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Detroit, 5:22 PM
Sun Nov 8
8 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/02/09
Instead, the ultimate goal of most people, and every single corporation on the planet, is to make as much money as conceptually possible while spending as little as possible.
I give man 150 years, max, before we're back in the 850's AD, socially/technologically.
09/03/09
09/03/09
Nope, I'm not that kinda person. Plus, I'll be dead before society fall apart, completely.
If it happens before that, I'll be welding up some pushbars/cages/combo offensive/defensive weapons on a choice RWD ride...along with adding 100 gallons of fuel capacity.
09/02/09
Furthermore, Bosh reported that fuel consumption of diesel engines is to be improved in couple of years by another 30% thanks to new high pressure injection technology.
Why would you need a hybrid?
Also for me, companies that do economy withouth hybrid powertranies are really green, like BMW
For example, the replacement for the current H6 used in a 3 series is gonna be a 1.3L 3cyl TT producing 260 HP. Fuel economy will be excellent and it's likely the car I will buy.
09/02/09
I'm not sure why BMW hasn't brought the efficientDynamics tech to the USA, it sounds great. Maybe it doesn't benefit on the EPA cycle, or maybe a diesel cycling on-off pollutes more?
09/02/09
C'mon Mr. Wojdyla. That's either complete and utter bullshit or you're twisting words to imply more than they say. You're equating "All cars suck environmentally" with "They're all the same" and it's obviously wrong. You do a lifecycle analysis that takes production, operation and disposal into account, and you figure out how green a car is. [whatgreencar.com] is one site that has the numbers. There are different ways to do this -- do you focus only on CO2, or overall pollution? -- but it's very doable. At the end of the analysis it's obvious that some cars are more green than others. And because (for the thousandth time) most of the energy consumed/pollution produced occurs during 150,000+ miles of operation and NOT production, you're pretty safe skipping the complicated production analysis and just looking at operational fuel economy and pollution scores
(Self-proclaimed analyst Jack Lifton is making a career out of doubting battery and motor materials. What's his angle?)
09/02/09
No matter how green the PR makes a car out to be, it's still largely made from freshly mined minerals and elements, using very toxic processes, resulting in materials which won't degrade naturally for thousands of years. No number of green stickers and patchouli scented karma circles will make a Tundra green, same as the Prius.
09/02/09
Jalopnik is perfectly able to discern and celebrate minor differences in torque, top speed, and horsepower (17 extra bhp in the V spec, OMG!), yet when it comes to substantial differences in environmental damage, you act as if they don't exist and attack PR strawmen with the equally shallow mantra "Cars aren't remotely green". Fortunately the public aren't so reductive and are interested in environmental progress. Please continue to skeptically analyze manufacturers' claims as you did with the 230 mpg, but your blanket "Cars aren't remotely green" isn't analysis, or news to anyone.
09/03/09
09/02/09
China mines over 95pc of the world’s rare earth minerals, mostly in Inner Mongolia. The move to hoard reserves is the clearest sign to date that the global struggle for diminishing resources is shifting into a new phase. Countries may find it hard to obtain key materials at any price.
[www.telegraph.co.uk]
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
The Tesla Roadster is already more efficient/less polluting than all other cars. Yet it doesn't appear at all in fueleconomy.gov and www.epa.gov/greenvehicles rankings. Tesla is to green cars as LM002 is to SUVs?
09/02/09
09/02/09
We're number ONE! We're number ONE!
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
Wow!
09/02/09
Thomas Francis got in his Toyota Prius last Monday and it wouldn’t start. He opened his hood and in his words, "it was gone, all of the neodymium was gone I tell ya, ripped out like a pitbull ripping the guts out of a chihuahua, they left a mess, it’s gone, those damned ole meth heads have struck again" This is the third time this year Mr Francis has had his neodymium magnets stolen from his car. This is Becky Wojciechowski reporting.
There will be other stories too, about folks getting magnets stolen from their IPod earphones and such.
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
@Mad_Science:
09/02/09
I'm not defending hybrids. It's clearly one form of trade-off...so 50mpg with batteries or 30mpg without. Is one better than another? I don't know. But if hybrids are so bad, why are Mercedes/BMW/GM (all original naysayers) all jumping onto the hybrid bandwagon now?
09/02/09
Laptop batteries don't use the same elements and don't use them in nearly the same quantities. Most people go through computers about as fast as cars, meaning the car is worse.
2nd: 50mpg Vs 30mpg is a fallacy. Automakers are making all of their "eco" cars hybrids because that's what the masses have associated with "green".
If you were to pull the batteries and hybrid drivetrain from a Prius and instead throw in a 1.something liter turbodiesel, you'd easily get the same or better highway mpg. Around-town is hard to beat because of regenerative braking.
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/03/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
Thank god for McDonalds.
09/02/09
09/02/09
What's that? We can't burn it to make energy because it pollutes the environment? Well.fuck.us.
09/02/09
09/02/09
The US is the Saudi Arabia of coal, AFAIK.
Several times per day, on only one train line headed south from Castle Rock, CO, there is a 100+ car train packed solid with the solid stuff headed to at least Texas (that's where I've seen the same trains, on the rails headed east).
We were next to that track for about 2 months, and hated every single time a train went by. Loud and long-lasting noise. Talk about laboring engines...they had a few locomotives in the front, a couple in the rear, and sometimes one in the middle, which I'd never seen, before.
09/03/09
09/03/09
They'd cut down on lack of trip-planning....
/sarcasm
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
The coefficient of drag on the current Prius is .25, ridiculously low:
[en.wikipedia.org]
The reason it looks so weird is because of all of the aero tweaks that went into it.
09/02/09
From the table of coefficients of drag: 0.25 Cd, same as the new Honda Insight; only the Mercedes E-class coupe does better (0.24) among current cars. The remaining big jump in aerodynamics is to fair the wheels, like the late GM EV-1 (0.195!!) and original Insight.
What slows the car down is Cd x frontal area, thus a 1990 CR-X Si has great drag area despite average aerodynamics. The same article has a computed table for drag area and again the GM EV-1 does very well, bettered only by the wacky Aptera and Twike.