Ahhhhh..... like a large steak after a long fast. Glad you made it back.

Screw hybrids...they still burn gasoline...don't get stuck on stupid! If you really want to lower pollution, yet still drive as much as you want, do what I'm going to do...switch your car to run on propane.

Propane is cheaper than gasoline...you don't have to buy a new car, and it pollutes a hell of a lot less. Don't believe me? Check out a warehouse some time. They run forklifts indoors burning propane...they won't let you leave an idling Prius inside an occupied building.

Propane exhaust creates 60 to 70 percent less smog than the hydrocarbons in gasoline exhaust. Cuts emissions of toxins and carcinogens like benzene and toluene by up to 96 percent.
Offers a 20 to 25 percent reduction in emissions of greenhouse gas from light duty vehicles.
Reduction of particulate matter (PM10) of 40 percent 50 percent less of nitrous oxides (NOx)

You can go three times farther between oil changes and the oil will still be golden when you drain it...it burns that clean!

I've cobbled together the parts needed on-line, total less than $300.00.

And please don't tell me that propane is more dangerous then unleaded, when they start filling fire extinguishers with gasoline, I'll listen

Anyway, this what I'm doing.

My best wishes to you and yours and I hope your relocation is rewarding.

You points are well made and chilling. Chilling because the 'pointy-headed-oh-so-smarts' who seem to know what's best for the rest of us (the mulletted mouth breathers??) have an opportunity to worm their way into the national conciousness. The same way Marx, Lenin, and Hitler did in their time. Broad proclaimations based on evil fairy tales can become accepted fact; there is a straight line between "Everybody knows that the Jews aren't like us", and "If you don't conserve you don't care".

The move to socialism and tyranny, even while done with a smile and a caress and even when reinforced by comedians and entertainers, cannot be tolerated.

For the sake of the children.

Dan

Rather than go through all of that, wouldnt it just be easier to get a bicycle?

And when we all discover that hybrid cars aren't good enough, along will come...hydrogen.

Meanwhile, I cheer myself imagining akaky and 250,000 other commuters doing a 15-mile slog to work every August morning in San Antonio, the City Too Close to the Sun.

Welcome back to blogging, Gerard!

What a great satire. However, we won't even be allowed electric blankets--back to feather beds. Imagine the piles of goose manure that will result from raising the geese for the down.

You've been watching "Americathon" again, haven't you.

I bought my Honda Civic Hybrid (HCH) in 2003, when hybrids weren't cool. My dad and I were looking to buy replacement cars anyway, and I knew gas prices were only going to continue to go up, so being the cheap bastard I am, I bought my HCH as a commuter car. The last 1400 miles, I've averaged 48 MPG, but it has also changed the way I drive (I used to be a wild speed demon).

In San Diego, gas is routinely almost $3 a gal - so I don't feel so bad about dumping smaller amounts of money out my exhaust pipe when I could use the excess for better things like booze and ammo. I didn't get my hybrid to save the planet (but I love clean air). I think the Toyota Prius is fugly. I haven't had any problems with my car, and I go over 400 miles on a tank of gas. I think this kinda' makes up for my RV (8-9 MPG), which is painful to refill at the pump. I get the gas mileage of a big-engine motorcycle & I can carry a lot more, and with more comfort - but I still love riding motorcycles too.

I bought the car because I wanted to, not to make some kind of statement. Personally, I was quite intrigued watching a show on Brazil using ethanol for their cars, at 1/2 the price of gasoline. They were using a grow-able resource (sugar), but I don't think it burned as clean as propane, but it made more sense than sticking strictly to oil products. I wonder how propane would do in a hybrid? Propane is almost as much as gas in San Diego, so the ethanol idea is interesting (and much cheaper - more money for booze and ammo).

YMMV

Bill ... feathers? Nope - H5N1.

So nice to see you back Gerard. Give the Fremont District a look.

The thing the strikes me as funny about the eco-whackos is that they want the USA to clean up everything, but it seems to be OK that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, et. al. drill for oil. As if those countries are on a different planet. If you believe their rhetoric, it's a _planetary_ problem - yet they'd rather have OPEC drilling for oil than have the USA drill in Alaska and the Gulf. So long as everyone else does the dirty work - we Americans can all feel self-righteous and holier-than-thou toward the rest of the filthy Earth.

