I drive an 80mph, 166mpg SUV
Posted by The Technocrat | Filed under Geeky, Home & Auto
OK, after reading the headline, you’re probably now looking for “the catch”. There isn’t one. I drive a 2002 Toyota RAV4 EV. It costs about $1.80 to go 100 miles, and I commute daily at about 75 miles per hour without any problems. And if you think I baby it, I don’t. Ask the bureaucracy over at the emission place when they made me bring it in, despite my explanations over the phone. They have an electric-vehicle burnout to show for it. (They loved it)
(Picture of the RAV4EV at right, in line at the Emissions Testing Facility. The funny parts were when they tried to pressure-test the gas cap (it doesn’t have one), and when the computer wouldn’t read the engine’s RPM sensor (no engine, no RPM’s)…eventually they just had me sign a form and I was on my way with an audience of 10 emissions-testing personnel)
Now that we have that out of the way…
OK, so maybe there is one catch after all. It doesn’t use gas. At all. It’s not a hybrid, it’s an electric vehicle. The ‘mpg’ I’m listing here (166) is how far I can go on $3 of electricity, so it is a “mpg-cost-equivalent. You’ve probably never heard of this car, because there is a long list of people who don’t want you to have one, including the manufacturers and oil cartels. In fact, these same people were successful in getting rid of the RAV4 EV back in 2003, via their lobbyists and marketing departments.
- The manufacturer’s excuse? No-one wants a usable car that requires little, if any maintenance, and gets the cost equivalent of 166mpg. Of course, the “lack of demand” was no surprise, considering the car was never advertised too strongly.
- The oil cartel’s excuse? Well, you can imagine.
I’ve worked pretty hard on the Wikipedia entry for the RAV4EV , along with other RAV4 EV owners and fans, so check it out. I’m not the most knowledgeable person about electric vehicles, but I tried to post everything I could personally verify. The RAV4 EV community filled in the rest, and they’ve been doing a great job! (as most uninhibited collaborative communities do).
I had planned on writing more about the RAV4 EV here, but the wikipedia article does such a great job, I decided to let you read it for yourselves… Go ahead and read it a second, then come back, I’m not done yet…
Now that you’re back, you probably want to know what you can do to get an Electric Vehicle, since they’re easy on you wallet and the earth (including your own health!). We all need you to voice our opinion about the blocking of the electric vehicle in the United States. As we’ve seen time and time again, companies who have their own sales channels usually try to stifle progress and force people into adopting their business model (*cough*RIAA*cough*) Not only does this end up being unsuccessful in the end (*cough*bittorrent*cough*), but it’s also not fair to all of those Geeks out there trying to use technology for the betterment of everyone, instead of the profit of a few. In this case, the manufacturers even went to the extreme of buying the cars back, just to crush them out of existence.
Given our present involvement in the oil-rich middle east, it seems to make sense get our resource dependence out of there. We can see every night what our money is doing to our own soldiers. I have a hard time dealing with the feeling that every tank of gas might be funding a clip-full of AK47 7.62mm bullets, or maybe a rocket-propelled grenade. Despite this, oil lobbyists seem do anything possible to preserve their current fuel delivery channels and revenue, choosing instead to work on profits for the right-now, instead of planning for the near future.
You might be saying ‘whatever, I don’t know anything about the oil companies of the world, so who cares.’ To illustrate this point to a Geek, this makes about as much sense as if AMD/Intel would block the development of any processor over 1Ghz, in order to keep a grid computing business alive. Except that people don’t die from slow processors… Well, it doesn’t make any sense in that hypothetical situation, and it doesn’t make any sense in the real world.
The car companies claim that there is no demand for these vehicles. You can find them selling used on eBay for $20,000 more than they originally sold for. That sounds like demand to me.
Geeks, we need to create the demand. Your wallet and earth will be better off for it.
In addition, if any of you want to know anything/want pictures/want youtube videos, let me know. I think I’m one of, if not the only electric car in Chicago (they were generally sold in southern California), so if anyone is in Chicago and wants to check the car out for yourselves, let me know.
Here are some other resources:
Check out these groups who have been fighting tirelessly on your behalf get you the technology you deserve, and most likely want. These are the EFF’s of the electric vehicle world:
Think electric cars are too nerdy for you? Image how dumb the driver of a $440,000 Porsche feels after being beat 0-60 and in the quarter-mile by a new $100,000 electric roadster.
