janstett
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2005
- Messages
- 1,924
- Location
- Chester, NJ
- Car(s)
- 86 944 Turbo, 2000 TA, 09 GC Overland, 11 CLS550
Hybrids are not the future. And no, it doesn't deserve the credits it gets. It is over hyped. Unfortunately this world is full of morons who eat up everything clever marketing can convince them to believe in.
I had this discussion with my wife when explaining why Hybrids aren't so great, and why environmental whackos will complain about any car because they want us to go back to the stone age.
Current hybrids don't get better mileage than frugal gas-only and diesel cars (e.g. if mileage was all you truly cared about, get a 3 cylinder Suzuki Swift; there are small cars that get better mileage than the darlings like the Prius). Add to that the weight they carry around for the electric motor and batteries and they become more inefficient. Add the fact that they are useless on the highways because the electric motor doesn't come into play. Add to that the fact that the batteries are only going to last for 50,000 miles and they will cost more to replace than the value of the car at that point -- Hybrids are going to come off the road FASTER than other cars and add all those batteries to our landfill.
Electric cars, again with the battery problems of weight, replacement, and ultimate disposal; and news flash for environmental-cases, ELECTRICITY COMES FROM SOMEWHERE, in the US it's coal or nuclear, and we haven't built a new nuclear plant since the 1960s, and what environmental-case is going to agree with putting up new nuclear reactors?
I think long term fuel cells hold the most promise, but it's going to take industrial effort to make all that hydrogen, and even then I am only half-sarcastically suggesting that the water coming out of the tailpipe will be cursed as the cause for global-dampening because we're producing new water that didn't exist before (unless of course that's where we got the original Hydrogen).