Posted on 01/12/2009 6:02:31 AM PST by decimon
I believe the advice is to buy on the dips.
Yes. If you can get what you want when the price is down then you done good.
Too right.
My Honda Accord saloon averages 57.5mpg (65mpg if I use hypermiling techniques).
It’s not even a hybrid - and there are cars around now that are even more economical than that.
Round where I live, you can’t give SUVs away at the moment - nobody wants them anymore. Gas prices are plummeting but people are uncertain about their jobs and are looking to save costs wherever they can.
I traded in a car that got 36mpg with a tailwind, for one that almost goes twice as far on the same amount of gas. That’s saving me over $200 a month.
I know people who’ve stuck SUVs into the garage and are now using cars that get FOUR TIMES the distance out of a gallon of fuel that they used to get, which is definitely worth it if the trip to the office is a sixty mile round trip.
What's funny is that an SUV might be a good buy as a low mileage vehicle. Depends on the current cost of the SUV versus the current cost of an economical vehicle.
Should’ve added - I’m working in the UK at the moment and it’s a company car.
Funny thing about the UK - the roads are atrocious and bendy, they’ve got traffic lights, roundabouts and speed bumps all over the place.
You’d think if anything the cars would be LESS fuel efficient than their American cousins, but they’re the opposite. What’s more, they can handle tight, windy roads a lot better as well.
In fact, one of the standard jokes in any road test of an American muscle car in the press over here goes something like this:
“It goes like stink, but if you go round a bend at anything more than 20mph it WILL end up in the hedgerow.”
I think that's been typical of European cars. Years ago I asked a guy from France if he preferred American or European cars. He said that for American roads he'd prefer an American car.
The in-line 6 gets maybe 21-23 highway mpg, so it's not a gas guzzler now, but I can't help but think that an electric motor tied to a 2/4 wheel drive relatively small SUV would be a great ‘utility’ vehicle.
For short drives, to the grocery store or pick up the kids at school, run it electric only in a low power mode off of several batteries.
For longer drives, fire up a small gas engine to drive the electric motor and charge the batteries.
For any off-road 4wd, use whatever mode worked best at the moment. Most 4wd stuff I do anyway is really slow anyway and a quiet electric motor would make sense for alot of reasons.
I can't calculate any potential cost or energy savings overall, but it doesn't sound like it would be rocket surgery to do something like this.
Chrysler has shown some hybrid jeeps. The last I saw was a hybrid Patriot if you accept that as a jeep. ;-)
I should have said, “...hybrid jeep concepts.”
You are right! They copied my idea exactly ... :)
Here:
The Jeep EV Range-extended Electric Vehicle uses an electric motor, an advanced lithium-ion battery system, and a small gasoline engine with an integrated electric generator to produce additional energy to power the electric-drive system when needed. The 200 kW (268 horsepower) electric motor generates 400 N•m (295 lb.-ft.) of torque. With approximately eight gallons of gasoline, the Jeep EV has a range of 400 miles, including 40 miles of zero fuel-consumption, zero-emissions, all-electric operation.
“We are also exploring four-wheel-drive, in-wheel electric motors to demonstrate the full reach of ENVI’s advanced electric-drive technologies,” said Rhodes.
The instant high torque of the electric-drive motor and the ability to precisely control each wheel independently results in off-road capability ideally suited for the Jeep brand, without compromising on-road driving capability.
From:
http://jalopnik.com/5053639/jeep-ev-rock-crawling-the-electric-way
That Patriot looks nicer than the current model. And that 0-to-60 in 8 seconds is faster.
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