Some more detail on the RAV4 EV and Electric Vehicles in general:
Think I’m some crackpot? Sorry, the coverup is real news. In fact, there’s a movie coming out this summer about it. Your local theater will get it for you if you ask. Lucky you – you can say ‘I already heard about that 2 months ago at GeekLimit.com…’ to your friends. So Geeky…
Feature coming June 28: Who Killed The Electric Car
And the next X-Prize is coing to be based on a high-efficiency vehicle ! (Maybe I should show up in a stock RAV4EV…)
Want to complain to someone who can make a difference? You can’t match the money “donated to them”, but you can write your congressman/woman and be very noisy. Maybe a newspaper or two will notice… 
(One of them might write back, mine did – Henry Hyde is my new penpal… OK, not really, but cool anyway…)
Oh, and I’m not the only one who is a fan of the RAV4 EV. See if you recognize this guy:
(jungle and famous image from dontcrush)
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posuere nunc justo tempus leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec libero. Suspendisse bibendum.
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May 10, 2006 at 1:52 am
Ummm… minor point about the coal burning issue?
While not representing the MAJORITY of power generation, I have yet to see any other method that makes a hydro-electric dam power my car. They’re pretty clean aren’t they? And currently functional on a large scale? Of course there’s also wind, which is being implemented in lots of places.
No… they couldn’t handle the MASSIVE IMPACT of power consumption that these cars would create on their own, but that’s not my point. Currently, fossil fuels allow a 100% ratio of pollution to power, while the entire grid, right now, has SOME percentages that are absolutely clean, and even the “dirtiest” (like coal) are regulated and kept cleaner than the current damage from cars. So theoretically, even if coal was AS dirty as my car (which it’s not), the impact would STILL be less because some minor percentage of my car’s power would come from absolutely clean sources like hydro and wind.
As for capacity — ha! I own a SMALL colocation facility (4,000 sq. ft.) that pulls a regular 250kVA load and is one of 5 like it in one building. Compare that to the raw square MILEAGE of colocation space in this country and you’ll see demand can be met. This country has increased its power demand by huge amounts since the arrival of the home PC.
The worst case would be exactly what DID happen during the deregulation of California coupled with the rapid buildout of computer facility capacity. Rolling brown-outs and consumer dis-satisfaction.
So what did the Electric Companies do at that time? You’re right, they wrung their hands and cried that they couldn’t generate the capacity and that’s why we all sit in the dark now, wishing we had high-speed Internet and 10 different devices in our homes that never power down (your fridge, your 2 tvs, your wireless phone, your computer if you leave it on, or your laptop charger, your heatpump if you have one, and usually at least 1 or two lights in a standard home (e.g. externals, the bathroom nightlight, etc.), your DVD player, your CD player, your AV Receiver, your VCR, your TiVo, your alarm system … and even your power meter itself.)
Did they just let us starve?
No, stupid. They generated more capacity to meet demand.
Oh — btw — the clean air regulations on that new capacity are a lot easier to enforce than the guy driving down the road with oil spewing out his tailpipe.
May 10, 2006 at 4:28 am
Yawn. Not interested in this car at all. It’s for very rich self-righteous yuppies.
May 10, 2006 at 6:17 am
lame. I was born in ’79, how am I a yuppie? And the last time I looked, hippies/yuppies didn’t grill out three times a week and play FPS’s for fun…
May 10, 2006 at 8:04 am
[...] Also leaves a burnout at the emissions place when they forced him to take it in, lol.read more | digg story Bookmarks:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
May 10, 2006 at 8:40 am
The us is spending how many billions in iraq? Is it trillions yet? Electric cars would come down in price with higher volume. Yeah there are problems such as not being able to drive long distances at one time BUT cars have problems too like smog and dependance on oil. To those that dont think of these as a problem look at your taxes and the deaths in iraq. Go to phoenix or LA and look at the city from the distance. Breath the air in the “country” and then the city and tell me those arent problems.
May 10, 2006 at 8:46 am
166MPG SUV…
I didn't mistype and you didn't misread. This SUV gets 166MPG and would be available everywhere in the US if the oil cartel didn't lobby against it.
