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Originally Posted by Old Tele man
...Zetsche says: "...in the long run, there's no alternative to electric driving."
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I agree with him. With China and other developing countries with fast growing economic roots and oil production even without decline will become more and more difficult for us, buying cars that are electric will become an obvious positive economic choice once gas prices climb again. We went from the mid $1.xx in the early/mid 2000's to over $4 in mid-2008 and are now back to nearly $3. I'm not sure when we will be above $5 but I bought my most recent car (2000 Insight) with high gas prices in mind. I have a feeling with electric cars coming that everyone who vested in oil will try to keep the gas/diesel prices as affordable as possible so they have a bigger market when they spring the barrel prices again.
It doesn't seem like it will take much for electric cars to catch on though it seems, the Nissan Leaf has already capped its 20,000 orders for 2011 Nissan Leafs so its either a boost production or not grab the money. I think the $25k after tax incentives is a good price for the car while the early adopters are swallowing them full-force. I'm curious what prices later manufacturers will be placing on their cars such as the Ford Focus electric or Mitsu MiEV if it ever comes. ...and it is all before anyone even owns one! Even with no real world long-term examples of a mass production EV yet, people are lining up to get them. Outside of Tesla, Corbin/Myers and NEV's being about the most common road vehicles out there lately. Tesla is likely and hopefully the first thing that comes to mind(ideally) when people think of electric cars, it gives people a reason to think of a decent vehicle instead of the golf cart mentality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cfg83
MN Driver -
This adds a wrinkle to the Volt engineering strategy. The design is flexible so that the software can be tweaked to favor the battery or the ICE.
Wait until the calcars.org people get their hands on one!
CarloSW2
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If they do play with it, I'll be watching. Do you think they are interested, it appears they have a plug-in hybrids page on their site but there are no mentions of vehicle models other than in the links at the bottom.
Quote:
Originally Posted by robchalmers
42 for the cruze eco???? Erm our cruze base model 1.6 NA gets 42!! ffs didn't get much value on that overtime then General!
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UK and US standards are very different, also as one posted noted above our EPA ratings changed recently and the ratings are incredibly easy to beat. They basically set it up with what ends up being a huge fudge factor for the worst driving conditions or simply just the most wasteful drivers. When I want real numbers I hit up forums and make myself a ballpark figure from there.
I think cfg83 did a good job of showing it. For what it's worth, my second car, a 1995 Prizm(rebadged Corolla) gets 42mpg on almost every highway commute tank when the EPA said 34mpg highway and was before I started getting into hypermiling beyond just coasting a little more to stops. That rating was from our old standards. That is a 2370lbs car. I have a feeling with the same driving I might just get 50mpg with a Cruze which wouldn't be so bad for the price and the Cruze doesn't really seem all that small to me.
tjts1 - "And your probability of surviving a 35mph offset frontal impact or side impact is 0% in all of those. Ah the good old days."
I have a feeling my 2000 Insight is probably about the best car under 2000 pounds for crash survivability. I'm not looking forward to getting in any crashes with any vehicle though.