We don't really have a oil crisis, we have a crisis of self-loathing, and that is preventing us from solving the relatively minor oil problem.

I'm ready for Hydrogen. As soon as the Government mandates a hydro-station on every corner, I'll be there baby!

You forgot one other point on the hybrids. I beleive they need their batteries replaced roughly every 3 - 4 years, @ around $2,500. Figure this in, and a high-mileage gas-only automobile might just be cheaper to run.

I bought the extended warranty on my HCH which covers the batteries up to 80,000 miles or 6 years. The price of the extended warranty was almost $1k, but with the new technology, I figured it was probably worth it. I've also read of people buying after-market batteries and building their own replacement battery packs for a small fraction of the $2500 estimated replacement cost.

Since I drive over 20 miles each way to work and back, and I don't think gas will come back down significantly in cost, I'll keep driving my gas-sipping car, until they come up with something better. I don't like throwing my money at oil companies.

I wish US car manufacturers would get their asses in gear instead of always bringing up the rear in both quality and innovation.

Good for you, Mike. I'm glad you found a way to wrestle the price of the batteries down. I ride my motorcycle almost every day, but at about 42 mpg it still isn't that inexpensive. The hybrids are startig to look more attractive. I could drive, get better mileage and listen to the radio...

There is no cheaper or more expensive fuel.Always you pay for energy.Hydrogen-do not even think about.
Its production is more expensive than silver.
Hybrid after all is expensive as hell.
Solution:japanese moped/50ccm->bike->bycikel->mobility per pedes.
We still have in slate and sands more gasolin, after industrial this and that with heavy oil,than Arabs as a gift from Allah.Their production goes down.
Before we learn how get oil from slate and sands[15-20 years ?]we have still unopened sources.Sea,Alaska.Partly fission.Partly.That energy is too expensive.

If you wait until you were going to buy a new car anyway, then you're not looking at recouping the entire $25,000 price of a new car with your gas savings, you're only looking at recouping the price difference between a hybrid and a regular. Anyone know how much more a hybrid costs than a corresponding regular car?

I think the hybrid still comes out more expensive unless you keep your car for a decade or so, but I'm pretty sure the numbers are a little bit closer than your article makes them out to be.

Still, very funny article. :-)

To move battle hardened of redundant American, used car salesmen(sic)could be biiig problem after two years.Supply.

Mike (5:48):

Sounds like you bought your hybrid for all the right reasons.

(Especially the booze & ammo part. :)

Somewhere someone in America is saying, Yeah! That's a GREAT idea! Love your work...welcome back.

Yes, akaky, a bicycle would be easy to get. The knee replacement surgery is the difficult part.

Interesting discussion of hybrids, but I'd like to dodge back to a more general point Gerard makes:

Alas, to Progressives, this progress is no progress; any improvement shy of perfection is no improvement at all.

It took me a while to catch on to this bait-and-switch, but this is the classic Progressive maneuver. Whatever the US is doing is not compared with what other countries are doing or what has been done historically. No, the US is always compared with some Utopian ideal that would arrive if only the US would disappear or gracefully lay down, die, and let Progressives run the show as they deserve to since they are obviously so much more intelligent and moral.

It's why the miracle yesterday in Iraq is being dismissed as Sunnis still not satisfied and Iraqi voters not as enthusiastic as last time.

Never mind that more Iraqis voted this time than last time, that the violence was about 100 times less, that it was their constitution that they created and that Iraq is still on track to becoming a functioning democracy despite large odds and the endless carping from progressives that they would never get this far and some who still claim that the Iraqis were better off under Hussein.

As I recall I reckon I heered tell some years back that some Americans don’t cotton to trucks, but heck I always figgered that was jus’ Yankytalk & I don’t pay such palaver no heed nohow. Or I figgered mayhaps it was some a’them kinky folks I heered about from cousin Betty Lou out near Houston that drive them weird highbred vehicles. There’s just no accountin’ fer the types of vehicle some funny kinda folk will take up with, now is there?