I drive an 80mph, 166mpg SUV
…
May 10, 2006 at 8:53 am
I’d be curious to know the ecological cost of those batteries versus the burning of gas or diesel.
Zach said:
“in response to the 6000 watt a night thing– most people probably wouldn’t drain their battery enough to have to charge it every night duh”
That “duh” helped convince me.
May 10, 2006 at 9:15 am
Well, the comment I made about needing to burn coal sparked something. I guess that’s good. One of the best things about our capitalist system is that consumers can choose what they want, and industry will follow. The problem with this vehicle is that they only sold about 300 per year. The company won’t make money off of a product like that. They are, however, making tons of money off of hybrids, and they’re set to make those even more efficient http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/04/10/next-prius-to-offer-113-mpg/. There is no conspiracy here, it’s just difficult to make Americans give up their lifestyles. In ten years, I think you’ll see a marked improvement in how we, as a nation, are dealing with CO2 output. Give the free market a chance. I know for a fact that our system has a much better chance at producing a clean vehicle and clean power production than a system like that of China. Who wants to bet that China and India will do it first or better? They’re the problem of the future, not the US.
May 10, 2006 at 10:11 am
I agree with letting the best solution come to market.
Also, it’s important to note that those mileage numbers are the EPA estimates, which are normally off compared to real-word results. Also, some magazine just did an article that shows that the hybrids are way off in epa vs. real-world. Something along the lines of the Prius getting 27 mpg.
In the real world, you can’t beat a diesel like VW’s TDI. Unfortunately, these engines have their own issues, being based on non-renewable fuels (until B100 is standardized) and having issues with particulates, especially when many small trips are made (soot apparently chokes off the internals…).
May 10, 2006 at 10:15 am
Why is it that whenever something that a very few people like is dropped or canceled there is always some kind of conspiracy behind it? Toyota will make any car they think they can sell and my guess is that the only people that would find this vehicle attractive are the enviromentalist geeks out there and how many of them are there? So I think its more likely that they stopped selling this vehicle because they weren’t selling enough of them to make it worthwhile. When it came out gas wasn’t $3 a gallon. Now it might sell much better.
Do the oil companies lobby against this sort of thing? Sure, if were up to them we would have gas powered toilets but to suggest there is some kind of grand conspiracy between every automaker and the oil companies is ridiculous. This car has obvious drawbacks the main one being lack of range.
May 10, 2006 at 10:33 am
well of course the enviromentalists will buy it first, and there aren’t as many of them as there are the ‘over consume, bigger is better, pride filled gas gusuling typical American jerk’ but eventualy, they and even you will smarten up. Also, as you said the car was not as good all around as whats out there now, but thats the way it always is at first, but if you dont make it then, than your not going to produce the next generation electric car as soon, and will post pone the wide spread use of EV’s. So what this article is saying, is that the gas tycoons with the help of their government friends, imposed themselves on this car manufacturere, to not be the one to produce this first generation, less profiable, vehicle any time soon. Thus screwing the world over for another few years, and the masses didn’t hear about it, cars were bought back hence… CONSPIRACY.
May 10, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Matthew, I have a couple of issues with your conspiracy theory. First, what kind of leverage would an oil company have over an autombile manufacturer? “Ditch the EV or we’ll…” what? Also, the federal tax credit for an electric vehicle is $4,000, which is twice that of hybrids. Remember, this tax credit is offered by Bush, a “Big Oil” man. Toyota didn’t think that Americans would spend thousands of dollars on a vehicle that is teathered to their home. In other words, it was a risky investment. This is why it was sold in limited markets and not advertised widely. They wanted to spend their advertising dollars where they had a greater potential for return. On a side note, throwing around government conspiracy theories doesn’t help you win over the average American, in my opinion. In fact, I think that it alienates the vast majority of the people you are trying to convince. The same goes for your “over consume, bigger is better, … America jerk” comment. Try to stick more to the factual, market oriented arguments. Continuing in your current vein of argument will only delay and hamper the very actions you are advocating.
