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Automotive Trends 1975-2010, Part I: More SUV's, More Power, & More MPG's!
This is from Stone Street Advisors
As gas prices continue to rise across the Country and we slowly,
possibly begin what could loosely be described as the
late-spring/early-summer driving season, I thought it high-time I
started running some car and gas numbers. Before we get into the price
of gas at the pump and how it is likely to affect driving/car-buying
behavior, I'd like to take a look at the composition of the U.S. vehicle
fleet and how it's changed over time.
Confirming the anecdotal
experience of everyone who's spent any time on the roads over the past
decade or two, SUV's are in fact slowly taking over. Additionally, as I
explained back in June, 2009, Americans simply are not fans of the small car, even when gas prices rise exponentially (I'll be re-visiting this sometime in the next few months). Allow me to share some additional facts in greater detail:
Per EPA data,
in 1975 cars and station wagons represented over 80% of all vehicles
produced, while trucks & SUV's accounted for less than 15%. Fast
forward three and a half decades, and cars (including wagons) only
represent less than 60%, while trucks (including SUV's) represent almost
40% of vehicles produced. The following chart shows the production
share of (in order from top to bottom) Cars, Wagons, Vans, SUV's, and
Pickups by size (small, medium, large) in years 1975, 1988, and 2010,
including their average fuel efficiency (by miles per gallon). The
chart also shows how these numbers have changed over time. Numbers in
red (on the right three columns) are decreases, while numbers in dark
green are mild (<10%) increases, and numbers in light green show more
drastic (<10%) increases.
What's
immediately clear is the shift away from cars of virtually all
sizes/type towards SUV's, as evidenced just by looking at the
distribution of red, dark green, light green in the columns to the
right. From 1975->2010, the production share of small cars dropped
by over 40%, while the share of large & small SUV's (combined; small
SUV's were the same in both years) jumped over 1,700%!
Many - if
not most - people assume that the shift towards SUV's and away from
small cars has severely reduced the overall fleet-wide fuel efficiency,
however such is not the case. Since 1975, fleet-wide average fuel
efficiency has increased 71.8%, and even the low-end fuel efficiency has
increased 33%. When we use weighted-averages (% share of each segment
times its average fuel efficiency), fuel efficiency has increased almost
77% over that time period, which indicates that preferences have
shifted towards types of vehicles that have experienced greater than
average fuel efficiency gains such as midsize cars and midsize/large
SUV's.
Tree-huggers can whine all they want, but the facts speak
for themselves: vehicles have gotten MUCH more fuel-efficient over the
past few decades, even though large SUV's account for significantly more
vehicles on the road today than ever before!
While
efficiency gains are certainly a good thing by every measure (except
oil company profits), the best part about advances in technology for
drivers - especially those with a bit of a lead foot - is that not only
are cars more efficient, but they are significantly faster and more
powerful, too! For cars & trucks combined, horsepower is up over
60% while power efficiency (hp/cid, or horsepower produced divided by
engine block size) is up over 120%!!!!!! Think about that: technology
has advanced so much, so fast, that not only are effectively all
vehicles significantly more efficient, but they're even MORE powerful,
too!
One thing that I'm only going to touch upon in this series
(at least that's the plan) is how government standards/classification
and changes thereof affect these numbers. Over the years, vehicles that
were once classified as small SUV's are now classified as midsized and
vice versa. Cars like the Toyota RAV4 (Lexus RX330) and the infinity FX
are based on car platforms instead of truck ones in-part because of how
the government measures Auto manufactures offerings. I've seen a
number of essays and studies, but for quick-reference, either hit up the
google machine, or pick up one of the major auto magazines (Car &
Driver, Motortrend, Autoweek, Road & Track, etc) there's likely to
be at least some discussion every month on the topic.
This is only part I in a series of at least 3 articles. Stay tuned later for more later this week!
- advertisements -
There is zero chance a 20hp car can transport two guys at 70mph, unless you want to squeeze them into a BMW Isetta, and even then I'm not buying it. Physics and all...
