I Recall Seeing a Chevy Volt in New Hampshire
See what I did there with that headline? Government Motors won’t like it.
Here’s a little vignette that might tell us much about the difference between the mainstream media and the rest of us. As I’m walking into Newt Gingrich’s townhall at Public Service New Hampshire in Manchester, I am behind a pair of MSMers, a man and a woman. The two are chatting about the event and the fact that it’s a Republican candidate, and the woman mutters something about “crosses and swastikas.” The man just chuckles. No bias to see here.
As we’re walking along the sidewalk towards the PSNH building, we pass a Chevy Volt owned by the utility. It’s parked just outside PSNH’s doors, with signage accompanying it touting its wonders. It’s plugged in just in case you miss the obvious message and name, that this is an electric car and not a gas burner.
The man in the MSM pair in front of me looks at it, gets an awed expression and says “Hey, that’s a Chevy Volt we just passed. Cool!”
My reaction: The Volt is the ultimate government car, and its presence outside a public utility company just locks that down. The Volt was built by a government-owned company mainly to sate a government desire to socially engineer a “green” energy outcome. It was pitched by the president himself, but like most of his programs it’s unworkable for the average American. At about $40,000 (subsidized) the Volt is one of the most expensive cars on the market. For that high price, you get a tiny car that is impractical for most American families, but for those of a certain political bent it’s a public sign of their piety. Despite Ralph Nader’s silence on the matter, the Volt also appears to be unsafe; whether it’s unsafe at any speed is open to debate.
But hey, cool. Right?
The Chevy Pyre.
I will be using that.
Since when were crosses AND swastikas associated with the Republican party? I for one won’t buy anything from GM, so they won’t have to leave the light on for me at any of their dealerships..
You see, liberals believe they are the polar opposite to fascist Nazi stigma in all aspects. Anyone who is not them is that much closer to being a real nazi. Republicans are very close having the same color associated with their party. To understand liberals think an adult with a 4 year old’s dreamy simplicity.
Aside from being prohibitively expensive, they’re also not as “green” as proponents would like us to believe. The amount of rare earth minerals–and the radiation and waste associated with their mining production–is over twice that of a conventional vehicle, never mind the added burden on an already over-burdened electrical grid.
Yes, pretty cool that!
I often wonder where greenweenies think the energy comes from that powers the electrical sockets into which they plug their electric deathmobiles. Wind? Solar? Magic pixie dust and unicorn tears? I realize trying to talk sense to such dweebs is a hopeless cause, but honestly; they’re dumber than a bag of hammers that think they’re wrenches.
In fairness,
the idea is that electric cars are supposed to be recharged during the night, not during peak hours of electric usage during the day.
Most power plants have unused capacity in the middle of the night, when most folks aren’t working or using appliances or TV. In warmer weather, use of electricity for air conditioning is less at night than in the daytime as well.
Whether that kind of arrangement–drive by day, recharge at night–fits most folks’ lifestyle is an open question.
You assume that these homes, in the middle of the cold, cold night, are not being heated with resistance heat!
A bunch of people bought into the “All Electric” home idea. Many of them could not get natural gas on site anyway. Electricity is much less efficient at heating a home than fossel fuels. So peak usage is when?
Oops!
Charlie
There can’t be a lot of “Total Electric” single family homes left in the Country; electricity has been too expensive for that for a long time now unless you count a heat pump as total electric.
With rentals and multi-family housing, the math isn’t as simple. It is MUCH cheaper to build a structure with electric baseboard heat than with any other kind of heating, so the capital cost is much less and thus the rent can be less. The consumer then has to balance the lower rental cost with the higher heating cost in winter. Likewise, even in a single family, if you could get the “Total Electric” cheaply and weren’t planning to stay there very long, and who does these days, it might well pencil out to go total electric.
And remember, lots of those “Total Electric” homes were built in the ’50s and ’60s when we were going to be all nuclear power and electricity was going to be “too cheap to meter.”
I had an old oil furnace and water heater that needed replacing along with an in-house tank that the insurance company wasn’t pleased about, so about $4300 total. For about $4000, I have an electric forced-air furnace, water heater, 200 amp panel including new line from street AND my total energy cost are down 47% OK? Wanna talk about pay-back period? Wanna talk about not worrying about rag-head oil prices? You are lucky if you have cheap natural gas, but I don’t.
which is why at off peak hours some powerstations are set to idle, and maintenance is scheduled for those periods.
No power is “lost”, and would now be used so as to “prevent waste” as the electric car myth claims.
And indeed, just charging at night won’t be enough for the vast majority of users. The range is so short (just 40 or so miles) that most people would have to charge the car both during the day AND over the night.
Drive to work, charge, drive home, charge, and if you go out in the evening you will have to charge again when you get back else you won’t have enough power stored to get to work in the morning.
Of course for a lot of people the range on electric won’t even get them to work…
Give it a wide berth.
I did.
I’ve never seen a Volt in the wild, so I just wanted to see if there were any available in my neck of the woods.
