Driving hope from work yesterday I spent about 20 minutes on the interstate. I was driving a 2004 4 cylinder Jetta. I played a little game where I categorized each non-commercial vehicle going the other way into 3 groups. 1. Those that get worse mileage than me: trucks, vans, SUVs, big cars, etc 2. Those that get about the same as me: Accords, Camrys, Contours, etc 3. Those that get better than me: Civics, Foci, Miatas, Suzukis, etc Obviously in bunches I had to guess pretty quickly. Virtually all cars were lightly populated with passengers. Results: Group 1: ~80% Group 2: ~10% Group 3: ~10% We DESERVE high gas prices the way we waste it! (BTW, I can't believe how fun that little base model Jetta is compared to any Civic or Accord I've driven. Even with an automatic it is fun. It reminds me alot of a BMW 2002 I had years ago)
I hope you're just kidding (if only a little). Vilifying everyone else's driving habits (and choice of vehicles) will certainly ensure the end of the "car hobby". I'm already hearing "what do you need a car like that for?" and "look at that person wasting all that gas". It's only a matter of time before "sports cars" are officially deemed "bad for the environment" and restricted to museums (or rounded up and recycled for "the common good")
What's funny is listening to people that commute in trucks crying about the price of fuel. Or people that drive trucks and don't modify their behavior (lead foot ALL THE TIME) to conserve gas.
Actually it was only fun to do yesterday. I usually drive my 4 door 4 WD Tundra that gets 16 MPG combined.
Hey my daily driver is a Toyota Sequoia and it gets 11 mpg. The truck is always making right handed turns and can't pass a gas station without pulling in for a fill up. Of course my daughter's ML350 does much better; 15 mpg. I hope all those teridactyls know they went to a better world.
Besides, if I drive my Escalade 20 miles daily and you drive your Prius 50, we're both burning the same amount of gas per day. You say "Buy a more fuel efficient car!" to which I respond "Don't drive so much!" And if I've already paid my Escalade in full, it just doesn't make financial sense to pay for a new car with better mileage. Where is the gasoline going? Businesses. Public services. Government. Of which the latter two don't have any impetus to cut down usage. Our local PD probably uses more fuel in one day roaring around looking for petty traffic violations than my entire family uses in a month. The average citizen is getting the raw end of the deal here. First we are blamed, then we are fleeced, and soon we'll be forced. Great, CAFE wants to have 40 mpg fleetwide standard in 6 years. With food and energy costing so much, just how many of the 150 million people earning less than $30k/yr are gonna have any money left to buy these new cars?!
In Portland this week, I rented a Mitsubishi Endevor (sp?). WOW! What a great little SUV. It is just as comfortable as my V8 4-Runner (About 20% smaller) and got 22MPG. I just may go shopping for one tis weekend!
I just did a 1300mile drive to Houston for an Internship, I only had to fill up 3 times... 37mpg not to shabby
I usually use this for going to the store to pick up milk. For when a Hummer is just a little to small. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Did you notice that the truck is "on exhibit" with a display picture and info card mounted on a post out front like a dinosaur skeleton in a museum? More cars will end up like that as the price of gas continues skyward.
We could cut our usage in half in a few short years if the goverment would allow us to import diesel cars and trucks like the rest of the world. Oh no.... we have to do it the hard way.
