[thegrq]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') get great mileage: 0 gallons per mile. The petroleum used is mostly in tires, tubes, and breaks. I can use biodeisel to clean and lube the chain.

[PhilBiker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') can understand people wanting to get 50+ miles per gallon with a car, but a motorcycle is much cheaper and some can get between 60 and 70 mpg, and costs only a fraction of what a new car costs.

[DriveElectric]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NevadaGhosts', '
')I almost fell on the floor after reading that a transmission replacement for a Toyota Prius costs between $8,000 and $9,000. Damn...

[DriveElectric]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PhilBiker', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') can understand people wanting to get 50+ miles per gallon with a car, but a motorcycle is much cheaper and some can get between 60 and 70 mpg, and costs only a fraction of what a new car costs.

[DriveElectric]

225 miles driven so far. I am averaging 50.1 mpg. I am being really careful to maintain that above 50 mpg.

[gnm]

I live in a rural area but work in the city about 18 miles one way for a commute. My problem is that the road is only rarely maintained and can be rather severe. I have opted for a Kawasaki KLR650 - a very inexpensive motorcycle which can handle trails and roads. I get about 45mpg. The KLR uses roughly the same engine as it did 20 years ago and is still carbureted even. I use an old subaru (24mpg) for really nasty weather days... 4wd and it works fine for my needs. And I could easily replace it for $1500.00...

-G

I should add that the KLR gets that 45mpg with "aggressive riding' - Never noticed much change in mileage if I back off on that throttle...

[PhilBiker]

The KLR is a great motorcycle, but from what I've read has at one serious deficiency. Fortunately it can be easily remedied. Look into aftermarket front brake upgrades for the KLR.

Parts availability is on par only with BMW, and reliability is virtually unmatched. People take KLRs on trips around the world and across continents.

[baldwincng]

There are diesels that have regenerative braking like the Prius....

See 5th article on following....

http://www.iee.org/oncomms/pn/railway/industrynews.cfm

Virgin Trains' new Pendolino trains will shortly switch to regenerative braking on Britain's West Coast main line, putting electricity back into the line supply as they slow down. This will be a first for high-speed inter-city trains in the UK.

A number of diesel hybrid vehicles are being developed by a UK company called Eneco

http://www.eneco.co.uk/hybridVehicles.html

Every little helps.

[DriveElectric]

450 miles driven on 1st tank of gas. Still about 1/4 tank remaining. 12 gallon fuel tank. Averaging right at 50 mpg.

[Graeme]

TOKYO - The heads of Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors Corp. have agreed to strengthen their partnership in development of technologies for environmentally friendly vehicles, major Japanese newspapers reported Sunday.

Toyota President Fujio Cho and visiting GM Chief Executive Richard Wagoner agreed in a meeting Saturday to step up cooperation in areas such as fuel cell-powered vehicles, the national newspaper Yomiuri said.

Leading business newspaper Nihon Keizai quoted Cho as saying that the two sides did not make any concrete agreements, but "we plan to strengthen our partnership with GM" in fuel cell technology.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/japan_toyota_gm

A partnership would allow the world's two biggest automakers to share the cost of developing fuel cell-powered cars — pollution-free vehicles that are powered by hydrogen. Many in the industry believe fuel cells will eventually replace gasoline as the primary power source for cars.

Wagoner, who arrived in Japan on Friday, also met with Toyota Honorary Chairman Shoichiro Toyoda on Saturday to discuss a fuel cell technology tie-up, Kyodo News said. Calls to Toyota and GM on Sunday were not answered.

Saddled with huge health care and pension liabilities, GM lost US$1.1 billion in the first quarter. Its bonds were recently downgraded to junk status and its stock hit a 10-year low in April. Toyota reported US$2.8 billion in profit in the same quarter and commands an edge in the market for environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles, which run on a combination of electricity and gasoline.

Toyota and GM already have a partnership but it does not involve investment stakes in each other. They run an auto plant in California together and have exchanged research, including a 1999 pact to jointly develop environmental technology.

[BiGG]

America’s largest selling car, the Toyota Camry is about to go hybrid next year ….


Toyota to build hybrid Camrys in Kentucky

CHICAGO (AFP) - Toyota Motor will begin producing a hybrid version of its popular Camry mid-sized sedan at a plant in Kentucky in late 2006, the automaker said.

The hybrid version of the Camry -- perennially among the top-selling US automobiles -- will be the Japanese automaker's fifth gasoline-electric vehicle.

The Camry will be produced at Toyota's Georgetown, Kentucky plant which currently has the capacity to build 500,000 vehicles annually.

[lorenzo]

The title of your thread is very funny.

"960% increase" in sales, I suppose. If you sell 4 items this year, and you sell 40 the year after, you have a 1000% increase!!!!, but you've still only sold 40 pieces.

Hybrids are a marginal phenomenon with a marginal share. They make up a micro-fraction of all vehicles on the planet. They are insignificant in the peak oil debate.

[BiGG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'T')he title of your thread is very funny.

"960% increase" in sales, I suppose. If you sell 4 items this year, and you sell 40 the year after, you have a 1000% increase!!!!, but you've still only sold 40 pieces.

