rights of others. I just feel as though the auto industry should be wiser for their grandchildren's future.
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For you, "freedom" appears to mean doing whatever you want whenever you want to the detriment of anyone and everyone who doesn't like it.
You mean, like modern day Liberalism??
I find it interesting that we still can't come to some middle ground in this country in terms of compromise and discussion. I realize that there are two real "sides" in this country politically speaking, but we are so multi faceted in scope and I wonder sometimes why we can't see beyond the red and blue divide.
Sirs, I am not speaking of you, personally per say..but I find that many people in this country tend to pretty much lack the ability to discuss and see the other guy's point of view without labeling them as a box of nuts. ha!
Brass must have ONE good idea in his bag. Hell. who knows....why not let everyone share at least one good idea around the circle...
God, I am sounding like a teacher of kindergartners. ha!
Used to be one.....'tis why. ;)
But, really.....there are some things I agree with on the "liberal side"..and I can't see why some of those issues can't be knowns as conservative issues with their own weight----such as the environment, education for all appropriately.
....ok, who here has one really good idea to heal this nation? Time to speak up.
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It might be nice to mind your one business a lot more, Brass. I do not have a Hummer, I have a Honda Civic and two Toyotas. That being the case, it simply is NOT you and anyone's esle's business to tell someone who DOES have a Hummer to get rid of it. If you told me, I would tell you to mind your on business.
Had any other vehicle been posited as a standard for your noble consumerism chivalry, I might have consigned a nod at least for the Libertarian principle you embrace.
The symbolism of the hummer is large, its message loud; on an Ink Blot Card text, a hummer is . . . the bully in the schoolyard.
Only a sick society would condone their continuing insult.
Conquer the hummer sumbol, and you have symbolically conquered the fear engendered by those of the Cheney Administration.
Symbols are important in revolutions.
Don't be afraid of the word, we are in a revolution now, started by the radical right which keeps insisting on their "Cultural Revolution . . ." Those countering those would be the counter-revolutionaries.
That the counter-revolutionaries will wage this war in peaceful means, much as did the right in pushing their cultural revolution--so far, so good.
I myself am willing to fall upon the knife, my very life offered for the cause of ridding our souring nation of this ignoble spectre, this brutish machina.
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Motorhead Messiah
Johnathan Goodwin can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental, cut emissions by 80%, and double the horsepower. Does the car business have the guts to follow him?
From: Issue 120 | November 2007 | Page 74 | By: Clive Thompson
?Check it out. It's actually a jet engine," says Johnathan Goodwin, with a low whistle. "This thing is gonna be even cooler than I thought." We're hunched on the floor of Goodwin's gleaming workshop in Wichita, Kansas, surrounded by the shards of a wooden packing crate. Inside the wreckage sits his latest toy--a 1985-issue turbine engine originally designed for the military. It can spin at a blistering 60,000 rpm and burn almost any fuel. And Goodwin has some startling plans for this esoteric piece of hardware: He's going to use it to create the most fuel-efficient Hummer in history.
Goodwin, a 37-year-old who looks like Kevin Costner with better hair, is a professional car hacker. The spic-and-span shop is filled with eight monstrous trucks and cars--Hummers, Yukon XLs, Jeeps--in various states of undress. His four tattooed, twentysomething grease monkeys crawl all over them with wrenches and welding torches.
Goodwin leads me over to a red 2005 H3 Hummer that's up on jacks, its mechanicals removed. He aims to use the turbine to turn the Hummer into a tricked-out electric hybrid. Like most hybrids, it'll have two engines, including an electric motor. But in this case, the second will be the turbine, Goodwin's secret ingredient. Whenever the truck's juice runs low, the turbine will roar into action for a few seconds, powering a generator with such gusto that it'll recharge a set of "supercapacitor" batteries in seconds. This means the H3's electric motor will be able to perform awesome feats of acceleration and power over and over again, like a Prius on steroids. What's more, the turbine will burn biodiesel, a renewable fuel with much lower emissions than normal diesel; a hydrogen-injection system will then cut those low emissions in half. And when it's time to fill the tank, he'll be able to just pull up to the back of a diner and dump in its excess french-fry grease--as he does with his many other Hummers. Oh, yeah, he adds, the horsepower will double--from 300 to 600.
"Conservatively," Goodwin muses, scratching his chin, "it'll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You'll be able to smoke the tires. And it's going to be superefficient."
He laughs. "Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!"
This is the sort of work that's making Goodwin famous in the world of underground car modders. He is a virtuoso of fuel economy. He takes the hugest American cars on the road and rejiggers them to get up to quadruple their normal mileage and burn low-emission renewable fuels grown on U.S. soil--all while doubling their horsepower. The result thrills eco-evangelists and red-meat Americans alike: a vehicle that's simultaneously green and mean. And word's getting out. In the corner of his office sits Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1987 Jeep Wagoneer, which Goodwin is converting to biodiesel; soon, Neil Young will be shipping him a 1960 Lincoln Continental to transform into a biodiesel--electric hybrid.
His target for Young's car? One hundred miles per gallon.
This is more than a mere American Chopper--style makeover. Goodwin's experiments point to a radically cleaner and cheaper future for the American car. The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered--the poor man's version of a Goodwin conversion--he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50% less fuel and produce 80% fewer emissions. On a full-size gas-guzzler, he figures the kit earns its money back in about a year--or, on a regular car, two--while hitting an emissions target from the outset that's more stringent than any regulation we're likely to see in our lifetime. "Johnathan's in a league of his own," says Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables, the nation's largest producer of biodiesel. "Nobody out there is doing experiments like he is."
Nobody--particularly not Detroit. Indeed, Goodwin is doing precisely what the big American automakers have always insisted is impossible. They have long argued that fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel cars are a hard sell because they're too cramped and meek for our market. They've lobbied aggressively against raising fuel-efficiency and emissions standards, insisting that either would doom the domestic industry. Yet the truth is that Detroit is now getting squeezed from all sides. This fall, labor unrest is brewing, and after decades of inertia on fuel-economy standards, Congress is jockeying to boost the target for cars to 35 mpg, a 10 mpg jump (which is either ridiculously large or ridiculously small, depending on whom you ask). More than a dozen states are enacting laws requiring steep reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Meanwhile, gas prices have hovered around $3 per gallon for more than a year. And European and Japanese carmakers are flooding the market with diesel and hybrid machines that get up to 40% better mileage than the best American cars; some, such as Mercedes's new BlueTec diesel sedans, deliver that kind of efficiency and more horsepower.
General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, in short, have a choice: Cede still more ground--or mount a technological counterattack.
Goodwin's work proves that a counterattack is possible, and maybe easier than many of us imagined. If the dream is a big, badass ride that's also clean, well, he's there already. As he points out, his conversions consist almost entirely of taking stock GM parts and snapping them together in clever new ways. "They could do all this stuff if they wanted to," he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder. "The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use." He doesn't have an engineering degree; he didn't even go to high school: "I've just been messing around and seeing what I can do."
All of which raises an interesting possibility. Has this guy in a far-off Kansas garage figured out the way to save Detroit?
America's most revolutionary innovations, it has long been said, sprang from the ramshackle dens of amateurs. Thomas Edison was a home-schooled dropout who got his start tinkering with battery parts; Chester Carlson invented the photocopier in his cramped Long Island kitchen. NASA, desperate for breakthroughs to help it return to the moon, has set up million-dollar prizes to encourage private citizens to come forward with any idea, no matter how crazy. As the theory goes, only those outside big industries can truly reinvent them.
Goodwin is certainly an outsider. He grew up in a dirt-poor Kansas family with six siblings and by age 13 began taking on piecework in local auto shops to help his mother pay the bills. He particularly enjoyed jamming oversized engines into places no one believed they'd fit. He put truck engines inside Camaros, Grand Nationals, and Super Bees; he even put a methanol-fueled turbocharger on a tiny Yamaha Banshee four-wheeler. "We took that thing from 35 horsepower to 208," he recalls. "It was crazy. We couldn't put enough fins on the back to keep it on the ground." After dropping out of school in the seventh grade, he made a living by buying up totaled cars and making them as good as new. "That," he says, "was my school."
Along the way, Goodwin also adopted two views common among Americans, but typically thought to be in conflict: a love of big cars and a concern about the environment. He is an avid, if somewhat nonideological, environmentalist. He believes global warming is a serious problem, that reliance on foreign oil is a mistake, and that butt-kicking fuel economy is just good for business. But Goodwin is also guiltlessly addicted to enormous, brawling rides, precisely the sort known to suck down Saudi gasoline. (I spied one lonely small sports car in the corner of his garage, but he confessed he has no plans to work on it right now.) When he picked me up from my hotel, he drove a four-door 2008 Cadillac Escalade XL that should have had its own tugboat. He parallel parked it in one try.
If Goodwin is an artist, though, his canvas has been the Hummer. His first impression of the thing was inauspicious. In 1990, he bought an H1 in Denver and began driving it back to Kansas. Within 50 miles, the bolts in the transmission shook loose, forcing him to stop to fix it. "By the time I made it home, after three roadside repairs, I pretty much knew that the Hummer was not all it should be," he told me. He didn't think much of the 200 horsepower engine, either, which did "zero to 60 in two days. It was a piece of junk."
So Goodwin decided to prove that environmentalism and power could go together--by making his new lemon into exhibit A. First, he pulled the gas engine so he could drop in a Duramax V8, GM's core diesel for large trucks. Diesel technology is crucial to all of Goodwin's innovations because it offers several advantages over traditional gasoline engines. Pound for pound, diesel offers more power and torque; it's also inherently more efficient, offering up to 40% better mileage and 20% lower emissions in engines of comparable size. What's more, many diesel engines can easily accept a wide range of biodiesel--from the high-quality stuff produced at refineries to the melted chicken grease siphoned off from the local KFC.
"Think about it," Goodwin laughs. "A 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and will do zero to 60 in five seconds!"
Putting a diesel engine in the Hummer, however, required Goodwin to crack GM's antitheft system, which makes it a pain to swap out the engine. In that system, the engine communicates electronically with the body, fuel supply, and ignition; if you don't have all the original components, the car won't start. Goodwin jerry-rigged a set of cables to trick the engine into believing the starter system had broken, sending it into "fail-safe mode"--a backdoor mechanism installed at the factory. (At one point in his story, Goodwin wanders over to a battered cardboard box in the corner of the garage and hauls out an octopuslike tangle of wires--"the MacGyver," his hacking device. "I could have sold this for a lot of money on eBay," he chuckles.)
Once he'd picked the car's lock, Goodwin installed the Duramax and a five-speed Allison--the required transmission for a Duramax, which also helps give it race-car-like control and a rapid take off. After five days' worth of work, the Hummer was getting about 18 mpg--double the factory 9 mpg--and twice the original horsepower. He drove it over to a local restaurant and mooched some discarded oil from its deep fryer, strained the oil through a pair of jeans, and poured it into the engine. It ran perfectly.
