Hybrid cars no longer desired by US buyers.

ben91932 wrote:

Well it is a certainty that the value of energy stocks in the ground will increase at a rate that is greater than inflation. That means it is really stupid to think it is imperative to pump every gallon out of the ground as soon as possible. The only way to slow the rate that the cost of energy rises is to conserve it. The fact is the oil companies and the governments they support have colluded for a long time to ensure that the cost of oil is as stable and reliable as possible. The cost to taxpayers and consumers to try to maintain this stability has been enormous. A great deal of effort has gone into doing things to avoid exactly what happened to energy prices in the past year. Stable prices delude people into believing it will last forever. There is nothing like truly free market price fluctuations to help people understand the true value of commodities. The tax on energy makes a lot of sense if you are capable of looking into the future at all. Right now we act as if we are expecting that future generations will be able to enjoy their "lifestyle" despite the fact that the wasteful practices of past generations make energy cost much more than it should be. Plus we are passing on to future generations the taxes we should be paying now. In addition, in 20 years you will have a much smaller labor pool to pay for a much larger pool of retirees. All of those facts combined spell looming disaster. But hey, we wouldn't want to do anything to disturb the "lifestyle" of the lemmings in their rush for the cliff.

-jim

....fantastic deals abound on low-mileage used conventional cars and manufacturers are deeply discounting new cars too, so the pay-back time for going hybrid is now measured in decades.

The good news is that there seems to be a rather permanent decrease in consumption, and even when OPEC cuts production the price still falls the next day. The spike last summer had some permanent effects: First, it proved that most of the price run-up was due to futures speculation, not actual supply/demand and the market crash proved that futures speculation might not be so smart. Second, the consumer-end price spike was so high that people have actually changed their habits. I doubt we'll be seeing $4/gallon gas again for quite a MANY years. The market just won't support it. I could be wrong, but that's my prediction. I'd bet on prices hovering in the $2/gallon range during the high demand months this summer.

Agreed

Agreed.

I certainly believe there is good evidence that we're increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. I'm not actually convinced that its causing global warming, and I'm even less convinced that we should care about warming per se. The earth has been one hell of a lot warmer in the past. Its also been much colder, so who's to say if warming is good or bad or indifferent in the long run. The system is obviously reasonably stable, so the old 70s sci-fi horror of earth teetering on some knife-edge between becoming another Venus or becoming another Mars is just a bunch of bullspit. At least in the "short" run of a few hundred million years ;-)

I'm more worried about the atmospheric carbon load causing other effects, such as changing growth rates and patterns of everything from bacteria to algae to coral polyps to trees and crops, and all the things that depend on the them.

As an aside, I'm was FAR more pissed-off at giving billions to the damn lending institutions (to call the ones who screwed up "bankers" is not altogether accurate) than I am giving it to the automakers. At least the automakers *produce* something.

Kinda like Ethanol and fry-oil biodiesel, now that demand has spiked up. ;-)

I'm an EE, not a chemist, but I do know that synthetic lubricating oil is produced using natural gas as a feedstock. Can natural gas be similarly, and economically, processed into a lighter synthetic hydrocarbon that could be used as a gasoline substitute? That wouldn't solve the "it won't be cheaper if we use more of it" problem and in fact it would create a competitive demand that would drive up the cost of electricity which, at least in parts of the US is largely generated by burning natural gas... but it would fix the storage issue.

One of these days I'm going to learn to read a few posts ahead before I make replies and ask dumb questions... ;-)

If Im not mistaken, most of the diesel we see at the pump is made this way, which is why it is more expensive than gas. Ben

Me too!

Actually, it works quite well. You park your car at home, hook up the hose from the cng compressor i n your garage and it refills the tank overnight. No muss, no fuss. Yes, enough tank capacity to go 400 miles would take up the entire trunk, so you will be limited in the range department a bit. Honda makes a nice little CNG car, and you cant tell the difference between it and the gas model, except your fuel is considerably cheaper than gas and you dont ever have to go to a gas station.

Good batteries for EV's already exist, the large format NMH batteries used in the Rav4EV and the Honda EVPlus. Unfortunately the bastards at Chevron own the patent and will not allow them to be sold or built in the US. (They sell more gas that way!) The guys that are building the Prius plug in hybrid kits are reporting between

75 and 150 miles per gallon with a little help from a few dollars of electricity. That is available today. My feeling is that as soon as we have the right batteries, and it looks like lithium may be it, we will see more and more Chevy Volt type cars on the road soon, getting phenomenal mileage. I also feel that the cheap gas we are seeing now wont last. Doesn't gas always drop in price during election season?

My guess is that the guys working on making oil from pond sum, some bacteria or wood ethanol from trash dumps will make a breakthrough in the next few years.

