June 06, 2008
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A net positive, I think on the whole, though I do feel for those who are about to be unemployed and paying $4/gallon. But the auto market needs to change. hbs and I have been car shopping lately, and it is pretty much impossible to find a family-sized car that's large enough to fit two rear-facing baby seats comfortably and get >=30mpg without dropping, say, about $30k. I hope this will change that, spur more efficient engine r&d and end auto makers' practice of making the hybrid market a spendy boutique affair.
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I'm afraid that weaning ourselves off oil is going to be about as much fun as weaning off heroin.
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It would be a lot easier if we'd started doing it gradually in 2001, when it became obvious to everybody but government and industry leaders that this was inevitable.
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*cough* It looks like a truck plant up here is going to close, and there seems to be this steadfast refusal on the part of both management and labour to admit that they were building the wrong product -- instead, it's this line repeated over and over about unfair trade barriers not allowing them to sell these behemoths in Asia. It's not the entire automotive sector that's bleeding, just the ones who are making the wrong products -- the Big Three either failed to or refused to see the indicators that the other manufacturers did, and now they're way behind the ball. This is a longstanding beef of mine, how the Big Three put efficiency gains into pushing bigger cars and trucks around rather than making cheap, affordable cars; that the Big Three killed the electric car and allowed the Asian makers to step into the gap and take over, and now the Big Three are bitching about it; that everyone knew high oil prices were here to stay, and the US auto makers were somehow the only ones to not see that coming; that the Big Three failed to stick to the basics of cheap, affordable cars... I feel for the guys that are losing their jobs, but jeez -- they were living on borrowed time as it was. Not only because they were building the wrong thing, but the manufacturing industry itself in North America is a dinosaur. That one should think that they're somehow exempt from that shift abroad, I have no idea. I thank my lucky stars I can walk to work (well, not right now), and though while my car is getting older, I can hold off on a new one until a much more satisfactory model is out there in three, four years.
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MCT, I don't know if the Honda Fit is big enough for the car seat issue, but it's incredibly roomy inside for such a compact car (ie, 4 adults sit in car with ample leg room for all) it's a great, very versatile car, we are presently getting 39 mpg (!!!!) on ours, and they start around $15k. /end honda fit commercial
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Also, a couple friends of mine are very happy with their Nissan Versa. It's sorta like the TARDIS -- much larger on the inside than the out. Price is decent, and you seem to get quite a bit of car for the money, but I couldn't speak to mileage.
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/buys stock in saddlemakers
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< off topic>mct: two rear-facing baby seats?< / off topic>
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The Honda Fit is so hard to come by around here that auto dealers are selling them for more than the MSRP.
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We have penciled in the making of number two for sometime around Jack's first birthday. Which I'm only just now realizing is less than two months away. I'm...I'm going to go take a nap now.
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There was some guy on the teevee this week talking about bringing back coal-powered locomotives, as they'd be much cheaper to run than Diesel. Fer fuckssakes, you're still burning shit. Same as with this biofuel nonsense. You're not eliminating the essential problem. GRR.
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I was at the hospital yesterday, and my very well-off doctor was talking about how he had to ditch his SUV for a Honda Civic because he couldn't afford the gas. (He would, however, keep his truck and BMW, but not to drive every day.) It really is hitting everyone, but I don't think politicians, who'd be in the same group with my doctor financially, realize that for a lot of us, this means ditching the car altogether and taking the bus.
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*waa waa waa* can't afford your SUV Buncha babies. I can't wait till the Hummer drivers start pushing theirs.
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You're absolutely right, Capt, that the big 3 are to blame for not seeing the writing on the wall and making giant vehicles that are now selling poorly. They do have a valid point, however, about the unfair trade barriers preventing them from exporting even their smaller models into the Asian market. I feel bad for the workers losing their jobs, but when I see (non-union) Toyota and Honda plants here doing well, a small part of me says the CAW have made their own bed.
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I read a great comment once; paraphrasing, it ran that the Big 3 _had_ to make SUVs and light trucks. It's well documented that they all have huge pension and healthcare (<--- especially that one) liabilities and they needed the LARGE profit margin on the big cars to stand a snowflake's chance of covering them. IF they are very lucky, they've run the clock down far enough that they can hand healthcare over to the US government, assuming an Obama presidency can bring in something approaching a modern healthcare system.
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GM is thinking of dropping the Humvee. What a damn shame, eh? There's one Humvee around my part of Christchurch -- I used to see it every morning on my way to college. Haven't seen it in over a month. It was covered in advertising so I'm guessing someone bought it and used company money to run it (pretty standard practice for owner-operators), but it was costing the business too much -- petrol here is $2 a litre. Also, this may not be news to anyone else, but I didn't realise Schwarzenegger was solely responsible for the civilian Hummer. What a butt.