But Goodwin wanted more. While researching alternative fuels, he learned about the work of Uli Kruger, a German who has spent decades in Australia exploring techniques for blending fuels that normally don't mix. One of Kruger's systems induces hydrogen into the air intake of a diesel engine, producing a cascade of emissions-reducing and mileage-boosting effects. The hydrogen, ignited by the diesel combustion, burns extremely clean, producing only water as a by-product. It also displaces up to 50% of the diesel needed to fuel the car, effectively doubling the diesel's mileage and cutting emissions by at least half. Better yet, the water produced from the hydrogen combustion cools down the engine, so the diesel combustion generates fewer particulates--and thus fewer nitrogen-oxide emissions.
"You can feed it hydrogen, diesel, biodiesel, corn oil--pretty much anything but water."
"It's really a fantastic chain reaction, all these good things happening at once," Kruger tells me. He has also successfully introduced natural gas--a ubiquitous and generally cheap fuel--into a diesel-burning engine, which likewise doubles the mileage while slashing emissions. In another system, he uses heat from the diesel engine to vaporize ethanol to the point where it can be injected into the diesel combustion chambers as a booster, with similar emissions-cutting effects.
Goodwin began building on Kruger's model. In 2005, he set to work adapting his own H1 Hummer to burn a combination of hydrogen and biodiesel. He installed a Duramax in the Hummer and plopped a carbon-fiber tank of supercompressed hydrogen into the bed. The results were impressive: A single tank of hydrogen lasted for 700 miles and cut the diesel consumption in half. It also doubled the horsepower. "It reduces your carbon footprint by a huge, huge amount, but you still get all the power of the Duramax," he says, slapping the H1 on the quarter panel. "And you can feed it hydrogen, diesel, biodiesel, corn oil--pretty much anything but water."
Two years ago, Goodwin got a rare chance to show off his tricks to some of the car industry's most prominent engineers. He tells me the story: He was driving a converted H2 to the SEMA show, the nation's biggest annual specialty automotive confab, and stopped en route at a Denver hotel. When he woke up in the morning, there were 20 people standing around his Hummer. Did I run over somebody? he wondered. As it turned out, they were engineers for GM, the Hummer's manufacturer. They noticed that Goodwin's H2 looked modified. "Does it have a diesel engine in it?"
"Yeah," he said.
"No way," they replied.
He opened the hood, "and they're just all in and out and around the valves and checking it out," he says. They asked to hear it run, sending a stab of fear through Goodwin. He'd filled it up with grease from a Chinese restaurant the day before and was worried that the cold morning might have solidified the fuel. But it started up on the first try and ran so quietly that at first they didn't believe it was really on. "When you start a diesel engine up on vegetable oil," Goodwin says, "you turn the key, and you hear nothing. Because of the lubricating power of the oil, it's just so smooth. Whisper quiet. And they're like, 'Is it running? Yeah, you can hear the fan going.'"
One engineer turned and said, "GM said this wouldn't work."
"Well," Goodwin replied, "here it is."
Goodwin's feats of engineering have become gradually more visible over the past year. Last summer, Imperium Renewables contacted MTV's show Pimp My Ride about creating an Earth Day special in which Goodwin would convert a muscle car to run on biodiesel. The show chose a '65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he'd doubled its mileage to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 horsepower. As a stunt, MTV drag-raced the Impala against a Lamborghini on California's Pomona Raceway. "The Impala blew the Lamborghini away," says Kevin Kluemper, the lead calibration engineer for GM's Allison transmission unit, who'd flown down to help with the conversion. Schwarzenegger, who was on the set that day, asked Goodwin on the spot to convert his Wagoneer to biodiesel.
Observers of Goodwin's work say his skill lies in an uncanny ability to visualize a mechanical system in precise detail, long before he picks up a wrench. (Goodwin says he does much of his mental work during long drives.) "He has talent unknown to any mortal," says Mad Mike, Pimp My Ride's host. "He has this ability to see things so exactly, and I still don't know how he does it."
For his part, Goodwin argues he's merely "a problem solver. Most people try to make things more complicated than they are." He speaks of the major carmakers with a sort of mild disdain: If he can piece together cleaner vehicles out of existing GM parts and a bit of hot-rod elbow grease, why can't they bake that kind of ingenuity into their production lines? Prod him enough on the subject and his mellowness peels away, revealing a guy fired by an almost manic frustration. "Everybody should be driving a plug-in vehicle right now," he complains, in one of his laconic engineering lectures, as we wander through the blistering Kansas heat to a nearby Mexican restaurant. "I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day.
"Detroit could do all this stuff overnight if it wanted to," he adds.
In reality, Goodwin's work has begun to influence some of Detroit's top auto designers, but through curious and circuitous routes. In 2005, Tom Holm, the founder of EcoTrek, a nonprofit that promotes the use of alternative fuels, heard about Goodwin through the Hummer-junkie grapevine and hired him. When Holm showed GM the vehicles Goodwin converted, the company was duly impressed. Internally, Hummer executives had long been looking for a way to blunt criticism of the H2's gas-guzzling tendencies and saw Goodwin's vehicles as an object lesson in what was possible. So GM decided to flip the switch: It announced the same year that, beginning in 2008, it would convert its gasoline Hummers to run on ethanol; by 2010, it said, Hummers would be biodiesel-compatible.
"It was an influence," concedes Hummer general manager Martin Walsh, of the EcoTrek vehicles. "We wanted to be environmentally responsible by having engines in Hummers that run on renewable fuels." But until I contacted Hummer for this story, GM didn't know that the man behind those machines was none other than Goodwin.
GM's commitment is a start, however halting. Overall, though, Detroit still seems to be all but paralyzed by the challenges of fuel economy, emissions, and alternative fuels. And it's not just about greed or laziness: Talk to car-industry experts, and they'll point out a number of serious barriers to introducing radically new alternative-fuel vehicles on a scale that will make a difference. One of the highest is that low-emission fuels--biodiesel, ethanol, electricity, hydrogen, all of which account for less than 3% of the nation's fuel supply--just aren't widely available on American highways. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem. People won't buy alternative-fuel cars until it's easy to fill them up, but alternative fuel makers won't ramp up production until there's a viable market.
Goodwin admits all these things are true but believes the country could be weaned off gasoline in a three-step process. The first would be for Detroit to aggressively roll out diesel engines, much as Europe has already begun to do (some 50% of all European cars run diesel). In a single stroke, that would improve the nation's mileage by as much as 40%, and, because diesel fuel is already widely available, drivers could take that step with a minimum of disruption. What's more, given that many diesel engines can also run homegrown biodiesel, a mass conversion to diesel would help kick-start that market. (This could have geopolitical implications as well as environmental and economic ones: The Department of Transportation estimated in 2004 that if we converted merely one-third of America's passenger cars and light trucks to diesel, we'd reduce our oil consumption by up to 1.4 million barrels of oil per day--precisely the amount we import from Saudi Arabia.)
The second step in Goodwin's scheme would be to produce diesel-electric hybrid cars. This would double the mileage on even the biggest diesel vehicles. The third phase would be to produce electric hybrids that run in "dual fuel" mode, burning biodiesel along with hydrogen, ethanol, natural gas, or propane. This is the concept Goodwin is proving out in his turbine-enhanced H3 Hummer and in Neil Young's Lincoln: "At that point, your mileage just goes really, really high, and your emissions are incredibly low," he says. Since those vehicles can run on regular diesel or biodiesel--and without any alternative fuel at all, if need be--drivers wouldn't have to worry about getting stranded on the interstate. At the same time, as more and more dual-fuel cars hit the road, they would goose demand for genuinely national ethanol, hydrogen, and biodiesel grids.
For Goodwin, navigating this process is all about imagination and adaptability. "The point is to design cars that are flexible," he says. "You'll see a change in how vehicles are fueled in the future. Which fuel source will be the exclusive one or the one that'll take over the petroleum base is, you know, anybody's guess, so it's like the wild, wild West of fuel technology right now. I think it'll be a combination between a few different fuels. I know hydrogen will definitely come around."
Imagination and vision, of course, are often rewarded. As global pressure increases on the United States to reduce our carbon emissions, those rewards are likely to get juicier. Under some versions of legislation being considered in Congress, for example, companies voluntarily deploying superefficient vehicles in large fleets could be awarded substantial offsets. Take DHL, the FedEx rival: Goodwin says his company, SAE Energy, is negotiating with the shipper to convert 800 of its vehicles to dual fuel. "We could get them an offset of something like 70 cents a gallon," Goodwin says, "and reduce their cost of fuel by 50%."
Industry insiders and observers agree with many of Goodwin's prescriptions, particularly his concept of fuel flexibility. "We have to have alternatives," says Beau Boeckmann, vice president of California's Galpin Motors, the largest Ford dealership in the country, who recently partnered with Goodwin to convert a 2008 F450 truck to hydrogen and biodiesel. "Only with a combination of things can we get alternative fuels off the ground." Boeckmann believes hydrogen is the true "silver bullet" for ending greenhouse gases but thinks it'll take more than a decade to figure out how to create and distribute it cheaply. Mary Beth Stanek, GM's director of environment, energy, and safety policy, also agrees with the multifuel approach--and points out that this is precisely how Brazil weaned itself from regular gasoline. "They pull up to the pump, and they've got a whole bunch of different choices," she notes. She, too, predicts diesel will make a comeback because of its inherent fuel efficiency: "You will see more vehicles going back to diesel over a lot of different lines."
Yet in reality, American carmakers seem conspicuously slow on the uptake. Stanek is about as ardent a fan of alternative fuels as you're likely to find inside GM, but even she admits no one there is seriously thinking of abandoning the gasoline engine anytime soon. The 300-million-gallon U.S. biodiesel business is a fraction of the 12-billion-gallon ethanol one. And Detroit is extremely cautious about what the market can bear.
A Detroit carmaker does, of course, have to worry about selling millions of cars at reasonable prices. But we've been hearing this refrain for a long, long time. And with European and Japanese carmakers driving ever harder into our market--and with Chrysler having become just another meal for Cerberus Capital--this hardly seems like the time to be overly cautious. (Those ultralow-emission Mercedes BlueTec diesels, for example, include a four-wheel-drive sedan that gets 37 mpg and goes from zero to 60 in 6.6 seconds.) Moreover, after decades of consumer apathy, improving fuel economy and reducing carbon output are becoming urgent national priorities. The green groundswell has arrived, and, given the stakes, anyone who ignores it does so at his peril. If Detroit can't sell diesel now--especially a clean, high-performance, money-saving diesel--it never will.
With U.S. carmakers being stripped for parts, now is hardly the time for them to play it safe.
Goodwin, perhaps, can afford to be a visionary. He has the luxury of converting cars for fancy clients who'll pay handsomely to drive on higher moral ground. (He charges $28,000 for a "basic H2 conversion to diesel--custom concept cars cost far more.") The future of the American car will likely be won by an automaker that can split the difference--one that may innovate more slowly than Goodwin would like, but a hell of a lot faster than the Big Three.