Van der Leun, no real American would ever disparage the finest vehicle type ever thunk up by Detroit – the Ford F150 pickup truck. I remember well that morning in ’92 after I drove her home from the dealership(she was a bit skittish on the turns, but that’s to be expected of any new bride … er … vehicle). I tiptoed out my front door ‘round about 6:49am & there she was, sleeping so peaceful-like in the driveway. I just stood there awhile, drinkin’ her in: her clean lines, her shiny chrome bumpers, the cute little side vents on her windows & a tailgate that would make a grown man cry. Then all’a sudden the morning sun peeped through that ol’ mesquite thicket over toward the east. Those golden rays bounced off that Cherry Red paint job & into my old eyes & I tell you Van der Leun, it was a dazzling sight to behold – I almost fainted onto my fresh-mowed crabgrass. So don’t be tryin’ to separate me from little Roxy, boy, she might guzzle a little gas but a finer, sweeter vehicle has not been had by man.

If I wurn’t havin’ a new clutch put in little Roxy by Dr. Tino Garcia down at the Expressway Auto Service & Pickup Clinic & therefore reeduced to(Lord help me) walkin’, I would saddle up little Roxy & ride up there to Yankyland, even up yonder past Dallas, & hog-tie yew to a fencepost! Cousin Daisy Pearl told me all about yew Yankys & yer weird talk that time behind tha barn, before Paw caught us. But don’t yew wurry, pretty soon little Roxy will be good as new & then yewl be in the ol’ cactus patch without a bandaid if yew keep it up.

Seriously, a fine post & welcome back.

You argue that one must earn back the purchase price in gasoline savings to justify a hybrid. But don't forget that non-hybrids aren't free. Your argument could perhaps be applied to the difference in price between a Prius and a similar non-hybrid Toyota. Since that difference is probably a few thousand dollars, the $700/year savings doesn't look quite so bad. And the price difference will narrow and vanish and more hybrids are produced, manufacturing is streamlined, and supply catches up with demand.

As you point out, though, people aren't buying them only to save money.

The other point about "what do we do with all the existing cars?" is equally flimsy: a car lasts an average of maybe 15 years. If nothing but hybrids were sold from this day forward, in 10 years the majority of cars would be hybrids and our gas consumption would be down 25% or more.

Denny,

Don't count on gas consumption being down 25% or more. The sad fact is the auto companies (at least the US ones) are putting hybrids in to create more power, not to save gas. sure, there are some gas savings, but not to the degree if they used the electric assist to match the HP, dropping the gasoline engine capacity so it substantially saves gas instead of just window dressing to create more power and make people THINK they're doing something good by buying a hybrid.

I love muscle cars and lots of raw power, but once I'm on the freeway commuting, I don't need all the extra HP unless I'm towing something. They need to make more and better commuter cars where the most gas savings are to be had, and save the powerhouses for those who need them or don't mind paying to play. Most of us don't need all that power to drive to work and back, so to make the gas saving cars more feasible, they need to come down in price too - otherwise people aren't going to buy enough of them to make a dent until gas gets much more expensive. And the stinking insurance companies are also making a mess of things by charging so much to insure these new cars even though most of them are just commuter cars. They're charging rates like they're hot rods or something. Jerks.

I played sports in High School in the late 50 ties, and all I remember was that it burned when you breathed after a workout. Of course that was in Santa Monica, so I guess I had the benefit of proximity to the coast. There has been improvement, but I'm not sure it justifys adding MBTE to gasoline, or having 40 different blends of gasoline all over the country. Government only does two things well, and this obviously was one of them: overreact! Regards Keith

The truth is actually worse than you put it. In the realm of most efficient vehicles, hybrids don't make much sense, with today's technology.

Consider the efficient, compact normal IC car. Such a car has a low vehicle weight, to reduce the amount of power needed to move the car, with a small, efficient engine. Even though a car's engine spends most of its time putting out a small amount of power to keep a car going at a particular speed, it still needs enough power to get up to speed in a reasonable time, and to get up hills. This tends to limit the minimum size of the engine you can put in a car (depending on the preferences of the market with regard to "reasonable" acceleration and max. speed, of course), which affects the efficiency of the vehicle.