May 10, 2006 at 12:41 pm
EV is more effecient polution wise than gas. Whenever you COAST or STOP you are using ZERO POWER (and in fact gain some if you have regenerative braking)
Gas Cars polute 100% of the time they are running. so YES power plant polution will go up but CAR POLUTION will go down by a much larger amount than PP polution will go up.
ALSO not all areas use Dino power for there PP’s which tilts the scale even farther in favor toward EV
the one thing I am unsure of is how much polution is created in the PRODUCTION of these battery packs. I am better its lower than the polution create in making all the “parts” in a gas powered car. but a gas car will also last a lot longer so its a toss up I just dont know.
I do know this. “smog” as nasty as it is is needed. we need to increase “polutant” or particulate polution and decrease green hpouse polution. you see we are warming the planet with global warming (green house gases) and also COOLING the planet with Global DImming (Particulate polution emissions diesel ejecta etc.. etc.. ie soot and crap)
alas soot is much worse for people “directly” (health) than green house gasses are.
we need to increase “soot” basically to cool the planet until we have Green House gases under control and THEN worry about soot clean up.
sad but neccessary truth.
for my daily cummute 5 days a week an EV would be perfect! I could go about 12 days before I had to recharge !! (6 miles each way) for my other job I drive my 76 300D of which I hope to soon play around with biodiesel.
Basically I would plug it in to recharge every other sunday and I would be set as long as I only used it for my 5 day daily commute (the other 2 days at my second job its 54 miles each way but a 100mile range car would work fine for this too since I could recharge at my work)
also the load is only high if you 220 charge them if they enable the slower lower load 120 charge it will not be much of a drain on the grid at all !! most people can easily afford t let it charge overnight without worry of not having enough go juice.
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/
May 10, 2006 at 4:03 pm
[...] A story about a 2002 Toyota RAV4 EV and a trip to the < ahref=”http://geeklimit.com/2006/05/09/i-drive-a-30k-80mph-166mpg-suv/”>emission testing facility. The author tries to shed light on the benefit of hybrid cars [...]
May 12, 2006 at 3:01 am
one more thing, how often does an electric car need an OIL CHANGE?
May 12, 2006 at 10:09 am
[...] interesting story on an electric toyota over at GeekLimit . Interesting not only because of the car, which is mildly interesting, but more so for the comments. [...]
May 15, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Yeah, everybody wants a car that you have to spend 5 hours to recharge every 140 miles…
I could like go on one small trip and barely make it back. I guess it’s fine for city driving.
Give it a range of 500 miles or make it so it can be recharged in 10 minutes.. and yeah.. everyone will want one.
Once batteries get compact enough that they can go for 300 miles and charge in 6 minutes… essentially acting like a gas car.. then people will want them. However, on a bright note, once hyrbids become more common the economy of scales may make electric motors and batteries more effective and less expensive.
May 15, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Right, as has been said before, the ideal situation for a 2-car family is to use a vehicle like this as the primary commuting vehicle and a diesel-electric hybrid for the longer distances, utilizing the existing infrastructure.
May 22, 2006 at 2:50 am
We have been building plug in hybrids at UCD for over 20 years, some with electric ranges off over 80 miles, and hybrid operation as high as 70 mpg. Many of these vehicles have been conversions of exsisting vehicles such as mercury sables, and even an EV1. They all have performance that is better than their stock counter parts. The total emissions from the electrical power plant to the road are less than half of that of gasoline, and so is the cost per mile.
We are the only research team in the country doing this kind of work. We compete in national vechicle design competetion every year. We are the only team entering PHEV vehicles, and we are also one of a hand full of teams who does not get direct support from a major american auto manufacturer. Finally the manufacturers make it a point to hire on as many of our leaders as possible and assign them positions where they can be happily paid doing work that does not involve HEV, or PHEVs. I think that is the best indicator that PHEVs work.
http://www.team-fate.net
May 22, 2006 at 10:21 am
cool stuff, thanks for pushing PHEV's. They're definitely the next step!