Goodwin himself seems more oracle than implementer, slightly unsure of how his ideas could be brought to the masses. He's working on patenting aspects of his and Kruger's dual-fuel work and would love to license it to the big carmakers. But the truth is, he's a mechanic's mechanic--happiest when he's solving some technical puzzle. He loves getting his hands dirty, "throwing wrenches around" in his shop, pioneering some weird new way to fuel a car. Today, he's thinking about taking his wife's Infiniti, outfitting it with a tank of ether, and powering the engine via blasts of compressed air in the cylinders. "Zero emissions!" he crows. It's the visionary inventor's curse: constantly distracted by shiny objects.
Goodwin eyes the turbine, which he has dragged out to the center of the floor. Just for kicks, he says, he's thinking of mounting it on a wheelie board and firing it up. "I'd love to see how fast that goes," he says. "I'm just not sure how I'm going to steer it."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/motorhead-messiah_Printer_Friendly.html
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the auto industry? wiser? Hey, if I were in that industry, I would make all the nasty gas burners I could if people would buy them as fast as I could make them. It is simply the American Way.
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the auto industry? wiser? Hey, if I were in that industry, I would make all the nasty gas burners I could if people would buy them as fast as I could make them. It is simply the American Way.
[/quote
Well, true..LOL...
But, I think we need a wake up call. Perhaps the air we breathe will have to hit crisis state in order to make sweeping changes across the board of dash boards, et al. ;)
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Thank you, AL Gore. The best thing about Al Gore, I am afraid, is Tipper!
I am all FOR environmental awareness but I draw the line when you begin to mandate instead of encourage. For example, don't tell me I must use brick siding (or whatever) because it is more energy efficient. Instead, give me an incentive like a tax credit to use it.
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When you start a diesel engine up on vegetable oil," Goodwin says, "you turn the key, and you hear nothing. Because of the lubricating
power of the oil, it's just so smooth. Whisper quiet. And they're like, 'Is it running? Yeah, you can hear the fan going.'"
This may be true of THIS Diesel, but it is not true of the Diesels that I am familiar with.
My 85 Mercedes 300TD is slightly quieter on biodiesel, and so is my 90 300D, but they still have the characteristic Diesel engine 'rattle', which is the result of a 20:1 or so compression ratio.
Last year, Sol Biodoiesel, the people I buy my fuel from, had a "green day festival" and about 40 customers showed up, with VW Diesels, Mercedes Diesels, GM and Ford Diesels, and Cummings Diesels in Dodge Ram trucks.
Each and every one sounded quite Diesel-like, and you could tell each was a Diesel by listening form about 20 feet away.
So I deem that this guy is a promoter, as opposed to an objective scientist. Perhaps he can get 60 mpg from a Hummer and still do 0-60 in 5.0 seconds, but I will believe this only when I see it personally.
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I am opposed to Brass committing any form of hari-kari in his zeal to rid the planet of Hummers.
I am currently incapable of conjuring up a scenario in which Brass (or anyone) might die and somehow take a Hummer with him that would not seem really dumb. This is hard to conjure. Let's try again: MMMmmmmmmmmmm, Ommmmmmmmmmmmm! Rrrrrrrrarggggh! Nope, still not yet.
I also observe that it is unnecessary to defeat GM's security system to own a Hummer with a Diesel engine. US mi8liraty Hummers and the original H-1 came with a Diesel engine installed. The H2 AND h3 Are more like GM pickup truck chassis with Hummer bodies bolted to them.
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Don't we already slap a luxury tax on these vehicles? (Hummers)
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There is a gashog tax on at least some Hummers.
In a lot of cases, the more expensive something is, the greater the prestige.
No woman would buy a $5.00 perfume, no matter how good it smelled, for example.
My $20 Timex tells me the day, the date, and beeps on the hour. No $4000 Rolex can do all this.
People still buy grotesquely Land Rovers and Range Rovers, despite their hideous reliability reports.
When Hummers become unfashionable, people won't be able to give them away. They are the future Toronados and Cutlass S's of the 2020's, I am sure.
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Thank you, AL Gore. The best thing about Al Gore, I am afraid, is Tipper!
I am all FOR environmental awareness but I draw the line when you begin to mandate instead of encourage. For example, don't tell me I must use brick siding (or whatever) because it is more energy efficient. Instead, give me an incentive like a tax credit to use it.
Hey, Professor, many things that start out as "encouragemnet", end up as a mandate one way or another.
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The symbolism of the hummer is large, its message loud; on an Ink Blot Card text, a hummer is . . . the bully in the schoolyard.
Agree on that one, Yellow!! LEt's see how we can be more responsible to replace that bully with something more environmentlally friendly.
Don't be afraid of the word, we are in a revolution now, started by the radical right which keeps insisting on their "Cultural Revolution . . ." Those countering those would be the counter-revolutionaries.
The word revolution (used in 3DHS) conjures the meaning-- "to overthrow of a ruler or government".
Perhaps revolution is too strong of a word, YC. ...Don't you mean the revolution of *spin*, as you do not agree with such spin-cycles in the world of politics?
I disagree, we are not in a revoltuion.
No fears!
The 'right' wants what it wants for the people. The 'left' wants what it wants for the people. The right and the left and those of us in between, just want what we want..... but we ARE the people.
The religious right wants prayer in school. True. They do.
I know...it can't happen, but don't we all want children to be able to learn and play in peace. Right now, teachers have their hands tied in so many ways. We can't teach morals, we can't touch children, (giving them a hug). In our system, some teachers can't even be in a room alone with a child. (Male specialists like speech pathologists, spec. ed etc) Sure, there have been some real perverted idiots and sick individuals who have held the position of educator-- and I say string them all up-- but, this country tends not to rant more about how to take away something of moral value without replacing it with anything PC+moral value.
Take out all that is peace, play, joy, comfort, and even recently critical academics(art,. music, social studies, science) for the chance to score HIGH.....and replace it with mandates that don't work, scores that don't matter to the kids in the long run, no concrete method to help a child learn compassion for self and others. What do we get?....a deeper hole.
........ but by damn the politicians and the public are happy, overall. Why? Because they have won a critical point---it's so important to win in this country sans the willingness to look at raw data. Revolution...counter revolution?
Fight. Don't solve. Fight.
Ex: playground point:
For example. Our principal has taken away the privilege to play touch football from the boys in the school. It's too dangerous, she says. There are no other choices on teh "soccer field", sooooo the playground has become a mayhem ....sorta like scenes from the Gangs of New York!! There is body wrestling between first graders and fifth graders, bullies stalking the mini pockets of chaos, ready to pounce on the innocent and the guilty, chase games that turn into PUSH GAMES, (one of my students had his wrist broken last week because of a 'Pushing' game.) It's a mess.
Ok...take away an organized tag or touch sport....because of one or two little injuries. Frankly, the boys were really good at throwing and catchign that ball. They organized their own football game, and I even threw the ball in their game from time to time...shame it had to go out so fast.
So, let's take away an child created organized game because it has so many dangerous elements within...and not bring in anything else in that will ease the mayhem. I have asked the coach, the principal, and NOPE NADA....a rule is a rule is a rule. Doesn't matter that there are little pockets of bedlum within the greens of the playground.
Too many basketball, wall-balls, footballs are being lost...so ok,then....no more balls are dispersed to kids.
Break a rule in a system, and suffer the consequence.......fend for yourself.
Now, I realize this playground example doesn't exactly compare to the issue of religion in schools, but there must be some sort of moral benchmark. Where are the ideas to heal the immoral elements that creep up behind this society? Yellow Crane, do you have any ideas...before you throw yourself on that sword?
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Thank you, AL Gore. The best thing about Al Gore, I am afraid, is Tipper!
I am all FOR environmental awareness but I draw the line when you begin to mandate instead of encourage. For example, don't tell me I must use brick siding (or whatever) because it is more energy efficient. Instead, give me an incentive like a tax credit to use it.
Hey, Professor, many things that start out as "encouragemnet", end up as a mandate one way or another.
And this is good news? :-)
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Thank you, AL Gore. The best thing about Al Gore, I am afraid, is Tipper!
I am all FOR environmental awareness but I draw the line when you begin to mandate instead of encourage. For example, don't tell me I must use brick siding (or whatever) because it is more energy efficient. Instead, give me an incentive like a tax credit to use it.
Hey, Professor, many things that start out as "encouragemnet", end up as a mandate one way or another.
And this is good news? :-)
I draw the line when you begin to mandate instead of encourage.
I was responding to your own words, Prof. ;)
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Thank you, AL Gore. The best thing about Al Gore, I am afraid, is Tipper!
I am all FOR environmental awareness but I draw the line when you begin to mandate instead of encourage. For example, don't tell me I must use brick siding (or whatever) because it is more energy efficient. Instead, give me an incentive like a tax credit to use it.
Hey, Professor, many things that start out as "encouragemnet", end up as a mandate one way or another.
And this is good news? :-)
I draw the line when you begin to mandate instead of encourage.
I was responding to your own words, Prof. ;)
Huh? Whatever. I would like more incentives, e.g. positive encouragers than punitive measures like government mandates. How can anyone disagree with that?
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Huh? Whatever. I would like more incentives, e.g. positive encouragers than punitive measures like government mandates. How can anyone disagree with that?
You're right, I was thinking of the "encouragement" in terms of smokers. To me the encouraging news is to tax the smoker, mandate that no smoking be allowed in public places, etc.
In my opinion that equates to "encouragement" because even though it is a negative idea...taxes etc....it slows down the deadly activity, I hope. THat's "encouraging news to me.
But, in terms of incentives and positive encourages for those who drive an environmentally friendly vehicle, that's not to be disagreed with...of course not. Yes, I agree with taht.
gosh, I have been posting here for too long today..ha!
I have no lessons to plan for the first part of the week, basically because we are moving furniture to a newly renovated classroom on Tuesday. Yep, kids will be exercising their muscles instead of their brains....blame it on poor management, architects, bonds passed to pay for such
Gunna mandate that I step back and re read your posts again, however. ha!
My point basically was this....
I want the HUMMER GONE. I think it's high time we stop building such over the top gas hogs. PERIOD.
So, yes, I am all for incentives....but, I want what I want, don't we all? I dont' see any light at the end of the slippery slope when it comes to creating massive hogs like the Hummer unless we just say stop the presses now!
I think also, that if smokers were given incentives to stop smoking, they would not be able to. sadly....
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The least fuel efficient SUV on the road:
Mercedes-Benz G 55 AMG 11/13, Porsche Cayenne Turbo SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Mercedes-Benz R500 SUV 13/18, Nissan Titan 4WD 13/18, Nissan Armada 13, and the Land Rover LR3 SE (V8), 13 mpg.Volkswagen Touareg SUV: 14 mpg/18 mpg, Audi Q7 SUV*: 14 mpg/19 mpg, Infiniti FX45 SUV: 14 mpg/18 mpg, Infiniti QX SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Lexus LX SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Toyota Land Cruiser SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg
Hummer more fuel efficient than sport sedans:
BMW M5 & M6 (12/18), Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG and CL600 sedans (13/19), Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG sedan: 13 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG convertible: 14 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG: 13 mpg/20 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL600 convertibles: 13 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz S600 sedan: 13 mpg/19 mpg,
Why then is Hummer a Target?