Now consider the ultra-efficient, compact hybrid car. The idea is that you can rely on a more efficient engine because you can use an engine as a generator, which doesn't have to span such a wide range of operating conditions. Also, in the case of parallel hybrid drives, you can use an engine which is smaller (and also more efficient) than you could with the engine alone, since you have the assistance of battery power and electric motor. However, none of this assistance comes free. You may shave weight from the engine, but you also have to add weight in the form of batteries and electric motor. Despite advances in battery technology, our batteries are still very inefficient and heavy. Usually, in the smallest vehicles, this weight balance doesn't add up, the weight you add with motor and batteries is vastly more than the weight you remove by using a smaller engine. That leaves the body. Using lightweight materials (e.g. fiberglass, plastics, aluminum alloys, etc.) you can shave a lot of extra weight off the body. If you're lucky, you end up with a vehicle that weighs about the same as an ordinary compact car. All this weight reduction and hybrid technology comes at a cost though. And not just in dollars. Batteries, electric motors, and lightweight materials don't grow on trees, they need to be manufactured. And that manufacturing, especially in the case of batteries and aluminum alloys, comes at an environmental cost. There is pollution and environmental cost associated with the manufacture of any vehicle. Interestingly, this figure is typically higher for hybrids than for equivalent ordinary IC compact cars. Thus, hybrids come with an environmental debt up front that can only be paid back after extensive use.

And the really ironic fact is that compact hybrids don't have very impressive fuel efficiencies. Because of the added weight and the still lack luster battery technology hybrids only offer marginal efficiency improvements over compact cars in the same weight class. Often, depending on driving conditions, they can be less efficient than lighter compact cars (e.g. Geo Metro vs. Prius).

There are two reasons behind this. One is that we have really come a long way in internal combustion engine design, and can make some very impressively efficient engines even without hybrid technology. The other is, as mentioned above, battery and motor technology isn't at a state sufficiently advanced to allow their addition to light frame vehicles without significantly affecting the curb weight.

What this means is that to get the maximum benefit from today's hybrid technology, it is better to use it in the heaviest, least efficient vehicles than to try to cram it into the smallest compact cars. This is because the addition of batteries and motors to larger cars doesn't make as much percentage difference to the curb weight, and yet can have fairly dramatic (e.g. 50-100% vs. 10-20%) effects on fuel efficiency. Indeed, that has been the trajectory that hybrids have taken over time. They have become standard on locomotives and very large industrial vehicles (e.g. dump trucks, mining vehicles, etc.) for decades, and have started making inroads in big-rig trucks. In terms of passenger vehicles, the logical place for hybrids is in SUVs, vans, and super duty trucks. And manufacturers are starting to see the advantages there and have plans for such vehicles in the near future.

Though, in terms of maximum fuel efficiency, your best bets aren't hybrids, yet, but rather common IC compact cars, pure electric vehicles, car pooling, or walking / biking (although keep in mind that bikes have a "pollution debt" due to manufacture as well, so to pay off that debt you have to ride a fair distance over the life of the bicycle).

I heard about this advertising scheme on a another blog, that gives away free computers. It sounded like a scam, but after I googled it, it was legitmiate. You have to sign up for an offer from one the sponser companies. I did the free credit report one and canceled before the free trial time was up. That was it! I just recieved my new mini computer and it didn't cost me a thing! Here's the link if you're on as tight of a budget as I am.

http://minimacs.freepay.com/?r=15601403

Jim--I heard about spambots like you on a another blog, one that says there's no free lunch. It sounded like a scam, and guess what, it was! You have to sign up for an offer from one of the sponser companies and then they make your life miserable with more spam. They use the word "free" a lot, as in "free credit report" and "free trial time." That's it! Oh, and they also use the exclamation point very freely, too, as in "I just recieved my new mini computer and it didn't cost me a thing!" And then they close with something personal, to make you think you are dealing with a real live person just like yourself, such as "Here's the link if you're on as tight of a budget as I am."

Buh-bye, Jim!

Propane? At least it's not butane. That's a bastard-gas.

Yup, Robin Goodfellow, what he said.

Wow! A coffin on wheels. Well, half a coffin anyway.
I can see it now:
The car was totalled and everyone killed, when the car was demolished by a raccoon, crossing the road.

Ben, I think you are on to something. There could be a new game for possums, "roll the rollerskate." They push the car over at rural stop signs then scurry off with the junk food that spills out.

