Green vehicles of 2007

A good summary of the 12 best and worst green vehicles.

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In the best list it's all Asian makes. Most know who they are! In the worst Mercedes has 4 places and Chrysler has 2, giving DC 50% of the worst vehicles.

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Hmmm - Prius is rated as the no. 2 green vehicle for 2007. Might want to read this:

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Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

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Bill Putney

That's a nice analysis of the situation. I used to really enjoy driving my 51 Studebaker, and I always felt pretty good about not adding to the environmental disaster caused by all the crap that goes into modern cars. Not only that, but my Studebaker got about 27 mpg on the highway, which is a lot better than cars of a similar size and comfort level today.

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Robert Reynolds

Interesting, but the Prius is not on my short list, nor is any hybrid.

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Yes those 50s Studebakers got very good mileage for their time. My '95 Concord, which is a far better car, does even better in spite of it's 12 years and 85k miles, plus it's air pollution is far lower.

However you are right about many more recent vehicles; in the last few years they have been gaining HP and bulk, but losing economy.

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Some O

I'll make a prediction for the next ten years. I am a used car buyer, and I don't think I'll ever be a new car buyer. I think that today's hybrid cars will end up on the junk heap in a few years with virtually zero demand from the secondary market. Once the batteries start needing to be replaced, people will run from these overcomplicated vehicles as fast as possible.

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Robert Reynolds

Oh my, he sounds like a car salesman who is determined to discredit the opposition, regardless what junk he's selling. Actually he's a hybrid himself, of Bush, Moore and Gore. Posted at a University site is very surprising, but they should practice open speech.

What he says is out of date, half truths and a political cost comparison. I'll just note a few things he said; first the pollution at Sudbury, Canada. Yes it was very bad, but many years ago. Now the area is an example of what can be done to clean things up, not bury the problem as was done at the Love Canal in the USA.

Secondly if he doesn't like nickel he'd better stop buying stainless steel items, including the exhaust on his Hummer if it's of modern construction. Oh yes most batteries as well, particularly the rechargeables.

As for his cost comparison, something politicians would try on those who don't think.

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Just Facts

Oh Robert Robert Robert! You should know by now that it's all about feeling good. The realities have nothing to do with it. :)

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

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Bill Putney

From the article:

"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.

"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."

Please show me the math on that last sentence being wrong (don't forget to factor in the cost of money over time, and factor in replacing the batteries and their full replacement cost).

Time to get out the tap shoes.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

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Bill Putney

Ironically, just this morning my wife told me that her mother was thinking of buying something "more efficient", specifically a hybrid. She's a feel-good type who likes to jump on whatever bandwagon is fashionable at the moment. When my wife told her that you have to change expensive batteries in a few years she said maybe not....

I wonder how dependable the regenerative braking systems will prove to be.

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Robert Reynolds

Over the next year of so the new design Diesels from Europe will be appearing, in Mercedes, VWs and I expect even in Chryslers. I feel they will smoke (x I mean be much better than EPA 'YourMPG' Data Reveal Diesel Vehicle Drivers Consistently Achieve Higher

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Some O

You guys are both so right. My Datsun gets 27 in town! I admit it's not as comfortable as a Studebaker, and not nearly as stylish. It sure is a lot of fun to drive, though. Its secret, of course, is that it weighs over a ton less than the lightest thing you can get now. I also have a first-gen LH, and no big car available today offers the same mix of power and mileage. Newer cars simply have too much horspower to get comparable mileage.

The biggest problem with new cars is the stupid people that buy them. Hordes of them just flock to anything that gets 12 mpg, then they sit around saying GM and Ford and the oil companies are in a "conspiracy" to keep gas mileage at 12 mpg.

Not that GM and Ford don't do their part. I notice GM has pulled the engine out of the "volt" and replaced it with their dream of a hydrogen fuel cell. I think they realized it made too much sense like it was, and a lot of people were saying they'd buy something like that, so they upped the stupid quotient by making the secondary fuel hydrogen.

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Joe

That's one thing that should be very reliable, really. It's just using the transmission to apply a little engine braking using the motor. That ought to work fine, you'd think.

I had heard from some industry insiders that hybrids don't "make sense" economically, even in Europe, where gas is $7 a gallon. Obviously, if the Prius costs $20,000, it does make good sense. So I have to assume that the Prius (and the other hybrids) are being sold as loss-leaders. Because honestly, they would make sense if they were honestly priced.

Note well that hybrids aren't used in Europe and NO ONE is talking about it. So there's something economic going on that won't have any sticking power. They'll wind up on the dust bin of history.