Firstly: I wrote 20-30 HP.
Secondly: Zero chance my ass! Read and enlighten yourself. Mindsets need changing. Most early cars were of less than 30 HP and although small in comparison to many modern day cars, did transport up to four people. Engines today are so much better, especially torque-wise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loremo
So OK, they are no longer in existence, but I'm sure their calculations were at least worthy of consideration, as they attempted to find a solution to a problem, by not following normal doctrine. Lower overall weight is an obvious key to smaller engine sizes being adequate for the job.
Fat Ass: Point taken. Not being someone who has driven an SUV, or even looked at any literature for them, I assumed SUV's was the accepted plural nomenclature among SUV users.
SUVs from now on.
Boiltherich:
And your point is... Denial is a better form of complacency? Denial roolz OK? Stupid is as stupid does? Don't blame me 'cos I can make no difference? It's everyone elses' problem. What a cop-out.
Oil is a finite resource. FACT!
Machines with lower fuel consumption help minimise the use of what's left. FACT!
For hell's sake,
THERE ARE NO APOSTROPHES IN PLURALS.
It's just " SUVs ". It's the PLURAL OF SUV.
THERE IS NO APOSTROPHE.
Stunningly basic English mistakes like such as this, really make the whole site look bad.
How can it be possible that any professional writer does not realise there IS NO APOSTROPHE IN PLURALS.
It's JUST A PLURAL -- NO APOSTROPHE!!!!!! For goodness sake.
Here's a cartoon strip that may help you remember:
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=09122008
If ZH is going to publish articles from sources with total grammar incompetence, would it be worth paying 50 dollars an article for a copy editor?
Again: it's amazing how amateurish and silly it makes the writer look -- and indeed the whole web site. A real shame.
THERE ARE NO APOSTROPHES IN PLURALS. It's not difficult!
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=09122008
You are in deperate need of anger management therapy. Seek help, please.
Get between a man and his vehicle and you risk your own neck. Now that I think of it I know a lot of women that feel the same way. I was born in 1958, I first was taught to drive in 1972, but just before that when I was hitting puberty and first realized the freedom that was coming my way there was a new development called self service. I remember it well, Lincoln Nebraska in 1971, a self service car wash with a self service gas pump, mom let me pump the gas into our 68 Impala convertible, 26 gallon tank, 9.9 cents per gallon. $2.50 for a fill up on near dead empty. You younger people think a gas war is the USA invading Iraq, for my generation a gas war was 10 cent a gallon gas and a free set of drinking glasses or a free car wash with every purchase. This new self service business had machines that dispesned gas a lot like the way the vaccuum machines dispensed suction for your carpets, you drop a quarter in and you got 2.5 gallons of gas. The margin on gas was so thin that as it caught on full service went out of business almost overnight. Add to that the requirements that tanks do not leak and station owners had to pay tons of money to prove tanks safe and bingo the rest went out of business. Then air quality laws were passed that forced vented tanks and required stations to dig the old tanks out and replace them with tanks that could vent and burn the fumes, which meant that pumping gas which was simple now required muscular strength just to keep the nozzle in the car and you had to do it yourself for 5 times the money.
A lot has changed since I hit the age of sex and cars, it was not that long ago. Unfortunately for me, boo hoo, the same exact time I actually got my drivers licence was right in the heart of original oil embargo in 1973, gas was not available no matter who you were or how much money you could pay. The only time since that time I would say gas was "cheap" was January/February of 2005, I paid $1.039 in Houston on a road trip from California to Florida and back.
Every time fuel rises in price to the point where it pinches all of us and geopolitics there are a thousand reasons why, hare brined schemes are hatched, and a recession happens. This is about the fourth or fifth time I have seen this energy scare, and yes it would be great to get off the merry go round. Peak oil my ass, there is more oil than they can store, energy is a mess, the grid sucks, cars use too much fuel, and if you are not using flourescent shit lightbulbs you are an enemy of the people. Cry me a fucking river folks, and if you are not contributing to the pain of high energy costs you are fucking up the planet with your carbon footprint. So tell me, how many of you limit your computer use to an hour a day? Or ten minutes a day as the green weenies would allow you provided your computer is energy star rated.