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If Google's calculator is right for currency, that's almost $5.80/gallon US. Goddamn. I knew the rest of the world was paying more, but goddamn.
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MCT, here's a nice little map that compares US pain.
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Rural US hurting.
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One more example of the clueless suffering for trying to live outside their means. For every gump cutting me off or blocking the road while they are yapping on their cell while driving one of these behemoths, boo freakin who. Suck it up and buy a prius, Earth raper!
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Yeah, whatever, "farmers," with your "tractors" and "combines" and "trucks" for "planting" and "harvesting" and "distributing" "food" that we "need" to "eat" so we don't "die." Put that ton of hay in your Prius.
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...because prius drivers never use cell phones, never cut anyone off, and never drive when they could otherwise walk or ride, right? And people who drive vehicles with storage and hauling capacity never need them. They're just status-seeking soccer moms living beyond their means. I'd love to get rid of my pickup right now ($140 per tank) but I still need it now and then for reno equipment & supplies...and besides,I probably owe more than it's worth because the resale market's gone to shit. But I'm sure that's my own damn fault for being an earth raper.
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MCTFTW. Reverse nasal Coffea arabica.
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Well, rocket, I have an extended cab GMC diesel pickup that was bought (and used) primarily to satisfy my selfish urge to play. We use it to pull the horse trailer, haul hay, and go camping. It's the only rig that all the grandkids can ride in, and it does all the heavy hauling. It's going to haul a load of sand tomorrow, and it will go to the dump Friday, but it's certainly not necessary for major transport to and from work or shopping. Most of the time it's parked, and we use conservative vehicles for the majority of our driving. If I were truly committed to ecology, I wouldn't drive it. I know I'm lucky to have that as a toy. My beef is with people who use a Hummer or SUV to go EVERYWHERE with only on person. People like my asshat neighbors--TWO married people--his Hummer, her huge SUV they drive everywhere, an RV, a brand new pickup to pull their boat, 2 snowmobiles, 2 4-wheelers, and a 5200 square foot house. For TWO people?
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For the price of 135 tanks of rocket88-fuel you could buy one of these. At 39 inches wide this electric car is 5 inches narrower than a Honda Gold Wing. But it will do zero to sixty in seven seconds. Only currently available as a kit car. Sorry, no air bags.
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Oh, holy fuck want.
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Reading about the effects of high gas prices on the rural poor is disheartening. But at the same time, a lot of our society - including the rural poor - have spent the last 50 years prioritising performance over gas mileage and voting for governments who have eviscerated the public transit that used to exist, even in less densely populated areas. All because gas was unnaturally cheap, everyone thought it didn't matter if they lived miles and miles away from where they worked, and because our society said that only losers take the bus. Maybe I have a different perspective on this, as I have never driven, nor do either of my parents drive. This wasn't out of any choice - cars just weren't an option, money-wise, and you can't learn to drive if you don't have a car to learn on. And it's meant that we've had fewer choices than drivers - like being restricted to the areas with good public transit when looking for work, or facing the choice between giving up your job or moving when it relocates even an hours drive away. And all along, no one else seemed to care when transit wasn't funded well, when malls are built with no pedestrian access, when a bank relocates to the middle of nowhere with no transit access because it's more accessible to the highway. Nor did they see how making everything really easy for drivers to get around ruined it for the rest of us - including all teenagers, and most senior citizens. Rural places, even in North America, used to have taxi services, buses, and trains. But people voted for governments who did whatever they could to undermine public transit while subsidizing roads and highways, even when it undermined the living conditions of their own children and their own parents. And then they voted with their pocket books, and the car manufacturers listened. European cars right now get much better mileage than North American cars. But they didn't want good mileage, they wanted performance, despite the fact that would only make a difference to illegal drag racers and if you stay in the speed limit it doesn't matter that your car can't do 200 miles/hour. Even just the other day, I saw a car ad and the only thing the ad said about the car was how much horsepower it had. Who cares about horsepower if your aren't, like, plowing a field or hauling logs? Even before gas went up in price, it would seem that the very first thing you would want to know about a car was its gas mileage. It's going to hurt - but it's a necessary correction. How we have been living is not sustainable economically, let along environmentally. I've been living for a long time as a minority - I'm not that sorry to know that more people will soon have to be living like me, because then maybe they will start to help to make a world where we all can live better, not just those with cars.
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You know what the rest of us do when we need hauling capacity? Well, if we can drive, we rent a Uhaul. If we can't drive, we borrow a handcart, and do it the old-fashioned way. I've moved by handcart, including furniture like bookcases. Which, by the way, seriously sucks. I had some awesome friends who helped when they can, but I really don't suggest moving by handcart on your own.
