[Pholostan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', 'Z')enn

[eastbay]

Here's an interesting list of electric cars available now. There seems to be little information about their longevity, maintenance, servicing, and all that other stuff that can cost a lot of money.

[eastbay]

Speaking of electric cars.... here's GM's response to growing demand for electric cars. At $50,000, the Volt. Sign me right up.

[frankthetank]

MY "auto mechanic" isn't really qualified to work on engines with EFI, i wonder what he'll think when i back this Lithium powered beast into his garage?

I bet a lot of backyard mechanics will be electrocuted in the next 10 years, when everyone is driving around in Volts, filling up at the nearest wind turbine.

Can't wait until i see a rusted out "VOLT". You'll buy a used one thinking it has all kinds of power and then it'll die on the way home... later you'll find the battery pack had been replaced with alkaline AA's batteries.

[dohboi]

P wrote: "A golf cart with doors and a roof. 25 mph top speed. I'm not impressed. If it did 50 mph and had a range of 50 miles, I'd be interested though."

Wellllllll, what exactly do you want? A Hummer that runs on a few grams of oil per year and zooms around at 100mph??? Don't hold yer breath.

Wake tf up. We are talking about the end of complex life on earth, the end of affordable oil, fresh water vanishing....see the converging catastrophes thread for more details.

In the face of these disasters, you're wining cause you can't continue to zoom around in the absurd way you have come to expect during the days of super-cheap and (seemingly) super-abundant oil.

Look, I appreciate that your view represents that of 99% of the 1st world public, which is one of the main reasons we are so incredibly, permanently and unspeakably f'd. We have all become unimaginably spoiled little children during an age when enormously dense liquid energy gushed out of the ground at a rate of 80plus million barrels a day.

We got used to zipping around the world in jets, eating exotic foods from distant lands for every meal of every day, driving obscenely enormous cars with the power of dozens of horses in each...

But those days are over.

Get the f used to it.

By the way, the Zenn can actually get closer to 35mph, you just have to reset the car computer. Kits are available for this on line. For most urban dwellers in the US 80-90% of their trips can be taken on streets with 35mph speed limits or less. So what exactly is the problem with limits?

Oh yeah, I forgot. We're all still living in an octane induced fantasy where there are no limits whatsoever for any desire any human on earth can imagine.

Let's party

[yesplease]

Toyota's beating the pants off GM right now w/ it. I'm pretty sure they're playing a waiting game in order to see what GM brings to the table w/ the Volt before introducing, or not, their competition. Besides, the Prius sells pretty well right now, so there isn't as much of a reason to change that compared to most models where sales drag as the platform ages. Like you said, there's also fear about another backlash via tariffs. VW has 1.4L TDI powered compacts/sub-compacts that can pull 60-80mpg, but there's no point in bringing them over if the domestic manufacturers wind up another pro-American media barrage and limit their sales thanks to tariffs.

[Pholostan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', '
')Wellllllll, what exactly do you want? A Hummer that runs on a few grams of oil per year and zooms around at 100mph??? Don't hold yer breath.

[dohboi]

OK, sorry if my tone got harsh there.

We live in Minnesota, about the coldest place in the US south of Alaska. A friend bought his Zenn in January and found it performed very well in icy conditions. Performance below 0 degrees F drops off, but I am told battery warmers can help quite a bit here. Many Minnesotans run electricity out to their conventional ICE cars to keep the engines warm anyway, so that's nothing new here.

[Tyler_JC]

10.6% of all cars sold in the United States in 2007 were hybrids.

Hybrids accounted for 1/6 of all of Toyota's sales in the USA.

It's not a niche market anymore.

Hybrid cars aren't just for smug yuppies anymore.

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '1')0.6% of all cars sold in the United States in 2007 were hybrids.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ybrids have become a real business for Toyota. In 2007, a year in which overall vehicle sales fell, hybrid sales rose 44 percent to constitute about 10.6 percent of sales. In March, hybrids accounted for nearly one in every six vehicles sold by Toyota.

[misterno]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', 'O')K, sorry if my tone got harsh there.

We live in Minnesota, about the coldest place in the US south of Alaska. A friend bought his Zenn in January and found it performed very well in icy conditions. Performance below 0 degrees F drops off, but I am told battery warmers can help quite a bit here. Many Minnesotans run electricity out to their conventional ICE cars to keep the engines warm anyway, so that's nothing new here.

[Starvid]

You use a block heater. All our residential parking lots have little raised boxes where you can plug in your car.



Welcome to the sub-arctic.

[frankthetank]

I'm seeing a lot more Prius cars around here. I think people are finally making an effort to lower their consumption (if they can afford to make the change).

I ended up buying a year old Focus the other day. Even these get mid to upper 30's if your easy on the pedal, plus when needed it has more then enough power to get moving. They started with 20 (from Hertz) and are down about 6 (had them just over a week). Just shows how good these little high mileage cars are selling.

[Gerben]

Would be a good thing to integrate block heaters into your plug-in hybrid. Battery heaters can run automaticly when it's cold. The block heater can start after you start your car: the first bit you can drive on your battery.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'S')peaking of electric cars.... here's GM's response to growing demand for electric cars. At $50,000, the Volt. Sign me right up.

[frankthetank]

Just another view:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')onsider the exercise Ford just went through. It ran a computer simulation on what would happen to the mileage of a Ford Focus small car if you built it entirely out of lightweight aluminum. Losing the steel allowed the Focus to drop 1,000 pounds—30 percent of its body weight. That enabled Ford to outfit it with a tiny one-liter engine, half the size of its old engine, but far more fuel efficient because of new technology. Best of all, the small motor goes just as fast as the big one because the car is so much lighter. The result: fuel economy on this fabulous Focus went from 35mpg to 50mpg. What's stopping Ford from moving this car from pixels to pavement? The cost of an all-aluminum car could top $50,000—not a sum the typical economy-car buyer is willing to pay. "What's going to be the cost acceptance for this much improvement in fuel economy?" asks Dan Kapp, director of Ford's advanced engines and transmissions. "We don't know yet."

[whereagles]

Just saw a Prius in a showroom at the local shopping mall. At €28 000, it's not really a bargain... that'll be $40 000, sir.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whereagles', 'J')ust saw a Prius in a showroom at the local shopping mall. At €28 000, it's not really a bargain... that'll be $40 000, sir.

[Gerben]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'I')'ll bet there's money to be made buying Priuses in America and shipping them to Europe.