Here is a fact, my energy usage will remain pretty much constant through my life, take it or leave it. If costs for energy rise via higher utilities or fuel then what remains to be spent on other stuff just falls dollar for dollar. If it gets so bad that I have to choose between my car and my apartment or house then so long lease or mortgage because I will live in my car before I give it up. Why is that so hard for people to understand?
There are really only three things I need to get by, gas for my car, coffee in the morning, and my tobaccoo. All the rest is your problem not mine. You can't tax me out of those things, and certainly are not going to guilt trip me out of them, so instead of trying to change those things why not alter your perception of how life really is? Simply change the way you ask the questions, like global warming, is the planet warming? Well no shit dude, of course it is warming, it has been since the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago. So is your or my carbon use the cause? Um, if you need that question answered then you have no business in a forum of educated people.
It is true that carbon release into the atmosphere by man has impacted the total concentration of atmospheric carbon by a degree, though not as much as most seem to think today because there have been times in the past when natural carbon in the atmosphere were 350 times the level of today. And that carbon in the atmosphere can theoreticaly warm the planet is not in dispute, we all can agree that total carbon can warm the Earth. The world is warming for certain, but it is so ego centric to assume that is you that has done it when in fact we have been warming and cooling on a very simple and regular basis for millions of years. If we are warming the planet by burning fossil fuels and thus releasing carbons into the atmosphere then we are not changing the pattern of nature other than to speed it up by a very small number of years.
How small? Mount Pinatubo and Mt. St. Helens happened relatively close together, on geological terms, and they made for great TV, but on volcano terms they were next to nothing, yet they emitted more carbon into the atmosphere than all of mans activities combined since we walked upright. The last eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 released more carbon into the atmosphere than ever gallon of gas man has ever burned.
Oh wait, you think I am a heritic now but when you read what I have to say about second hand smoke you will either come find me and kill me or you will kiss my ass and apologize for the shit you have given to smokers. I am not kidding, it is not about whether smoke causes damage, like duh asshole, but second hand smoke was the global warming of 10 years ago, that is why you can't enjoy a pint and cig indors now. And all I have to say about it with a couple shots of tequila in me is that you non smokers can go fuck yourself, but how you do that with a bible and a preacher standing over you is more odd than I want to know.
What is second hand smoke? I ask that question in the 1990's and guess what I got in response? They called me some kind of retard, in a way that did not suggest that they were politically correct. OK, they had no definition of second hand smoke other than the smell of cigarettes or other burning tobacco. So fine, second hand smoke is essentially being annoyed by the smell of tobacco. But no, these assholes decided they were going to punish people that made fun of them for good reason, they were going to prove that tobacco not only killed the users but killed the people near them using a variety of easily manipulated statistics and charts, never mind that the evil tobacco users are exposesed to both first hand cigarette smoke AND second hand smoke. Somehow the cancer rate for exposure to second hand smoke is so much higher than it is for actual smokers that the only reasonable conculusion is that you need to start smoking if you want to avoid cancer.
How can the cancer rate of non smokers be higher than for smokers? How can man be the cause of the millions of years of procession of ice ages and warming? Do we affect the world we live in? I know the answer is yes, but it is not as much as you think, and crappy religion gets in the way, because we can work together and find answers, even if that means leaving the planet, but denial and placing blame on homos and satan just will not fix things.
Carbon footprints?
People are used to freedom, in America and Europe, now spreding to Asia. Make an affordable car that has 300 horses, and comfort that has style and is not taxed out of existance and guess what, I want it. I will buy it, but it better be better be less than I paid for my BMW and at a better interest rate of you all are fucked.
World's most Economical Cars.
Wot, NO SUV's in the US top 10?