The 2007 H3 gets an official EPA Rating of 15/20 MPG. The H3 will get 14/18 with the new 2008 ratings and a 7 of 10 Air Pollution Score - all MPG scores went down with the 2008 rating system.
This is really an issue about economic class - Hummer (14/20) driver's are firemen and BMW M5 (12/18) drivers are Lawyers. Where is the anger and protests against BMW, the anger at Audi AWD sedans, Mercedes-Benz, or the Toyota trucks?
I enjoy watching the Hummer outrage as it is a great way to spot bigots.
H2: Very few H2s sold and this is a HD vehicle and thus there are no EPA MPG ratings. Thus there is no ability to make comparison to the large HD truck market. I hear about 12 to 14 MPG Hwy and about 10 MPG combined. Which puts it above the luxury sport sedans and right in with HD trucks.
http://www.sierraclub.org/compass/2006/02/hummer-its-just-so-evil.asp#726187482593229378
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The least fuel efficient SUV on the road:
Mercedes-Benz G 55 AMG 11/13, Porsche Cayenne Turbo SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Mercedes-Benz R500 SUV 13/18, Nissan Titan 4WD 13/18, Nissan Armada 13, and the Land Rover LR3 SE (V8), 13 mpg.Volkswagen Touareg SUV: 14 mpg/18 mpg, Audi Q7 SUV*: 14 mpg/19 mpg, Infiniti FX45 SUV: 14 mpg/18 mpg, Infiniti QX SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Lexus LX SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Toyota Land Cruiser SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg
Hummer more fuel efficient than sport sedans:
BMW M5 & M6 (12/18), Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG and CL600 sedans (13/19), Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG sedan: 13 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG convertible: 14 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG: 13 mpg/20 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL600 convertibles: 13 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz S600 sedan: 13 mpg/19 mpg,
Why then is Hummer a Target?
The 2007 H3 gets an official EPA Rating of 15/20 MPG. The H3 will get 14/18 with the new 2008 ratings and a 7 of 10 Air Pollution Score - all MPG scores went down with the 2008 rating system.
This is really an issue about economic class - Hummer (14/20) driver's are firemen and BMW M5 (12/18) drivers are Lawyers. Where is the anger and protests against BMW, the anger at Audi AWD sedans, Mercedes-Benz, or the Toyota trucks?
I enjoy watching the Hummer outrage as it is a great way to spot bigots.
H2: Very few H2s sold and this is a HD vehicle and thus there are no EPA MPG ratings. Thus there is no ability to make comparison to the large HD truck market. I hear about 12 to 14 MPG Hwy and about 10 MPG combined. Which puts it above the luxury sport sedans and right in with HD trucks.
http://www.sierraclub.org/compass/2006/02/hummer-its-just-so-evil.asp#726187482593229378
I believe Hummers also suffer due to their footprint, namely they LOOK over-the-top. Simplistic perhaps but perceptive sometimes rules supreme.
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Perhaps we need something analogous to the assault weapon's ban which largely ban weapons that LOOK mean, but are in no way military assault weapons
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I enjoy watching the Hummer outrage as it is a great way to spot bigots.
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Disliking people who dislike Hummer owners is about as simplistic as disliking Hummers or their owners.
The average guy on the street does not know the EPA mileage figures. He DOES know that the Hummer LOOKS like it was meant to be a gashog. People buy Hummers because they LOOK menacing. While it is true that a Hummer gets better mileage than a Porsche 9-11 or maybe even a Cayenne or a Boxer, the Porsches are intended to be fun cars, and are not sold to do the daily sort of service that the Hummer is generally bought for, ie to pick up the groceries, to take Becky-Sue to the ballet class, to drive to work every day.
The Hummer is criticized for being what its designers intended. A car for guys with complexes about their weewees being too small to do the duty of the minivan they really need. It looks about as aerodynamic as a brick, but in reality is no less aerodynamic than a 1980's Volvo, which is also brick-shaped, but made to appeal to an entirely different Market Segment.
When we see a Porsche, we are supposed to say to ourselves "when I make it big, as I eventually will, I shall buy me one of those and make all my loser buddies eat their hearts out!" So we can't hate a Porsche driver, because someday we hope to BE one.
People who dislike Hummers basically dislike these guys, because the same guys also are thought to be gun nuts, guys who like to massacre innocent forest creatures and brag about it by hanging their hanging their heads on the wall, guy who deny global warming, listen to Rush and vote for Juniorbush. Cars are designed for a specific segment of the population, and Hummers are designed for guys who think they are Rambo, but could not for the life of them tie a square knot.
Of course, the actual individuals differ greatly from the Market Segment Stereotype, and so do the people who dislike them.
We are all constantly being taught to conform to Market Segment Stereotypes, and a person who succumbs to this manipulation is no more a bigot than someone who dislikes members of the opposing Market Segment Stereotype.
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Yes,oh and Hummers are ugly bastards, too. btw. BMW'S have a cute look, I think that shows my bigotry....I like to look at nice.
::)
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A Hummer is a man's car. It is supposed to be ugly. Essentially it is testosterone with 4 wheel drive, or 2 wheel drive pretending to be 4WD.
If a lawyer drives a BMW, it suggests that Mrs lawyer's opinions are sort of respected, at least.
A divorced divorce lawyer probably could enhance his image with a Hummer.
Hummer: the name says it all. Is a type of sex, but isn't really sex, and is easily purchased with minimal obligations to society.
Other fave car names of this sort: Cutlass Cut L Ass. If you try to sell it to a woman, she can see the words 'cute ass'.
Toronado, Torino, Taurus seem to suggest Adult male bovines.
Why would Jeep have a model called the 'Limited'? Are not Jeeps supposed to be unlimited in their travel?
Chrysler took the Neon, the chick';s car par excellence and redid it as the Caliber, which is clearly NOT a chick car style or name. The name suggests LARGE caliber, which sounds good for the guys, who value size but a large caliber woman is not an appealing concept to either sex, I suggest.
What was Chrysler thinking when they named a Dodge the Dynasty (Die Nasty)? Or Cadillac when they stuck the letters ETC on the back of their former Eldorado? (Eldorado Touring Coupe=ETC, supposedly). But etc just does not have any distinguished cache. Perhaps more than Ibid, or OpCit.
Finally Cadillac has realized that the age of their best customers was deceased, and they have been trolling for the BMW crowd with luxury performance. It seems most hearses, formerly Cadillacs, are now Lincolns. I imagine that this has something to do with the change of image.
I would say that KIA has done quite well with a name that is the abbreviation for Killed in Action.
Hyundai means "modern" in Korean, but suggests Hound Dawg, (faithful, perhaps uncostly) in English.
Take the favorite American car's name CHEVY and substiture the middle three letters for something that suggests America (AMR and what do you get? CAMRY. A bit of genius, I think.
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Xavier,
Very funny. You are clever, indeed. Yeah, that makes sense.....and Hummers....bird humming....nah...too sweet. Has to be a down and ugly tanker. Oh well, your analysis of the lawyer's choice of "ride" is spot on, btw. ha!
The Hummer is a sex word??..now that I hadn't heard. But, ok it makes sense. Spooning...now there's a term I learned only 7 years ago. ha!. ..hmmm guess one could find cute :-X meanings in all sorts of words.
(I am having lunch with my Linguistics Prof. today, I'll have to run some of these words by him today. :o But of course Linguists, for the most part, are rarely shocked. ha!)
Very fun read, XO. My favorite auto used to be the Honda Prelude in the early 80's. I have played many a Prelude by Chopin on the piano...so, when I owned my Silver Honda Prelude 1985 ... I loved that car...it was so damn pretty....I had a personalized license plate made for it. The "reflection plate" was to represent my favorite Chopin piece..... from his OPUS 28.
So, my plate read: OPUS 28. Who knew that even that would suggest "something else"...sheesh. Stopped at a red light on day, a group of young teen boys drove up next to me and asked...as they were chuckling...the meaning of OPUS 28. OH well...you can't win when it comes to the mind of a man....ha.
Here is a website I found on the topic/subject.....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16440606/
Among the ones that made us smile are the Daihatsu Motor Naked; Honda Life Dunk and That's; Isuzu GIGA 20 Light Dump and Mysterious Utility; Mazda Motor Bongo; Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear and Pistachio; Nissan Fairlady Z and Prairie Joy; Rickman Space Ranger; Rinspeed X-Dream; Suzuki Cappucino; Toyota Motor Deliboy and Toyopet; Volkswagen Thing and Volugrafo Bimbo. We think it's a shame that the Honda Life Dunk doesn't sell over here. Its goofy yet inspiring name would probably attract a fair number of buyers.
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It involves defending those who are CLEARLY criminals, like Larry Craig
What criminal act did he commit?
The one he pled guilty to and was convicte of.
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The one he pled guilty to and was convicte of.
I wonder whether the constitutionality of that law has been tested.
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What a crock!
Why?
Have you changed out all your incandescent lightbulbs?
Yes.
You trade in the van?
No. I'd love to but I'm in a financial bind at this time. Have you?
You install low flow water savers to your faucets and showers?
No. I'd love to but I'm in a financial bind at this time. Have you?
Do you carpool?
No. But only drive to work and home each day in the Tracker.
Have you reinsulated your house?
No. I'd love to but I'm in a financial bind at this time. Have you?
Get back to me when you have, preacher boy.
Why is it that I have to be the purest of pure to call down those who are the most vile of the vile?
By your standards, because I ran over a dog once, I can't be a viable witness for a murder case if I see one committed.
Criminalization, my ass.
They rationed food in WWII. Were those who continued eating lots and lots not criminals?
BTW since when did you want to criminalize homosexual behavior?
[/quote]
If it was him and his wife getting it on in a bathroom stall, they should receive the same sentence.
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You trade in the van?
No. I'd love to but I'm in a financial bind at this time. Have you?
Don't have a a van. Last year i put less than 3000 miles on the Toyota.
You install low flow water savers to your faucets and showers?
No. I'd love to but I'm in a financial bind at this time. Have you?
Yes. The first kit is free at city hall. The second on are available at cost. I started that program.
Do you carpool?
No. But only drive to work and home each day in the Tracker.
I telecommute.
Have you reinsulated your house?
No. I'd love to but I'm in a financial bind at this time. Have you?
Partially. One room at a time.
Meanwhile the thermostat is set to 52.
Why is it that I have to be the purest of pure to call down those who are the most vile of the vile?
By your standards, because I ran over a dog once, I can't be a viable witness for a murder case if I see one committed.
If you are going to talk the talk, at least walk the walk.
BTW since when did you want to criminalize homosexual behavior?
If it was him and his wife getting it on in a bathroom stall, they should receive the same sentence.[/quote]
He didn't get it on with anyone.
He was trolling, same as all the breeders at a singles bar.
