Typical of someone who talks first and thinks later (?), to say in one message how his VW bug and his Jetta get great gas milage, then says 5 minutes later that he needs his SUV to drive to his house in the mountains! Which one is it Totally_Lost? Where do you keep your Bug, at the bottom of the mountain. Of course there are cases where larger vehicles are needed. I used to have an SUV for towing my boat, but I also had a toyota that I drove on a daily basis. Freedom does not mean that you can dump your pollution into the river I swim in, and pollute the air I breathe. You want Freedom like that, then go find your own little Island and ruin it. This is America, and we do what is best for the majority of us, not what is best for YOU personally. You also should look up the word efficiency. Additionally, while you are at it, look up some calculations that show the comparison of electric cars run on electric from coal and gasoline burning. It actually shows that driving EV's leaves a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline burning cars. Not to mention, our power in this country is not entirely from coal and oil, it is supplemented by Nuclear, Solar and Wind power, making the EV MUCH cleaner technology than gas or diesel. You (Totally_Lost) blame others for not doing research, but you are talking to people who DO actually research what they say, you should try it.
Take for instance, the the efficency of an EV at low speeds is completely horrible, since electric motors are horribly inefficent at low RPM's. To fix that requires a transmission between the electric motor and the ground, which is equally inefficent.
A parally hybrid using a high efficeny drive train, does MUCH better ... just turn the motor off at stops when the efficency drops to zero.
Also recover the stored regenerative braking energy AFTER the vehicle is moving and the electric motor can operate efficently again ... certain DO NOT use the recovered KE from regnerative braking to get the vehicle moving from a stop where the electric motor is about 5% efficent at best. The ICE and transmission does that a LOT better.
"I bought a used 2000 TDI Beetle with 125,000 miles on it for $7K, that gets about 48mps all the time ... including a trip from Atlanta backto Denver at 80mph."
97 ft{3} passenger+luggage Beetle vs 116 ft{3} Prius
manual transmission Beetle vs. automatic Prius
So with the Beetle, you pay more at the pump to carry less than the 2011 Prius and you have a manual transmission. The automatic Beetle only got 35.1 MPG for the four vehicles reported.
Willful ignorance, the only justification for a 2000 Beetle. Even the 2013 Beetle diesel has an EPA combined rating of 32 MPG for a compact car, 100 ft{3}, compared to the 2000 Beetle rating of 38 MPG . . . 'devo' progress.
If it were a contest, 1st Prize is a brand new Beetle diesel and 2nd Prize, two new Beetle diesels.
@bwilson4web writes "The willful ignorance of hybrid skeptics is mind boggling."
The truth is that there are a number of choices in hybrids like the Prius than can be applied to regular ICE cars to raise the efficency .... like automatically shutting the engine down when stopped.
It doesn't take expensive batteries to do regerative braking ... large capacitor banks have better efficencies and much longer cycle life.
A Parallel hybrid doesn't require any of the serial losses that are substantial in a Prius, and can still use regenerative braking and electric assist to recover KE.
The willful ignorance of the serial hybrid proponents, is even more mind boggling. They almost get it right, then do it horribly wrong comparied to parallel hybrids.
BTW Totally_lost (What an appropriate name), try getting a baby in and out of a baby seat in a VW beatle.http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymake/Volkswagen2012.shtml Highest milage car from VW is a diesel with and ADVERTISED COMBINED MILAGE OF 34MPG! If you get 48mpg out of your car, you must only be counting the highway miles that you are going downhill, downwind. I test drove a Brand new Jetta, and it was so cheap, the doors rattled, plastic inside was just cheap, and they got nowhere near 50 mpg.
You are certainly free to live in a transportation free mixed use zoning city environment if that is what you want.
Freedom stops when you start bashing those of us that live in rural areas where a larger 4WD truck and SUV is the only way to get around mountain roads where we live and work.
Electric is not all that clean ... it just moves the polution into the back yards of other families that have to suffer with the radioactive waste of burning coal (the primary source of electric generation because environmentalists block hydroelectric dams).
Parallel hybrid with 98% efficient air core PM motor/generators is a LOT more efficent, if using a diesel ICE (which again is on the environmental hit lists).
But back to your Prius promoting ... again ... that's an inefficent dog compared to much better engineering choices. All market crap with another green energy scam as the marketing tool
Based on empirical observation most accidents are caused by reckless drivers, not car designs. There are also security standards to be met before cars are allowed to be sold.
As far as CFLs are concerned, I have a set of Philips CFLs in a ceiling fan. I eventually removed one because it was too bright in the room. I also have some very old CFLs still in use that take quite a while to come up to speed. There have been many improvements in the last years that make your complaints a moot point.
In regards to freedom, your freedom goes only as far as everyone's freedom. The days where big bullies demand an entitlement to race their big boat luxury sedans down residential streets need to be over. That has nothing to do with curtailing any freedoms. Taking advantage of everyone else and caring not at all about fellow citizens is not freedom. It is asinine behavior at best.
The only stupid things come from those who think too deep and fail to see what is in front of their own face. Corn happens to make a really good fuel. Totally_Lost needs to do more research, because it is not that expensive to replace those batteries anymore. Couple of thousand bucks (~2500), not the $10,000 that is claimed by people that don't do their RESEARCH. http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2008/10/prius-battery.html Diesel fuel is great for gas mileage, couple that with hybrid technology and you are way over the President's goal, not that there isn't many other ways to make that happen. The Chinese will allow much more pollution than we allow, so it costs a little more to do business here. Oh well, it's not worth a couple of bucks to allow companies to dump their crap into our waters and air. You do business in America, you will do it responsibly, or get out. People that ignore public safety when considering how things should be done, (Totally_Lost... I will use your word) are stupid.
Amen brother to,"Excuses are for kids, and I don't except them from children either."
The willful ignorance of hybrid skeptics is mind boggling. For example, the truth of actual mileage can be found in owner records at www.fueleconomy.gov and fuelly.com. For example, at www.fueleconomy.gov we find:
49.2 MPG - 36 Prius owners, a full-size car
39.6 MPG - 10 Jetta TDI owners, a compact car
These skeptics spout utter nonsense about how our cars work but ignorance is its own reward and punishment. It is rewarded by the equally ignorant and they pay for it at the pump . . . everytime they fill it up.
The other thing to share is the EPA sticker mileage is derated from the CAFE numbers by at least 10%. This means the Prius is already achieving 54.5 MPG per-CAFE and another 20,000+ will be sold by the end of August.
Neil Armstrong died but had the hybrid skeptics been in charge, we would never have gotten to the moon and back. It took solid engineering designing to the limits for Neil to step on the moon. In contrast, the hybrid skeptics have no vision, hope, nor aspirations. For them, 54.5 MPG might as well be the moon when Kennedy said we shall go to the moon.
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