Posted on 12/19/2007 5:42:22 PM PST by BenLurkin
Sheesh, it’s 1973 all over again.
LOL! Is that yours? I wanna meet the guy who autocrosses a Yugo...and still shows his face in public!
Liberals put everything else before people. Flat little cars for the folks, jets for them.
My pickup turned antique 9 years ago. Paid the one time $120 tax and it now has "forever plates". It sucks spending $$ for gas, but it gets 17/18 mpg, and never breaks. The cheap cost of repair offsets the mileage by a long way, and it's got plenty of go-fast compared to my last "new" truck.
She's a keeper. I will upgrade it to a 1 ton (4x4), and a coat of paint next year, and I will keep it till I die.
Be aware that the new starters will be an integral part of the flywheel — no starter motor with a little gear that engages the gear teeth on the outside of the flywheel.
So starts will be silent.
Once the engine is running the starter becomes the alternator.
The electrical system will be 48 volts, which allows more power for a pound of machinery including wiring.
I think mileage improvement will be simple: go to diesel and make the engines less powerful. No rocket science. The vehicles might even become cheaper to make.
Will consumers accept less power? Depends on cost of fuel and cost of cars that can deliver the required mileage and still have the power.
nope...
But I used to drag in the same class as a guy with an opel wagon — with a 429 cobrajet mounted midships — I was running a 350/400 Don Yenko nova (1971 vintage)
Exactly!
Say..weren't those safety standards mandated by Congress?
Someone ought to try to teach our Congress some physics.
Can't have it both ways; safe AND efficient.
I’m not a fan of government meddling, but at least this is OUR government. All the idiots who insist on “high performance” (read: 0-60mph in a few seconds, like anybody actually needs that) and giant vehicles to compensate for their fragile little egos, are filling the coffers of the Arabs with all that extra oil they’re guzzling. And we know that a big chunk of money that ends up in Arab hands ends up in the hands of terrorism-sympathizing and outright terrorism-sponsoring Islamofascist states. It would nice if free American citizens would pinch the Arabs’ cash flow without a nanny government forcing them to.
IMHO, this may in fact be the only thing which will save the American auto industry - being pestered into changing.
Without any outside nudging, Detroit would continue to turn out virtually unchanged, oversized, too-heavy low performance boats, as they continue to lose market share and eventually just go out of business.
People increasingly WANT small efficient cars. I want a couple. One single-occupant super efficient rechargable hybrid something, perhaps along the lines of the Venture One tilting three-wheel motorcycle-handling “car”, which flies into curves just like a bike.
Something then, bigger for actual trips. Still energy efficient, but capable of carrying gear, and standing up to some weather and some dirt. I’m happy to have noticed recently, Jeep seems to have gotten the message, and has a couple smaller new 4x4’s in their lineup.
Saturn has a new small car, but the other manufacturers, are still stuck in the past.
American car companies are doing NOTHING to tap any of these markets - and I’m certainly not the only person out here, looking for something new from Detroit. Frustrated at their blindness and lack of initiative.
They continue to, year after year, make each model slightly bigger (dumb), heavier (dumb) and have even tried to create market hype for a re-launch of that 60’s guzzling Camaro.
Come on Detroit.
You are lost. Sleeping, and every foreign car company is eating your lunch.
This is needed. Next, let’s pester Detroit into moving at least one design studio each from deep-midwest Detroit, to Southern California - so they get at least some idea of what the competition is doing. And what people are actually ... BUYING.
EVERYTIME the government GETS INVOLVED....they screw it up! To wit....social security, medicare, DMV, IRS, Post Office, etc....WHEN WILL WE LEARN????
It works wonderfully in the Prius. It also makes the Prius very quiet. It feels more like my parent’s Lexus because it is so quiet inside the car.
It doesn’t change the performance at all. It’s seemless to the driver. The Prius also has very good acceleration because it uses a computer to change transmission.
All of this foward thinking is brought to you by the same institution that brought you the toilet that doesn’t flush with one flush. To get the load down the toilet takes at least three flushes to compensate for the congressional requirements.
My question to the Freepers, is how do I compensate for the congressional technology this time. Flush three times? Press on the accelerator three times to pass?
I’ve heard that E85 has less BTU’s and gives poorer MPG’s than gas in the same vehicle? Is this true and will it figure into the CAFE standards or be given an exemption? My ‘07 Chevy Silverado is E85 capable, but I’ve never burned any.
If the “hardpoints” are designed correctly, a unibody truck will have no problem towing trailers, etc. Don’t believe me?
Take a look at a carrier based aircraft, like the F-18. The carrier’s catapult accelerates the 25+ ton F-18 from 0 to over 150 mph in 2.5 seconds. All of these acceleration loads are taken up by the nose gear.
When it comes time to land, the tailhook snags an arresting cable and stops an aircraft flying at 150 mph in about 2 seconds. All done with a unibody.
I’m expecting the gov’t mandated car of the future to be a combination of the Chevy Vega and a golf cart.
It's a fact of chemistry and cannot be altered by any technology. Ethanol is about two-thirds as energy-dense as gasoline; in other words, if you can get a given amount of energy out of a gallon of gasoline, you would need to burn about 1.5 gallons of ethanol to release the same amount of energy. And if ethanol were unsubsidized, it would be somewhere around 10% - 30% more expensive per gallon (not per amount of energy) than gasoline, even at current prices.
Arr arr arr. </Tim Allen>
Too bad the Dems in Congress would rather our cars be represented by limp-wristed lisps than by manly grunts.
Sounds like a really bad idea for those of us who have lengthy stop and go commutes.
It sounds even worse to those of us who live in an area where being stuck in snow can get you killed if you cannot keep the heater going. That 'waste heat' from the engine is (literally) a lifesaver up here.
Lighter, smaller, lower, less powerful vehicles with engines which automatically shut off might be a warm-weather utopian's wet dream, but here, it will kill people.
I am afraid no one has calcualted the pollution impact of shorter engine lifespans, (how much pollution is generated manufacturing an engine, or for that matter, a car?), nor have they factored in the pollution generated by the manufacture and disposal/recycling of batteries.
There is a fixation on the tailpipe when it comes to pollution, which does not surprise me, considering the group we are talking about (Congress).
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