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The least fuel efficient SUV on the road:
Mercedes-Benz G 55 AMG 11/13, Porsche Cayenne Turbo SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Mercedes-Benz R500 SUV 13/18, Nissan Titan 4WD 13/18, Nissan Armada 13, and the Land Rover LR3 SE (V8), 13 mpg.Volkswagen Touareg SUV: 14 mpg/18 mpg, Audi Q7 SUV*: 14 mpg/19 mpg, Infiniti FX45 SUV: 14 mpg/18 mpg, Infiniti QX SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Lexus LX SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg, Toyota Land Cruiser SUV: 13 mpg/18 mpg
Hummer more fuel efficient than sport sedans:
BMW M5 & M6 (12/18), Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG and CL600 sedans (13/19), Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG sedan: 13 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG convertible: 14 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG: 13 mpg/20 mpg, Mercedes-Benz SL600 convertibles: 13 mpg/19 mpg, Mercedes-Benz S600 sedan: 13 mpg/19 mpg,
Why then is Hummer a Target?
The 2007 H3 gets an official EPA Rating of 15/20 MPG. The H3 will get 14/18 with the new 2008 ratings and a 7 of 10 Air Pollution Score - all MPG scores went down with the 2008 rating system.
This is really an issue about economic class - Hummer (14/20) driver's are firemen and BMW M5 (12/18) drivers are Lawyers. Where is the anger and protests against BMW, the anger at Audi AWD sedans, Mercedes-Benz, or the Toyota trucks?
I enjoy watching the Hummer outrage as it is a great way to spot bigots.
H2: Very few H2s sold and this is a HD vehicle and thus there are no EPA MPG ratings. Thus there is no ability to make comparison to the large HD truck market. I hear about 12 to 14 MPG Hwy and about 10 MPG combined. Which puts it above the luxury sport sedans and right in with HD trucks.
http://www.sierraclub.org/compass/2006/02/hummer-its-just-so-evil.asp#726187482593229378
ANYTHING UNDER 30 MPG SHOULD BE CRIMINALIZED IMMEDIATELY. (Yes, including my Chevy Astro Van and my Geo Track.)
Block any new auto sales of anything under 30MPG TODAY and watch how fast they roll out the hybrids or even the compressed air cars.
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The one he pled guilty to and was convicte of.
I wonder whether the constitutionality of that law has been tested.
Apparently, the ACLU is attempting to help Larry Craig discover that. Perhaps you should support the ACLU is you favor people having sex in the privacy of the public restroom booths.
I mean, Larry Craig DID plead guilty to that RIGHT? Or is it part of the new conservative re-writing of history that Larry Craig somehow DIDN'T plead guilty?
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Larry Craig never plead guilty to having sex in a public bathroom.
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I once heard a comic monologe in which was pointed out that "Electra" was a pretty good name for a car , but the caricter Electra (the daughter of Odepus) was devoted to vengance ,and he suggested that "Vengance" would be an even better name for a car. He then suggested that the seven deadly sins would each make a good name for a car , except for "Sloth", which might not sell.
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Don't have a a van. Last year i put less than 3000 miles on the Toyota.
Yes. The first kit is free at city hall. The second on are available at cost. I started that program.
I telecommute.
Partially. One room at a time.
Meanwhile the thermostat is set to 52.
If you are going to talk the talk, at least walk the walk.
He didn't get it on with anyone.
He was trolling, same as all the breeders at a singles bar.
And I congratulate you on all your environmentally sound decisions and adjustments; however, I imagine that my wife, the childrens' service agent, might raise an eyebrow if I were to suggest that from now on the thermostat for our floor furnaces should always be set to 52.
While my decision to buy the van may appear to be a mistake in hindsight, at the time, it was the right decision for my needs. Later this year, I intend to try and trade it in on a higher milage vehicle, preferably a hybrid.
Also, later this year, we are planning to apply for a home improvement loan. I really want to add another floor to the house but more importantly, I'd like to make the house completely environmentally friendly.
I wonder if my utility has a similar low flow program. Kudos on your decision to take the initiative to start the intern- low flow program.
I am working on suggesting that telecommunication would be the best bet for my company since all of us could do our jobs from home with the proper setup.
So, you are saying that I must be the purest of the pure to point out the vilest of the vile, then, is that right?
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Somehow i get the impression that you weren't speaking to to vile of the vilest.
I think your barbs were aimed at anyone to the right of Domer.
Y'all better get with the program and come to Jesus and realize that Hummers should be burned like Beatles records in the '60's and the auto industry needs to be turning to making cars that run on compressed air or hydrogen TODAY and not in oh maybe hopefully 20 -30 years, we'll see.
It's time to collectively circle the economic wagons or the America you guys love so much will go the way of the dodo and the Mayans.
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Somehow i get the impression that you weren't speaking to to vile of the vilest.
I think your barbs were aimed at anyone to the right of Domer.
And?
It seems to me that you guys (those to the right of Domer) tend get all defensive is someone suggests that maybe in a country where we don't really have that much domestic oil and the people who have the most oil (like the Saudis and Iraqis) tend not to like us very much, it might be not so much a great idea to have vehicles on the road that use an inordinate amount of gas.
You guys seem to get your panties in a twist when someone even slightly mentions that there are connections between those in our current government and those who have the most oil and sell the oil and gas here in the US.
Your hypocrisy is tangible in that you think that there might be a problem there but no one should suggest that we RAISE FUEL STANDARDS or we BAN VEHICLES THAT USE TOO MUCH GAS.
It seems the only time Americans' interest should be in collective thought is when you guys want to go take over some country or your "president" is being blamed for all our troubles as a nation.
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I think if you took a survey of those of us to the right of Domer you would find the majority of us think it is high time we looked at all the options on the table as far as development of alternative energy.
We may disagree with how this should be done, the level of govt funding etc. but it is a high priority for most of us.
Far as i know, none of us drive hummers.
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I think if you took a survey of those of us to the right of Domer you would find the majority of us think it is high time we looked at all the options on the table as far as development of alternative energy. We may disagree with how this should be done, the level of govt funding etc. but it is a high priority for most of us.
I'll 2nd that. And "all" includes our own oil vs importing foreign sources
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A Hummer is a man's car. It is supposed to be ugly. Essentially it is testosterone with 4 wheel drive, or 2 wheel drive pretending to be 4WD.
So, XO, what hidden meaning do you find in my vehicle?
I have the Ford Five Hundred with AWD.
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I once heard a comic monologe in which was pointed out that "Electra" was a pretty good name for a car , but the caricter Electra (the daughter of Odepus) was devoted to vengance ,and he suggested that "Vengance" would be an even better name for a car. He then suggested that the seven deadly sins would each make a good name for a car , except for "Sloth", which might not sell.
=========================================
There was a Buick Electra for a while. Now Buick has given up on its old model names from long ago, like Century, Special and Roadmaster and the newer ones, like LeSabre and Regal. At one point market research revealed that the average age of a new Buick Park Avenue was 88. Not much chance of selling him another car.
Oedipus is not a good name for a car, though: it means "swollen foot".
Drive the New Chrysler Envy! The all-new Plymouth Greed! The Improved Subaru Ire! The Amazing Honda Lust! The Spectacular Cadillac Gluttony! The Exciting Nissan Avarice! The incredible Ford Pride!
The Advanced Mercury Sloth doesn't work, but if we use the Latin name, it is best of all: Drive the all-new Hyundai Acedia!
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So, XO, what hidden meaning do you find in my vehicle?
I have the Ford Five Hundred with AWD.
==============================================
The term "Five Hundred" I suppose comes from the Forbes Five Hundred (a list of the richest 500 people in the world) or possibly the 500 finest families in NYC, according to the social register, which would filter out rich riffraff such as Mafiosi and booze merchants.
The AWD no doubt comes in useful in the snow. I hear it is a pretty good car, a LOT better than the antediluvian Crown Victoria so much favored by law enforcement and cabbies, but it didn't sell, and has been rebranded as something else. I think it is now called a 'Taurus'.
I think Henry Ford may have been a Taurus, or maybe Edsel or Henry the Deuce.
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A Hummer is a man's car. It is supposed to be ugly. Essentially it is testosterone with 4 wheel drive, or 2 wheel drive pretending to be 4WD.
So, XO, what hidden meaning do you find in my vehicle? I have the Ford Five Hundred with AWD.
I drive a Buick Regal myself. What Fascist, anti-enviroment, pro-pollution, proclaimation does sirs present with such a travesty of a vehicle?
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So, XO, what hidden meaning do you find in my vehicle? I have the Ford Five Hundred with AWD.
I drive a Buick Regal myself. What Fascist proclaimation does sirs present with such a travesty of a vehicle?
===================================================
Well, one would assume a yearning to present a royal image.
I sure hope it's better than the 1982 Regal four door I had. It had a large (3.7 litre) buy truly puny engine that could not maintain a constant 60 mph on the I-75 hills coming into Atlanta from the Soth and the puniest brakes that I have ever had on a car, including three Renaults (a Dauphine, an R-10 and an R-16) a Studebaker and a Hudson with twin H-power. One was never sure one would stop in time. The interior plastic was five shades of blues and greens, ranging from baby blue to stale peasoup green, much of it some form of self-destructive plastic that flaked into bilious green dandruff when scraped. It blew a headgasket at 61,000 and the dash caught fire and burned, ending its career at only 81,000. I bought it used for $850 and spent over $1200 on it in the two years I drove it. The rear windows could not be rolled down, instead, there were electric wind wings. One was broken in an incompetent attempt to steal the fool thing.
Unfortunately, it did not last long enough for the only purpose it was well suited for: Roger Smith's tombstone.
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Far as i know, none of us drive hummers.
I doubt none of you would turn one down if given one.
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Far as i know, none of us drive hummers.
I doubt none of you would turn one down if given one.
I would......in a hearbeat. It's functionally a terrible vehicle to get in and out of, not to mention the parking logistics, when driving out and about.
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I drive a Buick Regal myself. What Fascist proclaimation does sirs present with such a travesty of a vehicle?
===================================================
Well, one would assume a yearning to present a royal image.
LOL......kinda the response I figured I'd get. That explains why I haven't had that dent fixed in 4years now. Thanks Xo
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Far as i know, none of us drive hummers.
I doubt none of you would turn one down if given one.
I would......in a hearbeat. It's functionally a terrible vehicle to get in and out of, not to mention the parking logistics, when driving out and about.
Good to see you can bypass considering one for its chest-beating merits.
I never fail to finger one every time I pass.
I am not afraid of retaliation; people who drape themselves so resplendently with butch buttons to project such bully bravado on the outside rarely have much sand on the inside.
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I never fail to finger one every time I pass. I am not afraid of retaliation; people who drape themselves so resplendently with butch buttons to project such bully bravado on the outside rarely have much sand on the inside.
I bet that was Crane that walked by this golf course I was playing on, up in Carmel a few years ago, yelling profanities at me, for playing on such an apparent perversion to the enviroment ;)
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I never fail to finger one every time I pass. I am not afraid of retaliation; people who drape themselves so resplendently with butch buttons to project such bully bravado on the outside rarely have much sand on the inside.