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This whole situation does suck for farmers, and hugetime for contract truck drivers. But again, we've let artificially low gas prices lure us into creating an unsustainable world, and also unnaturally low food prices. There will be a painful adjustment period. I know I sound callous, but the only reason that I haven't been hit by the increase in food prices is that our household income is so low that we were already shopping the way every one else is going to be once the food prices start reflecting the real costs of food production. Also, I think our local grocery store (catering to a fairly poor and non-mobile population) already had higher prices than the suburban stores that compete with each other. We had few crazy bargains to start with.
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I think there must be a speculative element in recent price rises - the fundamentals haven't changed that rapidly. But of course in the longer run - who knows exactly how long - this is the way it's going. I wonder whether recent experience has changed the minds of those people who were saying a while ago that cutting our carbon emissions enough to stave off global warming seemed pretty much a win-win, no-brainer: a good thing to do even if you were a climate change denier?
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Plegmund - sorry, I don't follow; _why_ would recent experiences have changed anyone's mind with respect to cutting carbon emissions? For instance, I would say that raising the price of fuel 10 years ago (to pick a number), along with raising CAFE standards, is looking more and more preferable to what is actually happening now.
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It might have dramatised the point that using significantly less energy has a serious downside. I'm not saying we don't have to go through the pain; just wondering whether anyone still thought there was no downside to speak of.
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How dare you people challenge my opinion....
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I think the people who are saying reducing carbon emissions is win-win are thinking that even if you don't believe in global warming, you should support clean energy because it will help with high oil prices. But yeah, there are people who think change sources of energy will be painless, because some technology will majically save us. I just feel like even if that technology did come around, our stupid market policies would be sure to drive it into the ground before it could be adopted. But more realistically is just thinking it's not going to come.
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MonkeyFilter: How dare you people challenge my opinion....
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You'll all be happy to know that I've been driving one of these the last few days (my gf has a shorter commute so she gets the truck).
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..and it's ORANGE.
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That's crazy
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Why wait? There's a bunch of Spanish truckers who'd love to meet with you right now.
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A closer look at the impact of higher gasoline prices.
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Well, I had at first named our new car The Down-Low, but now that it has its new ornament, I'm think of changing it to The Dethwagon.
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Blurry close-up of the awesome.
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Those are red LEDs in the awesome ornament, I hope.
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Not LEDs, sadly. Just red plastic. Goddamn it, now I'm going to have to mod it.
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That'd be awesome.
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It occurs to me that I could in fact do this with a couple of LEDs, a couple of watch batteries, and some careful drilling. Hmm, there's a Radio Shack up the street...
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Couldn't you hook it up to the running lights somehow?
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I could, but I'd have to cut back through the license plate frame and maybe through the front bumper too. I'm also not an electrician. Watch batteries can be taped in place and slipped behind the plate. Only disadvantage is they'd be always on.
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Why not just use actual demon eyeballs? That's what I did.
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Sweet ride, MCT! Just watch out for the reptiles...
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VW has had this tucked away, waiting for cheaper carbon fibre - 1L per 100 km.
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Just a little something we can all afford... Less'ee. If the car's going for an average $35k, figuring gas is $5, I can buy 7000 gallons for my little paid off Nissan. I'm getting 20-25 mpg, so figger somewhere between 140,000-175,000 miles for my $35k. To go that number of miles, I'd have to pay $35k plus interest and buy somewhere in the region of 596-745 gallons @ $5 a gallon, that's $2980-$3725 more. Sucks to think of burning 7000 gallons of gas, putting that much pollution into the air, but we're doing our best to make the miles we drive essential miles. Haven't gone to the hills camping, fishing, or just 'for a drive'; haven't pulled the horse trailer; didn't go into Boise this weekend for dinner and a movie. I know my Nissan will last 100+k miles, the parts are easy (and cheap) to get, and Mr. BH can do all the mechanical work himself, plus rebuild the engine, saving a small fortune in garage fees. When I see the VW, I'm skeptical this might be a 'disposable plastic' car, it screams expensive parts, and I'm sure it would take a pro to work on it. There was an environmental cost (paid) to manufacture my Nissan, but eventually most of the car will gently rust away. What's the environmental cost to manufacture and dispose of the CFRP in this car? I wish I had the income that would allow me to think of 35k as affordable. Get that down to 10-15k, so the Average JoeBlueHorse can get excited. Until then, not 4 me. And it's ugly.
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It's gonna be a slow, painful process changing an economy based on cheap oil and inefficient cars but seeing the major auto makers finally touting these sort of concept cars offers some encouragement. They may not be entirely feasible technically or economically right now (although they damn well should be), but someone will get it right eventually. That someone probably won't be GM, Ford or even VW though. And it's ugly.
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Funny - I don't mind it. And even if an actual production car comes out only half as fuel efficient, it would still be twice (or better) as good as the current Prius.
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I think it's adorable. But I still can't afford it.
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The last photo reminds me of the Sinclair C5.