Check out the Electrocharger (google it) too… the company seems to be sitting on it and doing nothing…I offered to buy a diesel Jetta and be a test candidate, but they weren't interested. Time to fire up Sketchup and design my own diesel-electric hybrid, I think…
May 27, 2006 at 4:08 am
The A123 batteries are supposed to have a power density of > 3000W/kg per their web site:
http://www.a123systems.com
Also here’s a chart which shows gasoline at 13200 W-hr/kg.
http://www.energyadvocate.com/batts.htm
If these two ratings are comparable, and electric motors are 96% efficient compared to 20% for gasoline engines (as mentioned earlier in this thread), this is what I get:
3000 x 0.96 = 2880 usable (electric)
13200 x 0.20 = 2640 usable (gasoline)
May 29, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Oops that chart was POWER (Watts) not ENERGY. (Watt-hours). Anyone know how the energy density compares between NiMH and the A123 batteries?
October 25, 2006 at 2:53 pm
[...] Page Summary: You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Buying power is more powerful than citizenship and civic and political action. If everyone were to go out and buy electric cars this would surely illuminate the theory that the dollar has more power than the vote. If you think the battery will go nowhere, Toshiba is using it to make batteries for power tools.read more | digg story [...]
December 10, 2006 at 6:41 pm
I wonder about an EV that is a microturbine spinning a genny through a reduction transmission with big capacitors as current buffers.
I’ve searched and found few mentions of this.
As for our current situation, I hear that we have more fossil fuel in the ground and under the sea in North America than what’s in the Middle East. It would seem logical for us to completely cut off our consumption of M.E. oil, get the F out, and let the Shias and Sunnis kill each other off.
January 27, 2007 at 10:24 am
I think all of you are forgetting that photovoltaics and wind turbines can provide a clean power source for ev vehicles! Why not combine the two? If you are going to spend the money anyway on an ev car, then spend some more on the off-grid system to fuel the car and your home. Don’t depend on coal to recharge the vehicle. I promise you it is cleaner than just staying on the grid with an ev vehicle. EV’s are great if you could power them in this manner. There is some pollution generated manufacturing the PV’s, and some in the batteries for both systems, but please, if even 50% of the homes in America did this, we could be off foreign oil permanently!
January 28, 2007 at 12:16 am
Thanks for posting Susie. You bring up a good point. What’s becoming more and more obvious is that we need to get used to being open to new ideas, and understand that ‘just because that’s how it is/has been’ isn’t a valid excuse anymore, due to the wide array of technology and knowledge available to us!
February 25, 2007 at 5:04 pm
what you guys dont realise there are struntion batteries that power sattelites and the northern weather stations that have been in production for over 20 years and will last 20 years without a charge
February 26, 2007 at 9:13 am
Sounds interesting, I’d be interested in seeing how powerful those are though – they might be optimized for low-power, long-duration use, instead of high-power, shorter-duration… In any case, there definitely is way more battery technology out there than most people realize, and we most likely could be using it for much more than we currently do.
April 19, 2007 at 2:19 am
It goes beyond merely the power put into the batteries.
First of all consider the costs of mining and generally obtaining the exotic chemicals and stuff the batteries are made of, then transporting it etc etc. They don’t just plop into the battery maker’s hands.
Then add the cost of actually creating the batteries themselves – again by no means emission-free.
Next consider the emission costs of recycling said batteries.
Add the costs and landfill problems of disposing of the remaining toxic sludge.
Now consider these costs over the average life-time of the car. A good petrol engine car will go for around 150,000 miles or so, much more sometimes – how often would you need to recycle the batteries for that?
Once you’ve figured THOSE elements in then you can start comparing the pollution and energy costs.
Done on a large scale we’re going to have tankers full of toxic stuff to create batteries. Heaven help us if that runs aground.
I often see the figure thrown around of petrol engines only being “20% efficent” but that’s highly misleading.
It’s actually a lot more efficent to refine the fossil fuel and put it straight into the vehicle than it may at first sound!
I should also point out that cars DO have batteries – and improvements in batteries would help MPG as the engine wouldn’t need to keep charging the thing so much?
I have no objection to electric cars per se – they don’t have the same kind of power curve issues and can accelerate rapidly, don’t sit there throbbing in traffic etc. Give me one as speedy and easy to drive as my petrol car that I can “top up” once a week like I do my current car, at the same price (car and fuel) and I’d be happy to switch.
Likewise I have nothing against a good conspiracy theory but don’t really see one here. If Toyota coulda, they woulda – if they weren’t interested in exploring electric engines they wouldn’t have produced the thing in the first place. Evidently experience has shown it is not a feasible vehicle at this time.