I bet that was Crane that walked by this golf course I was playing on, up in Carmel a few years ago, yelling profanities at me, for playing on such an apparent perversion to the enviroment ;)
Were you the one in the neon green jumper?
The guy looking in both directions before you moved the ball out?
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I doubt none of you would turn one down if given one.
==========================================
If you will give me a Hummer, I would naturally accept the fool thing. But I'd sell it as soon as I could and invest the money in something lucrative. Like restoring my Mercedes Diesel a bit, perhaps buying an apparatus to turn WVO (Waste veggie oil) into biodiesel.
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If you will give me a Hummer, I would naturally accept the fool thing. But I'd sell it as soon as I could and invest the money in something lucrative.
I don't think that's wise. You obviously need the government to invest the $ for you. They know better, and will take much greater care of your money, than you ever could ;)
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So, XO, what hidden meaning do you find in my vehicle? I have the Ford Five Hundred with AWD.
I drive a Buick Regal myself. What Fascist proclaimation does sirs present with such a travesty of a vehicle?
===================================================
Well, one would assume a yearning to present a royal image.
I sure hope it's better than the 1982 Regal four door I had. It had a large (3.7 litre) buy truly puny engine that could not maintain a constant 60 mph on the I-75 hills coming into Atlanta from the Soth and the puniest brakes that I have ever had on a car, including three Renaults (a Dauphine, an R-10 and an R-16) a Studebaker and a Hudson with twin H-power. One was never sure one would stop in time. The interior plastic was five shades of blues and greens, ranging from baby blue to stale peasoup green, much of it some form of self-destructive plastic that flaked into bilious green dandruff when scraped. It blew a headgasket at 61,000 and the dash caught fire and burned, ending its career at only 81,000. I bought it used for $850 and spent over $1200 on it in the two years I drove it. The rear windows could not be rolled down, instead, there were electric wind wings. One was broken in an incompetent attempt to steal the fool thing.
Unfortunately, it did not last long enough for the only purpose it was well suited for: Roger Smith's tombstone.
Hudson's were memorable cars. The Hornet is a favorite of mine when I get to a decent car show.
You owned a Dauphine? That has to have been one of the worst vehicles ever made (no offense). I think there are lawnmowers with more horsepower. It ranks up there with the Chevrolet Citation, Chevrolet Vega, and that 350 diesel engine Chevy made from a gas engine that tended to catch on fire.
GM really made some crap there for a while.
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My Dauphine cost me $150 in 1966. It was a 1958 model. I bought it in Washington State from a fellow teacher.
It had very little power, but it did get great mileage.
The two worst moments were when the soggy headliner came loose and fell all over me, except the cutout for the sunroof. FWAP! It can surprise a fellow when driving down a wet mountain road at night and a wet and moldy headliner attacks you.
Then shortly afterward, it did the headgasket on the freeway trick, on I-5 between Bellingham and Everett. The car filled up with steam. I managed to get it home by filling up the radiator with ditch water. But the final leg into the logging town where I was staying, there was no water in the ditch, and it seems to have fried the engine.
I traded it to a old mountaineer who fixed it for a 1955 Buick Special 2 dr hardtop. He wanted it because the sunroof was ideal for poaching deer from while his wife drove. Eventually my T-bird was repaired (it had swapped ends on an icy road and hit a tree) and I sold the Buick to the town butcher for $150.
The Dauphine was a pretty awful car, it is true, but it was cheap. The Buick Regal had no excuse for being so poorly designed and made.
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>>How low will the market have to go in order to make you people understand that the whole of the country is not doing as well as the Haves are doing?When that market drops below 12,000 next week some time and people start wigging out even more, then it is going to drop even lower.I suppose what we're figuring out is no one will start understanding that this country's economy can't run on fast food, coca cola and computers or basically shuffling piles of money around.Bush the Moron got something right the other night in his cringe-worthy interview with ABC. Higher oil prices will destroy this country which means the Middle East has us by the short hairs.Y'all better get with the program and come to Jesus and realize that Hummers should be burned like Beatles records in the '60's and the auto industry needs to be turning to making cars that run on compressed air or hydrogen TODAY and not in oh maybe hopefully 20 -30 years, we'll see. It's time to collectively circle the economic wagons or the America you guys love so much will go the way of the dodo and the Mayans.<<
I've heard some fascist things come out of Brass's mouth before, but his little mustache has finally filled out. By circling the economic wagons, the fascist left means, ?we will make the decisions for you because we know best, just like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and all the other fascist despots throughout history. Notice the word collectively. Not a very subtle nod to communist confiscation of your hard earned wealth.
Watch out folks, there are lots of people who hate you because you can afford to get a hybrid car, or turn your thermostat down. They hate you because they can?t keep up, and they will take what they want by force if you let them.
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<<You obviously need the government to invest the $ for you. They know better, and will take much greater care of your money, than you ever could >>
Hey, I dunno, maybe sirs is on to something. Let's compare the number of times the U.S. government has gone bankrupt with the number of times individual Americans have gone bankrupt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_11#2004_Statistics
Chapter 7 bankruptcies (personal bankruptcy)
2003: 1.2 million
2004: 1.2 million
So, in just two short years, an amazing 2.4 million Americans have declared personal bankruptcy. It might interest sirs to know that in its entire history the U.S.A. has never declared bankruptcy even once. (although I'm not all that sure about the early days of the Republic. Maybe once.)
I understand that bankruptcies were up last year and expected to be even higher this year. So it appears that sirs' sarcasm was really unwarranted - - the fact that over a million Americans a year go into personal bankruptcy would seem to indicate that yes, for MILLIONS of Americans, the U.S. government WOULD know how to manage their money better than they do.
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I think if you took a survey of those of us to the right of Domer you would find the majority of us think it is high time we looked at all the options on the table as far as development of alternative energy.
We may disagree with how this should be done, the level of govt funding etc. but it is a high priority for most of us.
Far as i know, none of us drive hummers.
We should SERIOUSLY invest in R&D on geothermal, oil shale, wind and solar energy. For example, I bet if the proper funding was available, solar energy cells would be MUCH MORE EFFICIENT than now. Efficient and cheap enough for the common homeowner.
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I think if you took a survey of those of us to the right of Domer you would find the majority of us think it is high time we looked at all the options on the table as far as development of alternative energy. We may disagree with how this should be done, the level of govt funding etc. but it is a high priority for most of us.
I'll 2nd that. And "all" includes our own oil vs importing foreign sources
My uncle has hundreds of capped wells in Western Kentucky. He says it doesn't pay to uncap and pump them due to oppressive EPA regs. Might there be many many others like thus?
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A Hummer is a man's car. It is supposed to be ugly. Essentially it is testosterone with 4 wheel drive, or 2 wheel drive pretending to be 4WD.
So, XO, what hidden meaning do you find in my vehicle?
I have the Ford Five Hundred with AWD.
And, let's see: I have Toyota Celica convertible, a Toyota sedan and a new Honda Civic. And an old Jeep Wrangler and 1968 Vette I am slowly restoring. Your reading?
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I once heard a comic monologe in which was pointed out that "Electra" was a pretty good name for a car , but the caricter Electra (the daughter of Odepus) was devoted to vengance ,and he suggested that "Vengance" would be an even better name for a car. He then suggested that the seven deadly sins would each make a good name for a car , except for "Sloth", which might not sell.
=========================================
There was a Buick Electra for a while. Now Buick has given up on its old model names from long ago, like Century, Special and Roadmaster and the newer ones, like LeSabre and Regal. At one point market research revealed that the average age of a new Buick Park Avenue was 88. Not much chance of selling him another car.
Oedipus is not a good name for a car, though: it means "swollen foot".
Drive the New Chrysler Envy! The all-new Plymouth Greed! The Improved Subaru Ire! The Amazing Honda Lust! The Spectacular Cadillac Gluttony! The Exciting Nissan Avarice! The incredible Ford Pride!
The Advanced Mercury Sloth doesn't work, but if we use the Latin name, it is best of all: Drive the all-new Hyundai Acedia!
I read something a few years ago that said that the Buick Roadmaster had one of the most favorable ratings by owners of any American car ever made. I know my parents had two and were very dismayed when Buick stopped making them. It was a cool car because you could be on a trip from D.C. to Minneapolis and you only had to move to the front seat to instantly be in Minneapolis!
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Far as i know, none of us drive hummers.
I doubt none of you would turn one down if given one.
Nope, I would immediately sell it! Let's see. I purchased it for $55K. After two days, I might get $20K for it! >:(
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So, XO, what hidden meaning do you find in my vehicle? I have the Ford Five Hundred with AWD.
I drive a Buick Regal myself. What Fascist proclaimation does sirs present with such a travesty of a vehicle?
===================================================
Well, one would assume a yearning to present a royal image.
I sure hope it's better than the 1982 Regal four door I had. It had a large (3.7 litre) buy truly puny engine that could not maintain a constant 60 mph on the I-75 hills coming into Atlanta from the Soth and the puniest brakes that I have ever had on a car, including three Renaults (a Dauphine, an R-10 and an R-16) a Studebaker and a Hudson with twin H-power. One was never sure one would stop in time. The interior plastic was five shades of blues and greens, ranging from baby blue to stale peasoup green, much of it some form of self-destructive plastic that flaked into bilious green dandruff when scraped. It blew a headgasket at 61,000 and the dash caught fire and burned, ending its career at only 81,000. I bought it used for $850 and spent over $1200 on it in the two years I drove it. The rear windows could not be rolled down, instead, there were electric wind wings. One was broken in an incompetent attempt to steal the fool thing.
Unfortunately, it did not last long enough for the only purpose it was well suited for: Roger Smith's tombstone.
Hudson's were memorable cars. The Hornet is a favorite of mine when I get to a decent car show.
You owned a Dauphine? That has to have been one of the worst vehicles ever made (no offense). I think there are lawnmowers with more horsepower. It ranks up there with the Chevrolet Citation, Chevrolet Vega, and that 350 diesel engine Chevy made from a gas engine that tended to catch on fire.
GM really made some crap there for a while.
As in Paul Newman's Hudson Hornet?
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I think if you took a survey of those of us to the right of Domer you would find the majority of us think it is high time we looked at all the options on the table as far as development of alternative energy. We may disagree with how this should be done, the level of govt funding etc. but it is a high priority for most of us.
I'll 2nd that. And "all" includes our own oil vs importing foreign sources
My unlce has hundreds of capped wells in Western Kentucky. He says it doesn't pay to uncap and pump them due to oppressive EPA regs.
In Western KY?
I'm guessing that it wasn't the EPA's fault, but the fact that the oil is just such low quality. We have old pumps here in TN too, but the oil quality is just no match for the Arabian or Russian oil. The same problem exists in much of Alaska. It costs too much to refine poor quality petroleum. That's simple economics and not evil government.