And the most vocal supporters will be drivers of Escalades and Excursions that get far worse mileage. People may question using a Ferrari to commute in a city. But why does one person need an SUV that's bigger than my first apartment, burns more fuel, ... and doesn't move as quickly? (It was a beachfront apt -- it was built on sand. ) I'm still convinced that people buy SUVs to relieve them of having to look where they're going. Funny how the SUVs are even more likely than a Prius to block the EVO. The EVO may have the big wing, but it's also a 2 liter 4 banger -- an econobox engine, when the turbo isn't spinning. But it isn't the type of vehicles that's costing us fuel. I read a study done in Arlington VA, about how public transit would be "more attractive" if they set the traffic lights for the busses .... including stops. (I wondered where that "vehicle property tax" went.) Sounds okay on paper, but how do you predict the length of the bus stops? The lights stay red so long that *everyone* stops and sits ... ... and sits ... ... and sits ... ... and sits ... ... and here we are, once again, at the corner of "sit" and "rot". I burn more fuel on my DC metro commute than it took to travel four times the distance at twice the speed in Boston. And it takes longer. Most of which is spent sitting at traffic lights, idling fuel into the air. I'm literally getting *half* the gas mileage in DC that I got in Boston. Even in the 4cyl EVO. Some "green conscious" liberal town this is. The lights pack traffic into a herd of sheep, sitting around in formation, complaining about "how busy" the roads are. (Well, that one stretch that everyone is on.) But hey, if you drift out of your lane, the car next to you will just bounce you back in, right? Hint for city bureaucrats: Don't out-source your traffic management to a company that's invested in the oil firms --- and auto repair shops. But we musn't demand that drivers have a clue. America has remade itself into the land of universal incompetence. And people wonder why the economy is tanking.
This Gas thing is going to get interesting. Does GM and Ford retool and make cars with better MPG or do they wait it out? I have a Fiat 600 sitting in storage, so I am ready.
Chrysler's not waiting it out. They are rolling out the new Challenger as we type. They said they think it will be such a big seller that they will have to run 3 shifts despite high gas prices. They said people able and willing to buy cars like that don't care about gas prices.
Thats a long time away, what are they going to do in the meantime? It takes GM forever to tool somthing, The Camero, a car everyone wanted and it was going to take 3-4 years. I think they are going to sit on the bench and end up falling off for not making a change in their game plan, being over run by Toyota.
+1 on many accounts The USA didn't need a hostile country with sophisticated bombers to take out our oil supply, refineries, electrical power grid and food supply. (WE) did it to our own damn selves. And remember, lets be green!
blame the oil companies,traders and the falling USD Exon and shell made so much money last year and this year, Well.. lets hope the US and Canda find some oil in the poles,.. and russia does not make any claims on it.
Atta boy This gas thing is f'n ridicilous. For one there is no reason gas prices should be this high. For 2 there is no reason our cars should get such ****ty gas mileage. Cars built in the 90's got better gas mileage than cars today. WTF? Shouldn't the gas mileage be going up, not down? It's sad to see all the huge trucks and SUV's out there, but what can you do when people have an undying desire to feed their own egos?
If the high price of gas is supposedly based upon the increased global demand for oil, (like Chinese factories using so much gas and oil), then shouldn't the manufacturing output from all these global manufacturing plants have shown a DOUBLE or TRIPLE increase during the past year? If gas prices have tripled, how come the output of those manufacturing plants have not tripled to explain the rising gas prices? Have there been THREE times the number of cargo ships entering ports around the world as there were say,...a year ago? Strange how high gas prices are supposedly based upon supply and demand, but yet nobody seems to be able to show anybody where the increased amound of demand is coming from? Or the increased supply to fill that demand? I don't know of anybody that is buying THREE TIMES the amount of anything that they did a year ago. Everybody that I know is trying to save money and they are DECREASING their demand of anything and everything that they can.
The Chevy Volt and it's interchangeable platform is going to change the world. Nov 2010. Buy GM stock. http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/01/07/detroit-auto-show-its-here-gms-plug-in-hybrid-is-the-chevy-v/
China and India are huge industrial countries now. They and us are buying a lot more oil. It's not just oil prices that are through the roof. Steel, copper, rubber etc. have gone through the roof too. Why? China and India are buying tons of this stuff too. There's no "conspiracy" here folks. It's simple supply and demand as well as a little help from the futures traders. Let the prices rise!!! The higher they get the more new low cost options will become available to us. The answer is NOT making laws telling everyone what car to drive.. Don't like high gas prices??? Go buy an electric car!! Nobody has the "RIGHT" to cheap gas. This is a free country folks. Let's keep it that way.
They are fun little cars. We bought our daughter a used '04 Jetta GL w/ auto. a couple of years ago for her to learn to drive. I've driven it on occasion and it's actually a real "hoot" -- with plenty of get-up-and-go, even with the auto. tranny.