Might be great for the owner but you have to consider everything else that goes into it.
Put it this way – ever seen an electrically-powered gas tanker? Well there’s a reason for that…
April 20, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I can’t believe how many people are misinformed about electric cars.
Where do you read this crap that coal-powered electricity emits more greenhouse gas than gasoline powered cars? You make these claims without doing any research, so where the heck did you hear it? Centralized-coal-plants produce less greenhouse than gas-powered cars, and it will only get cleaner as we change the grid:
http://www.ilea.org/lcas/taharaetal2001.html
http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectricCar.pdf
Where do you read the crap that the electrical grid can’t support millions of cars charging at night without building new energy plants? Once again no legitimate sources of research, just bold claims. From what I’ve read, according to MIT Technology Review, over 180 million electric cars can be charged per night (over half the pop of the US) with no infrastructure change:
blog.wired.com/cars/2006/12/how_phevs_will_.html
Where do you hear that the cost of manufacturing and making batteries and recycling them (used in millions of computers everywhere) is so damaging to the environment? What about the cost of extracting oil, completely destroying habitats, transferring that oil by the barrels from remote regions of the earth under regimes that support terrorism, only to make more greenhouse gas when the oil is refined, and then again transported to gas stations, which you have to drive to (making more greenhouse gas)… is that better than buying a battery every 5-10 years and plugging it in from home, using local power?
Anyone who says local generated power isn’t better to use in transportation is either a PR rep for Exxon/Mobil or really good friends with “the terrorists”.
I hope in the next five years this FUD gets exposed for what it is, but considering Exxon/Mobil and others have an army of PR managers attacking EVs, I think it will just get worse. The future is very uncertain.
May 6, 2007 at 6:33 am
Okay, here’s the big thing that I always noticed never gets mentioned in all discussions about electric cars I have seen, that I feel it is my duty to post about.
As mentioned here by many, the electric car, even at best, doesn’t solve all the pollution, dependence on foreign oil, etc., etc., etc. problems. Furthermore there is more wrong with the car dominated culture than just those sorts of things. Ideally we should if not totally getting rid of private car use, cut it way, way, way back. Ideally I would really prefer using trains for long distance travel and human power for short distance travel. At the same time as having an energy use problem we have a terrible obesity problem. If we at least tried to use private cars as little as possible we could make progress to solving both of these problems, and create a better general quality of life as well. The problem is, for most it is impractical to totally do without private cars, so without radical measures that we are probably unprepared to use, there will be cars on the road.
The problem with petrol cars, though, is there’s no such thing as a small number of them on the road, because they breed themselves. Who wants to walk or bike next to an exhaust pipe? The great thing I see about the electric car is that it is capable of breaking the car use chain. Even *if* the pollution problem were merely transferred to the power station, that tranference *would* be a good thing, because people can walk and bike next to an electric car. In other words, the biggest advantage I see to an electric car is that it is pedestrian compatible. Where I live there is a post office about a half mile away, but there’s no way to get to it without using a major highway. I walk there, when I go there, but it’s not pleasant, and it takes a good amount of dicipline not to be tempted to drive the short distance. Now that I have an electric car, at least if I do succumb to that temptation, I will not be contributing to the problem, because if all those cars out there were electric, I and probably many others would be far more likely to make the trip on foot. Similarly, I would have to take that same road, the A49, to get to the center of town if I wanted to go by bike. It’s only 3 miles, so a bike trip that many could be encouraged to make if all those cars on it were electric. And the more bikes feel comfortable on the road, the less cars will be on the road, and the less cars are the road the more bikes will be on the road, etc., etc..
As to the problem about limited range. They are really a blessing in disguise, because we shouldn’t really be using private cars for long distance travel anyway. We should be using trains. My electric car is nowhere near as good as a Toyota RAV4 EV. It has a maximum speed of 42 mph and a maximum range of 40 miles. But with the right infrastructure (inexspensive rental cars like it available at all train stations, and charging facilities in every major parking lot) I’d get rid of my petrol car in an instant.