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<<My unlce has hundreds of capped wells in Western Kentucky. He says it doesn't pay to uncap and pump them due to oppressive EPA regs.>>
You also have to wonder about the "oppressive" EPA regs. "Oppressive" as in Hey! stop poisoning the local groundwater? or "Quit causing brain damage to the local children?" Every one of those "oppressive" regs has probably been challenged by the industry in its passage into legislation and in court time after time and still stood the test of the industry's high-paid lawyers.
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Watch out folks, there are lots of people who hate you because you can afford to get a hybrid car, or turn your thermostat down. They hate you because they can?t keep up, and they will take what they want by force if you let them.
==============================================
They hate our freedoms, like Juniorbush said.
Anyone that can afford a Hummer can also afford a Prius.
This happens all the time, a guy will be sitting home with his thremostat at 74 degrees F, and the next thing you know, Fascist leftists have broken down the door and are stealing all his heat.
Happens all the time.... in RR's inflamed mind!
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>>We have old pumps here in TN too, but the oil quality is just no match for the Arabian or Russian oil.<<
I knew an old pump in Tennessee.
<rimshot>
We only get about 30 percent of our oil from Middleastern sources, the rest we get from our "friends." What we really need to do is forget what the lunatic left thinks and do what best for the country. We should begin the search for domestic sources of oil tomorrow and begin drilling in ANWAR the day after tomorrow. Then we begin building nuclear reactors and fire 'em up ASAP. Let's stop listening to these pinheads who keep us dependent on foreign oil and do the right thing. Then, once we've taken the Mideast out of the equation we can watch American ingenuity make alternative sources that work.
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Watch out folks, there are lots of people who hate you because you can afford to get a hybrid car, or turn your thermostat down. They hate you because they can?t keep up, and they will take what they want by force if you let them.
==============================================
They hate our freedoms, like Juniorbush said. Anyone that can afford a Hummer can also afford a Prius.
And not so strangely it's the side who buys the Prious, who demands others drive what THEY deem appropriate.
and on a related note, perhaps Ami has access to this info, but I heard the logistics of putting together and/or transporting Prius parts, especially the battery, cost much more in both fuel (that dreaded oil based gasoline) and shipping logistics, than a Hummer's parts & battery. In otherwords, to save the world, the Prius destroys it. Oh, the irony :D
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Yes, we need to invest immediately in nuclear fission and R&D into nuclear fusion. And an immediate government-sponsored effort in immediately deploying geothermal and wind power while it is feasible. Not ten years form now, but now. Want to see the technology immediately appear before your eye? Cut off half of all overseas oil and see how the "magic" appears before your eyes!
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>>And an immediate government-sponsored effort in immediately deploying geothermal and wind power while it is feasible. Not ten years form now, but now.<<
Why government sponsored? Personally I don't trust the government to take care of my health, why would I trust them with my thermostat? ;)
If there's money to be made, American comaponies will be there to make it.
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>>And an immediate government-sponsored effort in immediately deploying geothermal and wind power while it is feasible. Not ten years form now, but now.<<
Why government sponsored? Personally I don't trust the government to take care of my health, why would I trust them with my thermostat? ;)
If there's money to be made, American comaponies will be there to make it.
Your inadvertant misspelling of 'companies' as 'comaponies' is hilariously ironic in its adverse--'coma ponies' is an excellent description for those hoodwinked by the corporate Mandarins.
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Watch out folks, there are lots of people who hate you because you can afford to get a hybrid car, or turn your thermostat down. They hate you because they can?t keep up, and they will take what they want by force if you let them.
==============================================
They hate our freedoms, like Juniorbush said. Anyone that can afford a Hummer can also afford a Prius.
And not so strangely it's the side who buys the Prious, who demands others drive what THEY deem appropriate.
and on a related note, perhaps Ami has access to this info, but I heard the logistics of putting together and/or transporting Prius parts, especially the battery, cost much more in both fuel (that dreaded oil based gasoline) and shipping logistics, than a Hummer's parts & battery. In otherwords, to save the world, the Prius destroys it. Oh, the irony :D
Nearly all container ships run on diesel and not gasoline (as with their land based brethren, the 18-wheelers). I don't know much about the assembly of Toyota's Prius itself, but the container ship industry has come a long way, especially Maersk, a Danish (got to love the Danes) shipbuilder and one of the largest transportation companies worldwide.
The Emma Maersk uses diesel and through recycling and special paints is able to conserve fuel at amazing rates. Those paints are also an environmentally friendly way to keep barnacles off the vessel as opposed to the typical method of using biocides. Emma Maersk (http://www.jtashipphoto.dk/jtashipphoto.dk%201/Emma%20Maersk/emma_maersk.htm)
But you know, what the hell would those Socialist Danes know about anything...right? ::)
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I wasn't referring to a generic "nearly all container ships" or "container ship industry", Js. I was referring to what I heard in that the making and specific shipping of Prius parts, espcially the battery, was FAR more expensive and "fuel burning" than that of the Hummer. And there in lies the irony I was referring to
But thanks for the general info on Danish shipping
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Nearly all container ships run on diesel and not gasoline (as with their land based brethren, the 18-wheelers).
And diesel is not made from petroleum?
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Nearly all container ships run on diesel and not gasoline (as with their land based brethren, the 18-wheelers).
And diesel is not made from petroleum?
It is, but the person to which I was responding to said, and I quote: "cost much more in both fuel (that dreaded oil based gasoline)"
I'd like to see the evidence for this claim about the Toyota Prius. I'm curious.
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I'd like to see the evidence for this claim about the Toyota Prius. I'm curious.
Well, here's one article:
Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage, Says Editorial
Source: The Recorder
[Mar 14, 2007]
SYNOPSIS: The Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel which is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario, a plant that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the 'dead zone' around the plant to test moon rovers.
The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate "green car" is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.
Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.
The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?
You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius's EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.
However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn't be writing this article. It gets much worse.
Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the "dead zone" around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.
The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius' battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist's nightmare.
"The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside," said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.
All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn't end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce "nickel foam." From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?
Wait, I haven't even got to the best part yet.
When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius's arch nemesis.
Through a study by CNW Marketing called "Dust to Dust," the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.
So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.
One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.
http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=14582 (http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=14582)
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Nearly all container ships run on diesel and not gasoline (as with their land based brethren, the 18-wheelers).
And diesel is not made from petroleum?
It is, but the person to which I was responding to said, and I quote: "cost much more in both fuel (that dreaded oil based gasoline)"
Oil based petrol, better? As if that makes much of a difference ::)
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Nearly all container ships run on diesel and not gasoline (as with their land based brethren, the 18-wheelers). I don't know much about the assembly of Toyota's Prius itself, but the container ship industry has come a long way, especially Maersk, a Danish (got to love the Danes) shipbuilder and one of the largest transportation companies worldwide.
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Actually, I think most ships run on bunker oil, a heavier, thicker, less refined and cheaper petroleum product then Diesel.
They can ship cookies from Denmark and sell them for a price competitive with American cookies, so I don;t think shipping is all that expensive.
NPR ran a story about this ship that is partially powered by a huge kite across the Atlantic, using 30% less fuel.
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Seems to be a conflict. I found this in just a really quick google:
Prius Versus HUMMER: Exploding the Myth
Which one?s more green over a lifetime?
by Bengt Halvorson (2007-04-16)
Link (http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/Green_Car_News/Prius_Versus_HUMMER_Exploding_the_Myth.S196.A12220.html)
Over the past year, there has been an explosion of stories raising questions about the real environmental cost of hybrids.
One of the most misleading ones, which has been spread by countless blogs over the past several weeks, and cited without verification by several sources that appear reputable, looks to have originated in a story last November in England's Daily Mail, a right-leaning, British tabloid paper, which bore the gleefully spiteful title 'Toyota factory turns landscape to arid wilderness.' An editorial, published last month in a newspaper for a small state university on the East Coast, helped bring this misleading report a new life.
But it isn't a Toyota factory at all. The automaker has, in fact, only been purchasing significant amounts of nickel from the Sudbury , Ontario , Inco mine for its batteries in recent years, while the environmental disaster the headline is referring to largely occurred more than thirty years ago.
And that ore is at the core of a semi-urban legend that leads to dumb headlines like "HUMMER Greener than Prius," and others we've seen recently.
Toyota says that nickel has been mined from in Sudbury since the 1800s, and that "the large majority of the environmental damage from nickel mining in and around Sudbury was caused by mining practices that were abandoned decades ago." Out of the Inco mine's 174,800-ton output in 2004, Toyota purchased 1000 tons, just over a half-percent of its output. The plant's emissions of sulfur dioxide are down 90 percent from 1970 levels, and it's targeting a 97-percent reduction in those emissions by 2015, according to Toyota.
Of course, metal-hydride hybrid batteries aren't the only use for nickel. One widespread use of nickel is for the chrome (chromium-nickel) plating that's widely used in trim and wheels for luxury vehicles. And according to the Nickel Institute, which represents trade groups, manufacturers, and nickel producers, about two-thirds of all nickel mined goes toward stainless steel, which is of course widely used in vehicles - exhaust systems, for instance. Another significant portion goes toward engine alloys - pistons, rings, liners and the like; in general, the larger the engine, the more nickel it's likely to have.
Living in the limelight
On to the other, more significant source of these stories: About a year ago, CNW Marketing Research, Inc., of Bandon, Ore., a firm with a well-established reputation for industry forecasting, made claims last year that that hybrid vehicles used more energy in their lifetime, from creation to disposal, than many SUVs. The tagline of one of CNW's releases was, "Hybrids Consumer More Energy in Lifetime Than Chevrolet's Tahoe SUV."
With the full study released in December, called "Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles from Concept to Disposal," CNW claims to assess all stages of vehicle production, including research and development, raw material production and sourcing, production and assembly, sales, operation and maintenance, and disposal of the vehicle at the end of its life.
CNW argues that its study is not geared to be an assault on hybrids, but in interpreting its results CNW states that environmentalists' faith in hybrids as a more efficient means of transportation is misguided to a degree, as many larger vehicles with lower gas mileage actually use less energy from dust to dust. Several outlets have held on to the idea that a Prius does more damage to the environment than a HUMMER, with the CNW study as their sole source. But of course, that study aside, there's a fatal flaw in this reporting: environmental damage and energy are not at all synonymous.
Lifecycle analysis is nothing new to the auto industry. It's been done internally for decades with cars and all manner of household appliances and electronics. What is new this decade is that a significant portion of shoppers are considering it, spurred by the recent movement toward environmental consumerism, and pop-culture books like 2002's Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, which focuses on the recycling of consumer goods.
CNW's research was done largely 'under the radar,' using publicly available data along with phone and mail research and on-site analysis of assembly plants. The research included demographics such as how far the vehicle was expected to go in its lifetime and over how many years the vehicle will remain with its initial buyer. Other factors included lifetime maintenance, mechanical repairs, and accident repairs; design and development costs; manufacturing (including energy in employee commuting); administrative support; transportation to retail; dealership operations; and the cost of recycling and disposing of parts and materials.
