America moving away from gas guzzlers

alfantastic

10 kW
Joined
Mar 29, 2011
Messages
524
Location
UK
I'm not a tree hugger by any means, but it is still nice to see the American culture move away from the big monster gas guzzling trucks, and into the smaller, greener, city type cars.

Mitsibishi i-Miev fully electric car

And as the specs show, you don't have to go without creature comforts, such as air-con and sat-nav, when going electric :)
 
except it is not true. fat car and pickup sales are booming here and they are not buying hybrids or EVs. you can now buy a hybrid for almost nothing and you can buy a 3 year old Leaf for $10k.

most of us know how to get to where we are going and do not need GPS to tell us how so that is not a useful feature imo. it just hooks a lot more money into the price for something that costs very little.
 
dnmun said:
you can now buy a hybrid for almost nothing and you can buy a 3 year old Leaf for $10k.
Damn that's good. Shame the import expenses would offset the bargain price for me :cry:
 
i bot a 2000 Honda G1 Insight for $2000 and reconditioned the battery so it works like new again. back in 2007-2008 they were $6-7k for the cheap ones. i see them for $1800 or as low as $1500. one guy on insightcentral said he bot one from a friend for $500 because his friend could only get $500 on it as trade in. perfectly functional hybrid car that can get 60-70mpg.

i see huge fat cars and trucks all the time that are brand new. tall as a basketball player and fat as the 600lb women.

i have noticed how the little guys seem to need that big heavy truck or van to intimidate others. psychologists call it 'compensatory behavior'.
 
What Alberta's surprising election results could mean for the oil sands
Alberta is the conservative heart of Canada, with an economy dominated by the oil industry. The Conservative party has held power there for 43 years. On Tuesday, everything changed. The New Democratic Party (NDP), a labor-left party long on the political sidelines, unexpectedly won a majority of seats in the provincial legislature (in part because two right-wing parties split the vote). Imagine if liberal Democrats suddenly controlled the Texas statehouse. And had a supermajority.
Only reason that there is short-lived uptick in American car gluttony is gas prices dropped. So here's one emerging scenario: Canada, on its own accord, shuts down the Alberta tar-sands for all the right reasons. Which reverberates on the world oil-market, driving gas prices higher, and suddenly fuel-economy again drives new car & truck sales. :mrgreen:
 
I walked to the gas station to get a snack... I played a game counting vehicles and pointing out how many trucks drove buy with nothing in them other then the driver. Chances are these idots bought them to help with their man hood and or to feel safe.... Out of 24 vehicles 20 were pickup trucks and 19 were empty other then the driver. 1 had a trailer. I just want to barf because society Is dumbing down. No body gets it. They all complain about gas prices but non of them realize a car is less likely to hurt them and will save them fuel costs. I mostly give up on those people. I will lead by example and when people ask about my DIY zero I give them the run down how all I had to do was plug it in when I get home and since last June I put 9000 km on it and its only needed air in the tires. I have used about $67 of electricity. Where if I was in my 4cy car It would have been ~$1100 of gasoline and if it was a pickup ~$2200 of gasoline!
 
arkmundi said:
What Alberta's surprising election results could mean for the oil sands
Alberta is the conservative heart of Canada, with an economy dominated by the oil industry. The Conservative party has held power there for 43 years. On Tuesday, everything changed. The New Democratic Party (NDP), a labor-left party long on the political sidelines, unexpectedly won a majority of seats in the provincial legislature (in part because two right-wing parties split the vote). Imagine if liberal Democrats suddenly controlled the Texas statehouse. And had a supermajority.
Only reason that there is short-lived uptick in American car gluttony is gas prices dropped. So here's one emerging scenario: Canada, on its own accord, shuts down the Alberta tar-sands for all the right reasons. Which reverberates on the world oil-market, driving gas prices higher, and suddenly fuel-economy again drives new car & truck sales. :mrgreen:
The NDP claims to be pro oil just against the pipelines moving crude. They want to refine the oil then ship it out.

The election was funny Premier Jim Prentice called an early election being all smug and arrogant and the province actually stepped up and voted him out!

It will be interesting. But if any of them have even 1/2 a brain they will look to help Alberta get away from its oil money addiction.
 
... further on in that article...
1) Climate policy. First, the new provincial premier, Rachel Notley, has vowed to work with Canada's federal government on some sort of national climate change policy. That, in itself, is notable: Canada has become a climate pariah in recent years, bowing out of the Kyoto Protocol and missing its targets for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. And oil-rich Alberta, the power base for Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has long been seen as a key obstacle to more ambitious climate-change policies.
Its a slow turn in the right direction, not a hard turn, so as to not upset the political balance. Understood. One can hope.
 
Back
Top