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/motoring/comparing-the-most-fuelefficient-cars-in-the-world-prius-crosses-all-boundaries-1805807.html
That list is a couple years old, but most of the SUVs and crossovers sold in Europe now would be on the US list from 2009.
Last month I was looking at either a Smart or a Jetta for my wife, the current models have improved to 85mpg and 78mpg. But even on the inefficient side- my MB350EG which weighs almost 5000lbs gets 30mpg, and my Ford 7.3L F250 back in the US gets 25-27mpg even though it weighs 1000lbs more and puts out obscene torque.
150 mpg just around the corner?
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/cartech/volvo-v60-plug-in-diesel-hybrid-promises-150mpg-low-emissions-50002873/
Let's hope they and other manufacturers actually start to build cars like this.
So between VW (German) and Volvo (Chinese) all the paper pushers and burger flippers in the US could be getting between 150 and 300 mpg (instead of 20-30) based on whether they need extra seats for kids, and create less competition for the fuel for vehicles that actually need to move measureable mass from point A to point B.
So what does the USSA's socialist retard-in-chief push - the Gubbamint Motors Volt, which meets basically no one's needs and requires subsidies & infrastructure just to be ridiculed on an actual road. Barry is a failure even at socialism - if he were running the USSR he would be pushing Zaz over Lada. Lada was successful because they licensed technology from Fiat and built it in volume cheaper in their own factories.
Fuck the UAW, send all their members to PBGC, and stop wasting taxpayer dollars on "ideas" that aren't solutions.
The wifeys 4x4 Toyota has 720,000 + miles on it,
It runs like a clock and gets 22 mpg,
It will go anywhere, I want to mount a 50cal in the back
but they won't let me have one.
From Wikipedia:
An average North American mid-size car travels 21 mpg (US) (11 L/100 km) city, 27 mpg (US) (9 L/100 km) highway; a full-size SUV usually travels 13 mpg (US) (18 L/100 km) city and 16 mpg (US) (15 L/100 km) highway. Pickup trucks vary considerably; whereas a 4 cylinder-engined light pickup can achieve 28 mpg (8 L/100 km), a V8 full-size pickup with extended cabin only travels 13 mpg (US) (18 L/100 km) city and 15 mpg (US) (15 L/100 km) highway.
An interesting example of European cars' capabilities of fuel economy is the microcar Smart Fortwo cdi, which can achieve up to 3.4 l/100 km (69.2 mpg US) using a turbocharged three-cylinder 41 bhp (30 kW) Diesel engine. The Fortwo is produced by Daimler AG and is currently only sold by one company in the United States. Furthermore, the current (and to date already 10 year old) world record in fuel economy of production cars is held by the Volkswagen Group, with special production models (labeled "3L") of the Volkswagen Lupo and the Audi A2, consuming (NEDC ratified) as little as 2.99 litres of diesel fuel per 100 kilometres (78 miles per US gallon or 94 miles per Imperial gallon).
What, exactly, is your point? That Wikipedia is more accurate than EPA data? Right...
That some cars in Europe are FAR smaller and therefore get far better mileage?
Stay on topic, please.
In reality, a 20-30 horsepower car is all that's needed to transport a couple of people in relative comfort, at 70 mph. Discuss.
There is zero chance a 20hp car can transport two guys at 70mph, unless you want to squeeze them into a BMW Isetta, and even then I'm not buying it. Physics and all...
The Jap iron is still the best for the price IMHO, German cars are cool if you can afford the upfront& repairs, Small Fords handle decent, but the engines are done at 100k, GM's- I can say they have given me plenty of wrench time and are not worth their price. I go to work every day and have never needed a four wheel drive, look at all that extra weight you are hauling. Of course I learned to drive a few years ago.
Where do you live? I have a 4x4 pickup and this past winter in Minnesota, I used the four wheel high range an awful lot. If you are leaving the house before the plows get around, it is a must-have. I have driven plenty of different cars in winter conditions, and front wheel drive is almost as good, but I have gotten stuck on unplowed hills around where I work with my car but never with my truck.