A further point is that whatever they do across the pond, with their pricey gas, reveals what the best efficiency solution is. Their fuel prices do a good job of flushing that out.

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Joe

That's cool. My brother had an Isuzu I-Mark years ago that got over 45 mpg, and it was from the early 80s. Makes me wonder where the diesels have been all these years.

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Robert Reynolds

(My attribution should have been snipped here - the following words are Robert's.)

If I'm reading you right, no. Regenerative braking is using the electric motor as a generator, driven by the vehicle's wheels and inertia, and pumping charge back into the batteries, the resitance of doing so providing the proportional braking effect ordered by the driver's foot pressure on the brake pedal. A little more involved than some words and hand-waving.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

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Bill Putney

It's so comforting to know that discounting attempts to move toward a safer mode of transportation for the environment is the easiest way to make people feel good about driving a 15 mpg car that is eating the planet alive.

It's just so inconvenient to push the market in hopes that the planet will last long enough for our children to grow old. Better not try to help because it isn't the "perfect" solution. Those batteries will seem cheap when your house is under water.

Someone needs to be the first to try something new. I don't see the automakers making much but a cursory effort and there ain't that many of us out there that can build our own cars. We have to find some solution. The problem is real and mother nature will make us pay one way or another.

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Just Me (remove

I don't drive a 15 mpg car. I drive a mainstream car that is way less overall impact on the environment than what the greenies are touting.

You see - that's part of the Gore hysteria. What Gore said about that in his movie about the oceans rising is absolute b.s.

You're working off of emotion and not fact. That is what is so scary about this whole "global warming" movement. You people start using real science instead of Al Gore and Cheryl Crow single-square toilet paper b.s., and you might have some credibility. This crap about if I'm part of the liberal elite and I plant enough trees or pay enough indulgences, then I can do anything else I want and I can always point to the indulgences I paid and my liberal eltite status as excusing anything else I want to do. All I've heard so far is that if I pay enough money to the right organization, and plant enough trees, and have the right public political personna, I can do whatever the heck else I want and it will be excused.

So far, the "solutions" I see are like if I break my arm, someone tells me to put a tourniquet on my leg, and that makes them feel better when in fact the "cure" will do more damage.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

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Bill Putney

Bill Putney:

Stop letting other people think for you. Do some research of your own, you may not have the background to fully understand the science but if you read about the actual research (not magazine, newspapers, radio or TV) you might be surprised at what you learn.

Reply to
Mac Cool

Convenient, safe, clean public transportation would do more for the environment and traffic congestion than all the green vehicles combined.

Reply to
Mac Cool

I've done a little bit of research, and the whole greenhouse thing just isn't very compelling. 90% of the world's ice is in Antarctica. (In fact, 70% of the world's fresh water is in Antarctica in the form of ice.) The mean annual temperature there is -71 F. How hot is it supposed to get, anyway? If it all melts it would raise sea level by

280 feet, but it would have to get pretty hot first, about a hundred degrees hotter.

Here's another tidbit you don't hear about a lot:

"Sea ice: Each winter, sea ice up to almost 10 feet thick forms outward from the continent, making a belt 300 to 900 miles wide. Even in summer the sea ice belt is 90 to 500 miles wide in most places. The area of sea ice varies from 1.15 million square miles in summer to 7.7 million square miles in late winter."

I remember hearing about icebergs of unprecedented size breaking off a few years ago. Well, I remember the news being unprecedented because nobody ever talked about icebergs there before, because it happens every year and nobody really cares. They just started unprecedentedly talking about it for some reason. The thing they didn't talk about it was that it was sea ice. Antarctica is the world's largest desert with only 2 inches of precipitation a year on average. In other words, there are no fresh water glaciers that break off like they do in Alaska and Patagonia because there is no snow to feed glacial growth. The ice sheet just sits there. The icebergs that break off are frozen sea water, and they break off every year. Is Antarctica really losing freshwater ice? I haven't heard about it. It is kind of ironic that the world's biggest desert contains 90% of the fresh water, but there is nothing really alarming going on there.

You want to get alarmed? Read about the dizzying array of toxic chemicals that are invented and put into production every year. Or how about the incredibly unwise practice of genetically modifying staple crops. Or how about commercial fishing that has depleted most of the fish in the ocean. And why are the bees dying? CO2 just doesn't make it to my list of things to worry about. I'm more concerned about things that are poisonous.

Reply to
Robert Reynolds

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