Or the larger and more aggressive crows could lift them in their claws and drop them on the windshields of real cars.

People will have to own those rat-sized dog substitutes instead of real dogs, and grocery shopping will have to be done four times a day due to the cargo space being the size of a frozen tv dinner. The paperless office will be a necessity, briefcases being too big by far to fit in the car.

And the redneck joke about the wife weighing more than the pickup truck can be modernized to the meth head girlfriend who actually fit in the car for an entire week before her death from anorexia related heart failure.

It could get really ugly.

Excellent post, Gerard. As usual.

Good to see you back blogging.

The rain and cold puts me off riding my bicycle 9 out of 10 days in the UK Winter. On strong wind days, cycling is impractical. It is also not fair to motorists to struggle slowly against the wind through flow-intersect situations. Here in Poole Bay towns, 65+ people (like me) now get free bus travel after 09h00. But ought I to feel guilty about encouraging deisel-engined-bus pollution? The solution is as it has always been: the much reviled 1920s-1930s ribbon-development for which the non-pejorative name is 'linear city'. You can have a constant slow flow of electric rail cars/carriages along the city spine for short distance travel, and a speedy version on a second level for larger/longer hops. Each street is a 5-minute-maximum walk. You have green fields at the street end. But it does mean giving planners perhaps-overweening powers to dis-assemble traditional cities and turn every road or lane into a part of the linear city net. Natural selection has ruled for 3 and a half billion years. Maybe we should welcome the motorisation of the Earth population and not interfere. If homo sapiens dies out, or survives, or adapts, or whatever, it will be most interesting to observe. Leave it free, leave it free, leave it free, leave it free, there will be an answer leave it free, leave it free... Cy Quick at mydigest.wordpress.com

"The Didik Long Ranger is constructed of welded aluminum tubing and is built to aircraft standards."

My flying buddies tell me that "aircraft standards" means making every part as flimsy as possible: "Throw it at the ceiling. If it sticks it's light enough."

I wouldn't get in one of those things unless I had a death wish.

I debated getting a Hybrid for a few minutes, but no, I'm getting my Mustang, sorry. (And investing the rest of my combat pay in Oil, big and small.)

I remember the thick, gooey air of Gary, IN when I was a child. Driving through it for the first time, I wondered if it was what the atmosphere looked like on Mars. Yes, the environment is much cleaner than it was in the 60's, so I'm going to continue driving my SUV and not recycling my garbage. Paying homage to carefully cleaned garbage and then piling on your curb once a week is really a treat for the racoons and dogs that scatter it everywhere creating - not preventing - pollution.

End to end, hybrids consume more energy than Hummers.

http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_20060719.shtml

Hydrogen is a net energy loser.

Gerard, your post is a boatload of exaggerated, distorted dreck that makes me want to throw up - and all that text is really saying is that you are determined to continue wasting the earth's resources while giving your share of the cataract of money going to people who will use it to kill us.

Point 1 is that the relevant cost is the difference in cost between hybrids and conventional cars. Why isn't Detroit working on hybrids? Simple. Because they don't want to - it's much easier to keep making the same grossly oversized and wasteful junk as they have been making for the last 50 or more years.

Which leads to point 2. What the heck is wrong with making and buying smaller cars? Europeans manage quite comfortably with vehicles half the average mass of American ones. Of course, since the number of grossly obese Americans is larger in proportion than in any other country in the world, maybe you need big cars to carry the tubs of lard that many Americans have become.

The image of America abroad is that of a greedy, spiteful, violent, stupid and uneducated bully - the sort of child that your kids get warned against. The word "child" is quite deliberate.

Gerard wrote:

"...the rapid build-up of American automobiles and other vehicles on the Chinese mainland, in conjunction with that nation's casual attitude towards pollution control, should quickly create such a toxic soup over all China's industrial areas that a vast die-off of its population is virtually assured."

Nice thought but not quite right. One inconvenient fact:

Burning high sulphur coal produces mercury pollution. China has only high sulphur coal and because they do not have laws to make the coal fired power plants that are sprouting at the rate of at least one per week scrub their exhaust, they issue large amounts of mercury into the air. Japan knows well the "benefits" of mercury in the environment. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease ) It turns out that 90% of the mercury air pollution in the US comes from........ China. So sure, send those old vehicles there... it will do a world of good.