Different strokes, etc. If those big SUV's get you off, more power to you. Just don't forget to seek medical attention for an erection lasting more than 4 hours.
Treemagnet is an angry man, or woman apparently. Good for ....him/her. It takes angry people to make things happen. As for me, I'm indifferent. I will give someone credit where it is due. Mulally has done a phenominal job with a broken company. I like to find bright spots in the doom and gloom, and this individual is it. He took Boeing from an atrocity, and he is doing it again with Ford. The man knows how to run/fix a business and make it profitable. Can I say he can do this when the economy falls off a cliff again in the very near future? No. However, I would prefer to have him on my board when the shit does hit the fan again.
SUV's sell to people who are insecure, giving the illusion of being safer since they are bigger, one reason you see so many women driving them. In fact they are less safe than smaller vehicles, being more prone to rolling over. Hydbrid or not, wwasting petroleum with these big-ass cars is stupid.
Illusion or not, a bigger vehicle is safer in a crash and people are less likely to pull out in front of one and you can see further down the road. All in all, I'm happy I bought one for my family hauling duties and I don't consider it a status symbol as I have never been too interested in fashion or status. I'm a very practical person.
Thank you for the reasonable and real comment. Amazing the opinions people harbor; everyone with an SUV (of any size) is some sort of wanna-be hotshot, instead of someone witha family of 4, 5, 6+ who enjoys the vantage point, 4wd, etc of the vehicle...
Where I live asshole they sell to people who want to get where they are going. It snowed 9" here last week.....how 'bout where you live? Yeah, we've got our cowboys who act like they're the salt of the earth driving $72,000 Esacalades, but driving "big-ass cars" as you state is not "stupid". They aren't less safe unless driven by gay metro fags like you and no, they're not more prone to rolling over....unless being driven by, dare I say, homo queens like you - ever steer into a slide queen? I drive diesel vdubs (2 actually) and a Fordasaurus aka "evil tippy SUV driven by illusions of grandeur" useful when I gotta get to where I gotta be. Just curious, are you the asshole I laugh at on the national MSM news sliding down the Atlanta suburb sideways in a whole 1/2" of snow crashing into shit? I knew I knew ya.....
Next time you hear a tree-hugging hippie tell you SUV's are destroying the Planet, remind them their VW Bus with the tiny 4-cylinder engine produces more emissions, but only goes half as fast as a Cadillac Escalade, all while using the same amount of fuel. Technology FTW
----------------------------------------------
What a fucking idiot tool.
Stonestreet: you do not put autos in perspective. They are the most inefficient monstrosities ever foisted on the people of the world. One commentor prided himself on his Cummins diesel truck with over 400,000 miles on it. 400k miles operated at 50 mph is one year of operation. 100,000 miles at 25 mph is 4000 hours of operating time - six months. We take something andoperate it for 6 months and throw it away! I buy a pump for my vessel for $30,000 and I expect to last for a minimum of 80,000 hours of operating time before the vessel is scrapped. If my $30,000 car would last for 80,000 hours times 50mph, the odometer would read 4,000,000 miles before that vehicle was thrown away. All we have to do is ask auto manufactureres to tell us part lives in "hours" instead of "miles".
Efficiency: Stonestreet: does it make common sense for a 5000 lb. vehicle to be transporting a 160 lb man to work?
Auto engines operate in a harsh environment with all the rpm changes. Aircraft engines also don't last as long as your pump (2000-5000hrs TBO typically). They're not junk, it's just an extreme environment as well (in this case heat and power related stress in a light weight system). Compareing any of them them to heavy industrial motors/equipment that operate in a more controlled enviroment is not informative.
"Baldski",
My original post was lost or deleted asshole, lucky for you. You arrogant fucking prick write like nobody else reads your bullshit. How bout the folks who live in very cold parts of the country....ever gone 10 days when the "high" is -30 degrees without the windchill fucktart. I doubt it, throw in a gusting wind and bring that number down to -50 +, (or minus, depending upon your point of view) and maybe, if you repeat your simplified, liberal, academic and extremely shortsighted yet always insightful view out loud in a crowded cafe, you'll realize you had a metro gay moment of stupidity and yes I said gay moment, deal with it....if it hurts as I suspect it does, just rub some vagisil on it.
what the hell are you talking about, and to whom are you referring when you say "you?"