I agree wholeheartedly. My question is why they have 2/3 of their cars and motorcycles running on clean cheap plentiful CNG and we arent even trying. Boone Pickens and Ted Turner have a great handle on the situation and I like what they have proposed.I sure hope the new President follows through with all his promises about alternative energy as I believe it is a critical situation. Ben

I can assure you my lifestyle will *not* change due to any tax on energy. (I will continue to find ways to increase my "carbon footprint" despite the desires of environmentalists and their politcal sycophants.)

The federal government will be looking to foist trillions of dollars of debt on future generations. Bush, Obama, and Congress will all be complicit in this. I very much doubt this will end well, but that is another topic.

The dollar's value going down from all this money creation for bailouts and low interest rates could bring us $4/gal gasoline. But not until the new money works its way out into the economy and prices adjust for it.

Trillions to the bankstas.

I remember an article I read about China in a National Geographic magazine back in the 1970s.There were a couple of photos of big bags mounted on top of some buses.The bags had natural gas in them.The natural gas was used as fuel for the bus engines. cuhulin

Depends. Despite the large amounts of money being printed, it has to get to enough people who will spend it on gasoline. Since unemployed people don't use much gas, if unemployment gets too high the demand will stay down. Then there's supply. It's complicated!

--Vic

It's okay, we haven't paid off the debt from the Johnson administration yet.

--scott

Andrew or Lyndon?

Ed

Devaluation of the US dollar will matter little, the gas/oil price will fluctuate some, but ultimately OPEC and the others with the oil will sell it for what the market will pay as it has no value otherwise.

I feel the same way. BTW I've pasted below a note from Pickens for your dining and dancing pleasure. I know he satnds to make billions off these new enterprises, but it all seems to make undeniable sense to me Ben

From the desk of T. Boone Pickens

Hey Army,

You all set to take on Washington?

So am I.

We've got less than three weeks until a new Congress is seated and our new President is sworn in. But before we muster the troops and charge up Capitol Hill, I want to share an experience of mine that not only changed how I do business but how I look at life.

Forty years ago, the small company I founded was looking at a big deal. In fact it was our biggest deal ever. That's when a friend of mine, Dow Hamm, gave me a piece of advice I've never forgotten: "Boone, you'll spend just as much time on a big deal as on a little deal." And, he pointed out, you'll find plenty of lagniappe in a big deal.

What's lagniappe? I'll tell you what it is. When we get America to end its addiction to foreign oil, new jobs will be created in new industries we can't even begin to imagine. When we stop sending $700 billion a year to foreign countries and start spending that money on energy produced here in the United States, start-ups that none of us have ever heard of will get the seed capital they need to get off the ground and become industry giants. When we go all out and develop wind and solar and other renewable energies, the breakthroughs that American companies will pioneer are going to have other countries sending us billions of dollars for our technology, for our equipment, and for our know-how.

Over the last 50 years, I've done more than my share of big deals. But this one here with you, the Pickens Plan, is by far the biggest. And it's going to pay off bigger than any of us can ever imagine.

That's what lagniappe is. Now let's go get plenty of it in 2009.

-Boone

P.S. We?re closing in on 1.4 million in the Army. Let?s get to 2 million by Inauguration Day. Please click here and invite a friend or family member to join us as we march on Washington next year.

Personally, I don't need a hybrid - an EV designed properly would give me all the range I need. Tesla, the company that makes the cool- looking, 0-60 in under 4 seconds, 125MPH (governed, at that!) roadster with a 220 mile range ($109,000) has already started working on a sedan.

The 4-door sedan is said to have a 240 mile range, decent performance and a price tag of 60K. They?ve said they hope to get the price to $30K within four years. Battery life on both Tesla vehicles is expected to be over 100K miles. Also, it?s a made in the US car owned by a US company. The big 3 may be losing it, but not everyone in this country?s car industry inspires despair.

When we can get a decent electric car (assuming they don?t turn the interior into something unbearable) with a 240 mile range and decent performance for 30K I just might buy my first showroom new car. If I had 110K I was looking to blow on a fun sports car right now, the Tesla would be on my list of cars to look into and test drive.

IMO the lead-acid battery powered gas car conversions produced a few years back gave the public the wrong idea about electric power. Batteries today are great, and Tesla has proved that desirable EVs can be produced, and sold. Come to think of it, I?m about to go find out if it?s a publicly traded company. I wouldn?t bet the farm on them, but with the sedan coming out they might not be a bad place to park a few bucks on a gamble.

This morning, I woke up a little early because doggy, she needed to take me out in the front yard for a few minutes.James R. Norman was talking to George Noory.James R. Norman said something to the effect/affect the reason America invaded Iraq was because Saddam Hussein was collabarating with China so China could buy and run the oil wells/oil fields in Iraq.James R. Norman has a new book,,,

cuhulin