/snark off

BTW, too funny article.

Well, image isn't everything Flethcer as all the footprints leading in attest.

Secondly, why should anyone care what anyone "says" the image is. That image is generated mostly by the same sort of cityoen de la monde that flaps its vapid gums here while taking posh shelter in the shadow of this red rock.

If there are children here masquerading as grown-ups they need to grow up rather than throw up.

As to your point 2, there's nothing wrong with making and buying smaller cars. Seems to me all of the erstwhile American mfgs have a number of models in their lines. The point, cher fletcher, which you seem determined to miss is that people should have a choice not a mandate in what they buy or do not buy,

You needn't worry here in Seattle where more people love going down the road with a big "I'm SUCH a good person!" announcement pinned on the behind of their bumper.

If Didik is not driven by that new physics, there is
according to old physics law: to move mass M from point
A to point B one needs energy E. If that energy is
created by hybrid or pure SUV, energy E stays the same.Trickster Toyota.

milos, actually you are just plain wrong - apart from the part of the energy used (usually negligible) used in lifting car and passenger(s) through a change in elevation between point A and point B. The theoretical lower limit of energy use to move a mass, however large, between any two points at the same elevation is ZERO.

Just about all the energy used in transport, after losses in the engine itself, is used in overcoming friction - which increases with higher speed, higher mass of the vehicle (which affects rolling resistance) and aerodynamic drag. The energy used also increases if higher accelerations are used, because the engine is being used in less efficient parts of its power curve. Heavy braking also increases energy loss.

Hence, a typical SUV or pickup (huge mass, big inefficient engine, very poor aerodynamics) uses more energy for the same job (the most common number of people in a vehicle is one) than just about any other form of land transport commonly used. Which is probably why Americans love them so much.

The total cost of ownership over the life of a vehicle may well be lower, in the USA, for a typical, traditional, American car (big, lazy engine and poor aerodynamics, but simple design leading to lower maintenace costs) - because fuel is cheap. Of course, maintenance costs largely stay in the country in which the car is being used, whereas extra fuel used due to poor MPG leads to higher costs to the country as a whole. This is for two reasons; money directly sent to other countries, many of them avowed enemies of the USA, and money spent on military equipment and munitions (much of which simply disappears) needed in larger quantities to secure fuel supplies. Missiles, tanks, guns and bombs are very poor stimulants of the civilian economy.

If gasoline in the USA was raised to European levels of cost, the government would have more money (for a while) for other programs such as making America self-sufficient in energy; the amount of money sent to the promoters of terrorism would decrease immediately and keep decreasing as vehicles were replaced with new, more efficient ones; and last but not least the evil day when oil runs out would be postponed. You probably don't believe in AGW, so I'll leave that out.

All this would happen without any compulsion whatever. After all, even in the UK with discriminatory vehicle taxation and high fuel prices, some people buy large gas-guzzlers. But there are less.

Fletcher,if you think that with better efficiency
you will save energy,forget it you will spent energy at process of making that car,I understand your arguments. After all during driving the car you can spill 1 gallon on 1 mile of road. However, it makes no sense. I drove 5500 km from north of B.C. to La Paz,Baja California South with broken ribs. I drove mine Cherokee, I did it. Didik? You are going to argue about efficiency. You are away from reality.
I did not say one word about efficiency. I was talking about energy needed from A to B. If your name will be kpt Bligh, that fact you will not change. Do not talk mi about guzzlers, talk about physics. I am not Greenpeace.I could take horse and truck and slowly go grazing horse.Or per pedes.How fast I could get there by using plane? Ha? Now price of plane, energy to make that plane.

I wish I'd read this before my last post. I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment and just genuflected to superior intellect. Brilliant, as usual.

P.S. For some reason I picture your dad wearing an eyepatch with those Hathaway shirts.

"If gasoline in the USA was raised to European levels of cost, the government would have more money (for a while) for other programs such as making America self-sufficient in energy;"

Ah yes the government would have more money (for a while) and we the people would have less (for ever).

How brainwashed does someone have to be to blurt out a statement like that and think it's a great idea and a persuasive argument?

Unbelievable.