Feel free to ramble about god knows what, but everyone would really appreciate it if you stay on topic in the future.
"Efficiency: Stonestreet: does it make common sense for a 5000 lb. vehicle to be transporting a 160 lb man to work?"
So, you say it is all a matter of perspective? If you're a city boy, and a vehicle is only a way to carry your scrawny ass back and forth to work, or Starbucks, or the opera, then yes - his example would be wasteful.
Now, consider this - his truck is where he works. Have you ever heard of a "hot shot" rig? Suppose you have a pump assembly that has to get to the power plant overnight. No freight forwarder will guarantee overnight delivery, and they grid is close to shutting down due to low spinning reserves and high demand. You call a man with a Cummins (or PowerStroke, or DuraMax) powered dually and a 30 foot deckover gooseneck trailer. He delivers the pump and charges by the mile. I use my trucks to haul hay or cattle, or carry the tractors down to the remote fields or the shop. I haul feed and parts of stuff in it. It is all perspective. Out here in the real world, people need vehicles that are capable of doing things you don't think about in your world.
Mostly I see them with 1 guy driving and nothing in the back, sometimes I see them with a female driving talking on the cell with nothing in the back.
I see nothing wrong with a rancher or plumber driving a truck for the purpose it was made. A truck as a family car to go to dairy queen is stupid.
It's sad that the blind McMansion owners will be able to outbid the serfs who mow their lawns for fuel (and need to transport equipment between McMansion enclaves) while touting fuel efficiency and railing against trucks. Perhaps when the trucks stop delivering their food (ala Argentina) or showing up to fix the broken baubles in their toy museums they will realize that if society is going to function trucks are needed, and they aren't entitled to one, unless they are willing to both pay substantially more fuel and pay more to the providers of service to them who must consume fuel.
The only way US politicians will become green to by shoving their high priced arugula up their asses.
That depends on how much he wants to hedge against the possibility of becoming a 160 lb pancake.
Engines (especially gasoline) certainly have become much more efficient and better performing over the last few decades. All kinds of hoses and pipes that used to be external to the engine block are now built into the (now aluminium) block itself and pretty much everything is precisely controlled and monitored by computer circuitry. There are better (for the most part) materials used from stem to stern in cars too.
However, we're pretty close to the limit of those efficiency and performance gains. The sky is not the limit here. An automotive engineer of the 1920's could have outlined pretty accurately what a car of the future would have to look like (inside and out) to perform like today's cars do. In other words, physics and thermodynamics haven't changed. To squeeze out another MPG you basically have to make the car lighter, make the engine smaller or increase efficiency. Exploding gasoline only yields so much power, car bumpers and everything else you can get away with are already made of plastic instead of metal and computers are already constantly tweaking every last adjustment that can be made in the service of efficiency while the car is going.
There just isn't much that is physically improvable at this point. Which means of course that aggregate performance gains of the future will come mostly from remote compliance monitoring.
Happy driving!
300mpg - room for improvement
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/volkswagen-world/news/282/volkswagen-unveils-the-xl1-super-efficient-vehicle-in-qatar
They insist much on the weight feature, not so much on the engine performance.
In Japan, they have a whole class of vehicles labelled Cappucino aiming at weight reduction.
"In other words, physics and thermodynamics haven't changed."
I tried to find a Carnot engine for my moped, but apparently they're not available any more!
Autopeepul always leave out the 'good parts':
roads, bridges, lights, parking lots, garages, sprawl/housing, malls, office 'towers' (dildoes), fuel infrastructure, finance infrastructure to allow the other infrastructures, the loss of millions of acres of good farmland and agricultural jobs (which we will need when cars become obsolete) ...