HUMMER has, for example, established a new national network of new, standalone Quonset hut, hangar-style dedicated dealership facilities over the past several years, and a completely new assembly plant was built for the assembly of the H2 SUV, which would bring their lifetime cost up significantly.
After all the numbers had been crunched, among vehicles sold in the U.S. in the 2005 calendar year, CNW found the least expensive vehicle to be the Scion xB at 48 cents per mile in overall energy costs. The most energy-expensive vehicle was the Maybach at $11.58 per mile in energy costs over its estimated lifetime. The VW Phaeton, Rolls-Royce line, and Bentley line followed closely behind. In all of these instances, these are overall energy costs incurred from inception through disposal, not energy costs associated only with vehicle ownership.
To compare, the Toyota Prius involves $3.25 per mile in energy costs over its lifetime, according to CNW, while several full-size SUVs scored lower. A Dodge Viper involves only $2.18 in energy per mile over its lifetime. The Range Rover Sport costs $2.42, and the Cadillac Escalade costs $2.75.
"If a consumer is concerned about fuel economy because of family budgets or depleting oil supplies, it is perfectly logical to consider buying high-fuel-economy vehicles, said Art Spinella, president of CNW, in a release. "But if the concern is the broader issues such as environmental impact of energy usage, some high-mileage vehicles actually cost society more than conventional or even larger models over their lifetime.
The junkyard brawl ensues
Some of the greater cost of hybrids, according to CNW, is due to the higher cost of recycling hybrids. On an energy basis, the firm says, vehicles cost an energy-equivalent average of $119,000 to recycle, while hybrids average $140,000. But CNW later says that it calculates the Prius's battery as costing $93 in energy to recycle.
Toyota says that credible scientific research has found that end-of-life recycling and disposal use disproportionately small amounts of energy. Although CNW does say that vehicle recycling accounts for about one-quarter of all the energy used in U.S. recycling, it also says that much of the extra energy cost of hybrids is due to their complexity, which requires more energy through many stages of its life, such as in sourcing materials and making repair.
"If Toyota can reduce the complexity of building hybrids to a simple 'plug and play' system whereby major hybrid electrics and electronics can be easily detached and disposed of for simplified replacement, the cost would drop dramatically. That is not the case with most hybrids today, however," CNW says.
Toyota has responded that CNW's study does not include any specific information on its methodology or data sources, and it does not at all agree with the bulk of scientific studies on vehicle lifecycle analysis, many of which conclude that about 85 percent of total lifetime energy use occurs in driving the vehicle. CNW's study shows these ratios approximately reversed.
In a prepared statement, the automaker says, "Toyota has been doing lifecycle assessment for many years to evaluate various advanced vehicle technology. We?believe that the best way to assess the environmental impact of a vehicle is to do a full evaluation of all the inputs and outputs in every stage of a vehicle life."
Fueling the controversy
David Friedman, research director of the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks that CNW's results and apparent methodology bring red flags. "This study has been completely contradicted by studies from MIT, Argonne National Labs and Carnegie Mellon's Lifecycle Assessment Group. The reality is hybrids can significantly cut global warming pollution, reduce energy use, and save drivers thousands at the pump," commented Friedman.
CNW's figures, for example, show that the Civic Hybrid can cost nearly $165,000 more over its lifetime, "dust to dust," than the standard Civic, which is a difficult figure to swallow, even considering the extra development, materials, and disposal of the Hybrid variant. Honda's Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system is a mild hybrid system and many engineers have admired its elegant and simple design and function, considering the efficiency gains.
The CNW study fuels further controversy by alleging that automakers - specifically mentioning Toyota - don't include the energy that goes into modules that are built by suppliers and then shipped to the assembly plant. But Toyota insists that its methods include all materials and components that go into the vehicle, not only those manufactured internally by the automaker.
Toyota concedes that there is more energy required in the materials production stage for its hybrids, but says that it is overwhelmingly made up by less energy used during its driving lifetime.
But Toyota also says that the study uses an unrealistically low estimated lifetime for hybrids, and that there's no data to support its assumptions in this. For instance, according to the study the average Prius is expected to go 109,000 miles over its lifetime, while a Hummer H1 would go 379,000 miles. CNW says about hybrids: "?these are generally secondary vehicles in a household OR they are driven in restricted or short range environments such as college campuses or retirement neighborhoods."
One other area of the study that some critics have found to be misleading is that CNW only included the so-called design and development cost of models sold so far, not on the potential volume of that technology in the long run.
In a section that seems to be leading to the dismissal of existing hybrids as having technology with a short shelf life, the study goes on to say that "?many of the hybrid models - such as the Insight and Prius - are early renditions of the technology that are being or soon will be replaced by more efficient and less complicated versions effectively making the current versions obsolete within a few short years."
In a similar manner, the methodology also looks to take into account how many vehicles have been produced by existing factories so far, not how many vehicles might be produced over the lifetime of the factories, so Toyota and other automakers who have recently established more efficient factories lose out, even though the facilities might be more efficient. The firm also includes the energy importance of where assembly plants are located, in factors such as how far, and how, its employees commute.
Grasping the 'social energy' of what you drive
2008 HUMMER H3 Alpha | CNW also includes overall "social energy expenditures," which it describes in very little detail except with a coffee analogy, alleging that while most peer-review papers only analyze the energy demands from the grinding of the coffee forward, the firm's report analyzes everything including the "coffee mug maker."
But if the mug could also just as well be used for tea or hot chocolate, do you still include that cost? As you dig farther up the supply chain, the answers seem to get fuzzier, and without figures or meaty methodology details from CNW it's unclear what kind of assumptions were made. The firm has not responded to our request for comment.
While its methodology may remain unclear, the report does include some useful and eye-opening information that few car shoppers had likely even thought about. Hopefully this controversy will spur shoppers to demand more information about the vehicles they drive other than emissions and mpg and consider the big-picture impact.
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>>And an immediate government-sponsored effort in immediately deploying geothermal and wind power while it is feasible. Not ten years form now, but now.<<
Why government sponsored? Personally I don't trust the government to take care of my health, why would I trust them with my thermostat? ;)
If there's money to be made, American comaponies will be there to make it.
By "government-sponosred, I meant "government incentives".
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And not so strangely it's the side who buys the Prious, who demands others drive what THEY deem appropriate.
Look, this is a dire situation. It is EXACTLY the same and extremely comparable to small towns starting fire departments, sanitation departments, police departments.
You don't have the personal freedom to "choose" to crap in the street every day because it destroys the environment, its' hazardous to peoples' health and its indecent.
You shouldn't have the personal freedom to use a vehicle to crap in the sky every day. It's EXACTLY the same.
and on a related note, perhaps Ami has access to this info, but I heard the logistics of putting together and/or transporting Prius parts, especially the battery, cost much more in both fuel (that dreaded oil based gasoline) and shipping logistics, than a Hummer's parts & battery. In otherwords, to save the world, the Prius destroys it. Oh, the irony :D
All the more reason to force the domestic auto industry to start building hybrids immediately.
And yes, I do mean FORCE as in regulate harshly and in possibly nationalize the auto industry.
Don't like it? Move away, loser.
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>>And an immediate government-sponsored effort in immediately deploying geothermal and wind power while it is feasible. Not ten years form now, but now.<<
Why government sponsored? Personally I don't trust the government to take care of my health, why would I trust them with my thermostat? ;)
If there's money to be made, American comaponies will be there to make it.
This is more important than making a buck. This is about public safety.
Would you like to have to pay for a personal police force? Personal fire department? Personal sherriff?
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I wasn't referring to a generic "nearly all container ships" or "container ship industry", Js. I was referring to what I heard in that the making and specific shipping of Prius parts, espcially the battery, was FAR more expensive and "fuel burning" than that of the Hummer. And there in lies the irony I was referring to
But thanks for the general info on Danish shipping
You know, even thinking of it that way, it STILL behooves us to use them because think of all the vehicles shipped here from other countries that DON'T conserve fuel.
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>>By "government-sponosred, I meant "government incentives".<<
Aren't there already government incentives? I'm pretty sure you can get rebates and tax rebates for installing certain kinds of alternative energy sources in your home. The same is true for businesses I believe.
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Rich -- they are pitiful incentives. I know, I recently expanded our home.
Tell you what: pay me a tax credit for half of a solar energy system and I'll purchase one tomorrow.
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>>Rich -- they are pitiful incentives. I know, I recently expandined our home.<<
Tell me, why should the government (me) pay you anything at all? Isn't saving money on your energy bill enough motivation? I've added insulation with no help from you. I've purchased more energy efficient windows with my own dough. Who decided that the government should subsidize this kind of thing anyway?
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>>Rich -- they are pitiful incentives. I know, I recently expandined our home.<<
Tell me, why should the government (me) pay you anything at all? Isn't saving money on your energy bill enough motivation? I've added insulation with no help from you. I've purchased more energy efficient windows with my own dough. Who decided that the government should subsidize this kind of thing anyway?
Then people generally will not do it --pretty simple math, actually.
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>>Then people generally will not do it --pretty simple math, actually.<<
Why not? Because the government won't help them? Considering America today, that may have some truth to it however, people don't ask the government to pay for half of a new car or half of a new furnace or water heater. Do they?
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Adding insulation to your attic or undefloor might actually make your house more comfortable .
If the government forbad it some people would do it anyway.
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>>Then people generally will not do it --pretty simple math, actually.<<
Why not? Because the government won't help them? Considering America today, that may have some truth to it however, people don't ask the government to pay for half of a new car or half of a new furnace or water heater. Do they?
Here is the deal. If America wants to import less foreign oil, then encouraging people to add insulation, more effcient heating/coolings systems, etc is a painless way to help. Since most people won't without some encouragement, why not help them by offeirng an incentive?
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>>Then people generally will not do it --pretty simple math, actually.<<
Why not? Because the government won't help them? Considering America today, that may have some truth to it however, people don't ask the government to pay for half of a new car or half of a new furnace or water heater. Do they?
Here is the deal. If America wants to import less foreign oil, then encouraging people to add insulation, more effcient heating/coolings systems, etc is a painless way to help. Since most people won't without some encouragement, why not help them by offeirng an incentive?
The natural move of the maret will produce some incentive by raiseing the price of fuel. Prognosticateing that this price will continue to rise is easy.
Does the public need the government to tell them anything?
Maybe , but perhaps not in this case.
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I agree with Plane. Do people need mommy to tickle them behind the ears to motivate them, or are we adults? Are we capable of acting in our own best interest without being told by government?
I don't need incentive from the government to save money and do the right thing for the planet.
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"I don't need incentive from the government to save money and do the right thing for the planet."
I am glad then you are such a great citizen, Rich, because I do. When I get a decent incentive, I'll od it. And I suspect I am not alone as is evidenced by the vast majority of folks who are NOT dramatically upgrading for energy saving.
I suspect it will stay this way until the Govt offers incentives, too.
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I never thought of it as being a good citizen. It's just what's best for me and mine.