Hybrids are a marginal phenomenon with a marginal share. They make up a micro-fraction of all vehicles on the planet. They are insignificant in the peak oil debate.

[lorenzo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BiGG', '
')The title is a quote from the article and I can’t imagine where you get the idea these are “insignificant in the peak oil debate”! What? Peak oil is about the world being at the half way point of known reserves so I would think cars requiring less oil are quite significant. Everything adds up like the 21% increase in Ethanol production in the United States last year alone last year.

[frankthetank]

Light DUty Truck sales 2000:8.50million

Light Duty Truck sales 2004:9.36million

Compare that to hybrids.

EDIT: around a 85million light duty trucks have been sold in the 1994-2004 time period.

[BiGG]

Geez you guys, ya gotta think here! New things MUST be phased into economies slowly! ESPECIALLY things that are replacing what the economy is based on like oil. We have lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of antiquated oil that is s-l-o-w-l-y being phased out so as not to crash the economy and displace too many workers at once. It’s the way things are done when we are dealing with gigantic scales like we are with the 6+ billion people currently involved in this equation.

First you start with say 1% then you move on towards increasing the percentage as market share of what its replacing s-l-o-w-l-y decreases.

The Toyota plant linked at the beginning of this article alone has the capacity to crank out 500,000 cars per year but only is gearing up for producing 48,000 hybrids initially for a reason. They will be adding more shortly I’m sure.

The bottom line is we cannot just switch everything overnight because it will displace too many current workers at once even though we already have the technology to cut consumption by a huge margin with cars, home/business heating etc. In the next few years you will start seeing efficiency coming in vogue because that’s just what the governments around the planet want you to see and the sheeple will respond accordingly. Its all about “Logistics”, “Macroeconomics”, & "Marketing" plain & simple.

[Sgs-Cruz]

You know, just as Bigg doesn't need to hype every small efficiency increase as the one that's going to save the world, you guys don't need to say that every new technology is absolutely useless. Each one may make a 1% difference, useless on its own, but when you name 50 or 100 new technologies or methods, each of which saves only 1%, you've made a serious reduction.

And Lorenzo, as a scholar of peak oil, you should know that while 0.05% seems very small, the exponential function is very powerful. It doesn't take too many years of 960% sales increases to make 0.05% a very big percentage of the auto market. (Granted, that kind of growth won't last, but even at one tenth that, that's still a very steep exponential curve).

We on this site should be applauding every new technology and making sure it's adopted as fast and as far as possible. Last I checked, most people didn't want a population crash, did they? Did they? Please tell me I'm not alone in thinking billions of people dying would be a bad thing...

[0mar]

It doesn't matter.

Our economic lifestyle is the culprit, not peak oil. So as long as we ignore the limits of earth, we are going to be perpetually fucked.

Let's look at an example here.

1 trillion barrels of oil are currently unexploited and 1 trillion barrels have been exploited.

Double this --> 2 trillion barrels.

Midpoint is now 1.5 trillion barrels.

We use ~27 billion barrels a year with a growth of about 2%.

500 billion barrels is a little more than 17 years with 2% growth. 17 years is all the time we buy by doubling our known reserves. That isn't much time. I'll scarcely be 40 years old by then.

The same story is repeated ad nausem with any non-renewable resource. So long as we ignore the natural limits of the earth, we can make efficient things from here to heaven and still end up fucked.

[cube]

For anybody who has ever read my posts you'll know that when I'm skeptical of an idea I sure don't "sugar coat" it. In fact I can be rather blunt.

But this is different. I think hybrids are going to be the wave of the near future. The word "near" means now till the next 50 years.

I don't know why so many people think hybrids are some left wing greenie idea reserved for those wackos in San Francisco who pay triple for groceries because they think eating "organic" food is going to make them live longer.

Hybrids are here to stay. And contrary to popular belief it DID NOT come into existance because environmentalists pushed for it, which probably explains why the idea actually works!

While the greenies in California were preaching about how electric cars were going to be the future 10 years ago. The Japanese were queitly developing the hybrid car. Now their efforts are going to pay off.

BTW hybrids have proven themselves commercially the key word here is commercially. Ever heard of diesel electric trains? They've been around before Jimmy Carter was president. The only electric car that has proven itself commercially is the golf cart.

[joewp]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sgs-Cruz', 'Y')ou know, just as Bigg doesn't need to hype every small efficiency increase as the one that's going to save the world, you guys don't need to say that every new technology is absolutely useless. Each one may make a 1% difference, useless on its own, but when you name 50 or 100 new technologies or methods, each of which saves only 1%, you've made a serious reduction.

And Lorenzo, as a scholar of peak oil, you should know that while 0.05% seems very small, the exponential function is very powerful. It doesn't take too many years of 960% sales increases to make 0.05% a very big percentage of the auto market. (Granted, that kind of growth won't last, but even at one tenth that, that's still a very steep exponential curve).

We on this site should be applauding every new technology and making sure it's adopted as fast and as far as possible. Last I checked, most people didn't want a population crash, did they? Did they? Please tell me I'm not alone in thinking billions of people dying would be a bad thing...