The car dudes never talk about this stuff but more energy/money/time/capital are thrown away in the infrastructure part than in the car part. It's all just waste for its own sake b/c what is lost is presumed to have no value which of course it does but that value is arbitrarily discounted (by auto peeps).
This is why the entire world is in 'crisis' of some kind or other. We've been mispricing capital for 75 years and burning it up. What kind of crisis do we have, children? A CAPITAL crisis. Our banks, businesses, governments, institutions, industries ... everything is undercapitalized. Why? Because we have mispriced it and burned it up.
Scarcity is forcing the repricing of capital and the consequence is that the entire establishment that has been created to support automobiles is now underwater. Who gives a flying fuck about the so- called 'efficiency' of the goddamned crap that floats like scum on the support structure?
The 'efficiency' measures how fast we can burn through capital, what an accomplishment! It's a surprise our grandchildren don't murder us in our beds.
The 'efficiency' that will matter is whether the brain trust can determine with some dispatch whether the idiots can make the 'efficient' choice between eating food or driving a fucking car. Right now the choice has been have a decent job and drive a car. This is not a good conceptual matrix to be in because the next levels of choices will not be pleasant.
Drive a car or take a bullet in the head or drive a car or watch someone rape your wife. It's all in play folks and your choice.
good point. i dunno why we all don't have 4x4's and dirt/gravel roads - incentives to not travel too far and rely on rail for long-distance freight.
Adding to that, the induced environmental disturbances like funneling precipitations into areas prone to floods...
Who the fuck are you asshole? Quit eating bong resin and stop rambling....ride you're bike you stupid fuck, enjoy the breeze.
my bong smashed in an earthquake. :(
Obama: Let’s fund clean energy by stripping giveaways to oil companies
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/26/obama-strip-subsidies-oil-companies/
People will ALWAYS want Bigger...Faster cars...look at what's happening in China. Now there is a lottery to get a car licanse....deamdn is hot and human.
Palladium should be part of everyone's portfolio imho.
PALL = Palladium etf.
Fuck PALL.... real men buy SWC (it actually has real palladium)
The writer of this article is DELUDED, just like the vast majority of the American public! How have the motor manufacturers managed to brainwash the whole frigging nation into wanting BIG cars, like SUVs? You need BIG, fast, powerful, ultra comfortable cars for what, exactly? Driving on clogged up roads in the rush hour, popping down to the shops, running the kids to school...what????? Pray tell me, as I'm pretty sure most people in the USA don't do 'hundreds of miles trips' more than occasionally. And, how often does the average driver need to move large quantities of 'stuff'?
Diesel or diesel/electric hybrids are the only way forward at the moment. When will the USA wake up??????
Summer is on its way and I will then look forward to 60-65 mpg out of my 11 year old, 174,000 mile diesel car, instead of 54-58 mpg in the winter. It's small, yes, BUT my head doesn't touch the roof, it's wider than many larger cars and the doors are bigger/wider, making getting in and out of it very easy.
Don't ascribe beliefs you hold about American people to me. Nowhere did I advocate that people SHOULD buy big cars. Nowhere. This is merely a reporting of data, of which the vast majority of people are mostly ignorant.
More duplicitous than deluded. Look at the construction of the article, aiming at effects.
Maybe a guy who bought a SUV and wants to have fun. Or a guy who wants to generate net traffic etc...
Say what you will, but I've still got (and drive from time to time) an '88 Mercedes w/3.0 litre straight six with 565,000 miles on it. When I do drive it, it'll pull hard in top gear to its redline of 6250 which equals 133 mph. I really like that car.
To protect you from accidents and terrorists you know. In a risk free society no one can die by accident only by depression or intake of a myriad of pharmaceuticals pushed upon you by the health care industry.
My modes of transport - In order of use Prius, Vespa, walking, and 1970 Ford F-100 for hauling when I need to which is not very often.
Stone Street Advisors - Interesting article. Will get the juices flowing. I look forward to learning from you and the ZH's automotive enthusiasts in this series of three articles. Triple the enjoyment.