June 2, 2007 at 9:43 pm
I love your enthusiasm. It is definately ashamed there are no more choices for electrical vehicles than their are. The Jetta TDI has been an alternative I have used and appreciated. Miss this car!! The public is getting pissed off. EV’s are on their way with companies like ZAP and Tesla.
February 9, 2009 at 10:21 am
Ouch! Good Cars Coming
Toyota is saving the best for the right market conditions in the U.S.A – Post (GRD) great republican depression, when Yankee Doodles’ raging sense of entitlement to comfort and extravagant luxury is beaten the fuck out of his asshole psychology by lack of credit and inability to pay, and he will willingly get down into a “Yaris” sized three cylinder, turbo-bio-diesel with H2 injection and Li batteries; plug-in, carbon fiber, plastic panels and all, and probably a three wheeler two seater commuter car to boot, and will gladly lose weight off of his fat ass to get better mileage! Right now, the arrogant sons of bitches feel that even some BMW models are not good enough to suit their fancies, time-payment fancies, no down payment fancies, but valid fancies on this side of the greatest depression ever, the great republican depression. VW of Germany withdrew their bio-turbo-diesel electric plug-in from the American market for the same reason! Americans still don’t get it! They are broke and not entitled to the food they currently eat, the toilet paper they currently waste, the very air the currently breathe, and their military can’t threaten good times to occur or bills to get paid, and you simply cannot eat extravagant aircraft carriers even if you named them “Clam Chowder” instead of “George Walker Bush”! After the great come-uppance, the GRD, the mindbending paradigm shifts, the high oil prices now in the works, the ever tightening credit crunch, the run away from the dollar by internationals, the fall of the dollar to worthlessness, the utter defeat and disgrace in Iraq, and not a drop of oil to show for it, the rows of foreclosed McMansions, the shystered banking system, bankrupted food chain, and a collapsed infrastructure, Yankee Doodle will stand in a shanty on the outskirts of town with his now aging, surgically altered great huge saggy boobed dumbbell sex maniac psycho-consumer wife and realize “Life is not on the glossy pages of magazines at all! It is real! and in the land we have polluted so badly, we can’t even swim in a lake!” Then, and only then will truly economical means of travel become available, and only to the select few who have converted totally to reality and no longer disrespect life.
June 12, 2009 at 4:26 pm
http://www.repp.org/discussion/ev/200007/msg00326.html
The aluminum-air cell is approximately 75 times more energy dense than conventional lithium ion cells and delivers significantly greater power in portable electronic applications. Aluminum-Power’s current focus is on this end of the market. Additionally, because of the simplicity of the fuel cell’s design, its dimensions can be customized to fit small and large technology.
July 23, 2009 at 10:09 am
While I appreciate everyone’s concern for the environment in this day and age, I feel that the outlook is quite short-sighted.1) 85% of the electricity produced in the US is done so by burning coal, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels out there.2) With the sheer number of electronic devices we use in our everyday lives presently, the power grid is already over-worked. Could you imagine if everyone was recharging their environmentaly concious electric vehicles every night or while at work? It would outright fail, forget the rolling brown-outs!! Even if the grid could support everyone recharging their cars, how much more coal would have to be burned to keep up with the demand? Millions of tons!! How much more pollution would that create? More than your average full-size SUV I’ll bet you.3) What about the environmental hazard of dumping all of those used up batteries when they fail in 7 to 10 years and need to be replaced? Currently the batteries used in hybrid vehicles are 10 times the size of a regular car battery where are they going to fit and in what land fills? They are toxic!
I don’t have the answers but as you can see, I do have questions about how environmentally sound these options are. We can find better answers, we just have to look a little deeper.
July 24, 2009 at 12:45 pm
quote your sources.
March 9, 2010 at 3:09 am
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March 30, 2010 at 12:45 pm
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March 31, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Good point, many thanks for the post.
April 18, 2010 at 12:47 pm
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May 2, 2010 at 1:22 am
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June 17, 2010 at 3:05 am
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June 24, 2010 at 3:19 pm
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June 25, 2010 at 4:02 am
I don’t believe that the oil crash is accurate and that we are now past the point of the oil crash. I believe many of the current situations have to do with this fact and it won’t be long before the msm and population wake up and know what is going on. For me and my family, we are getting ready for the next era.
July 20, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Nice work. If only all new SUV owners could drive so efficiently.
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