I live right down the street from Stingray Chevrolet, between Tampa and Orlando Florida. They advertise that they have the largest Chevy inventory in the Southeast US. http://www.stingraychevrolet.com/HomePage
Just checked Stingray’s on-line inventory: they have 7 new Volts.
They also have 100 new Corvettes. They have 224 new Chevy Silverado pick ups.
For used cars, they have 9 Pontiacs on the lot; a brand that GM hasn’t made in 3 model years.
The Volt is a complete afterthought for this dealer, and I’ll bet it’s that way for many GM dealers. Got to have a few around, but who is buying this thing?
Short answer? Absolutely no one.
The government and electric utilities.
Throw in a few college professors and Democrat apparatchiks who buy them, or have somebody buy them for them, to be seen as cool and green.
I live in NH, and I have seen a grand total of ONE Chevy Volt “in the wild.” It was just before Christmas on I93 North, between exits 16 and 17. In fact it was such a curiosity that I actually pointed it out to my mother (with whom I commute). “Look, Mom! Leftist trash driving a four-wheeled explosive powered by liberal guilt!”
Laughs were had all around.
I’ve seen one Volt in the wild that I’ve noticed. It was in a Home Depot parking lot. It’s possible I’ve encountered others on the road and didn’t recognize them.
The Volt isn’t a pure electric car like the Nissan Leaf. It does have a gas engine if you need to drive more than about 30 miles (the range on the electric batteries). That makes it much more useful than the Leaf, IMO. Still, it’s not worth anywhere near $40,000 to me.
Some people love the idea of pure electric cars because they don’t use gasoline. In America, about half of all our electricity comes from burning coal. Personally, I don’t see a coal powered car being any more virtuous than a gas powered car from an environmental perspective.
I saw a Volt on the Illinois Tollway last summer. It had Michigan plates. I screamed “You’re using just as much gas as I am!” but I’m sure they didn’t hear me.
The most obvious hazard in the first photo is the electrical cord that some pedestrian is going to trip over, which will result in a lawsuit against whoever owns the property. Plug-in sites need to be engineered properly to avoid such hazards, according to the report, “Electrical Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Deployment Guidelines, British Columbia, Canada” (BC Hydro).
The infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs) is completely lacking. I live in a condo and it is not possible to simply plug in an EV in a parking stall in a parkade. The U.S. and Canadian electrical codes (which govern all municipalities in a country) have laid out safety requirements. Special grounding, etc. has to be installed so that if an EV mistakenly pulls out of the stall without the cord having been previously disconnected, a fire or electrocution does not result. Cords cannot be lying around anywhere, as they are a tripping hazard. EV owners in condos cannot expect the other owners to pay their electric bills, so a dedicated line has to be installed specifically for each owner; or special charging units that record each individual owner’s use of electricity have to be purchased and installed in the parkade. The estimated overall cost to upgrade a parking stall in a condominium parkade so it can handle an EV is about $2,000.
I don’t have to go and buy myself a small gas station if I want to drive my present vehicle. The infrastructure already exists. This infrastructure is simply not out there for EVs.
That’s one big reason I can’t own an electric car–I park my car in my apartment complex’s parking lot, not in my own garage.
But there’s another reason.
In MA where I live, during the winter it usually snows a lot. Even if the parking lot had charging stations, they–and the car’s charging system and electric line–would have to be designed to be so waterproof that they would continue to function even when buried under a 5 foot snowdrift.
All-weather charging stations–that operate in rainstorms and snowstorms–are theoretically feasible. But I haven’t seen them operate in any conditions other than sunny California.
I saw a Chevy Volt in Brooklyn a few weeks ago, driving on the right-hand lane on a one-way street. It made a left turn across the lane of traffic to its left, against a red light, instead of signaling and waiting its turn.
Perhaps the driver’s battery was running low, so he didn’t want to further deplete it and wanted to get back to a charging station as soon as possible. But there used to be an ACORN office in the area, so perhaps it was merely a functionary from the Extended Obama Campaign.
I’m a raving gun nut, life NRA member, conservative/libertarian. I have an electric bike made by E Plus, a great company out of Virginia. It’s not subsidized and cost me a few grand. I can ride anywhere at up to 30 MPH, not pay to park, not insurance or other fees, and I slip in and out of city traffic.
Transportation really has very little to do with politics. Unless it is subsidized. If the train tracks around our great nation had not been ripped up by oil companies and car companies, we wouldn’t hear complaints about trains being foolish. All the trains have to squeeze on the freight tracks and get delayed.
Mixing politics and transportation is just folly. I own a Harley, a Kawasaki, a Chrysler, a Ford and a Subaru, as well as the two electric bikes.
One thing I do know, for sure, is that all the liberals with Priuses or Prii plural, are refusing to employ unionized Americans, like me, by purchasing imported hybrids, and even GM, with all their BS fake patriotism are using Korean batteries for their subsidized vehicles.
As for the Cross and Swastika comment, I find that more telling. As a Jew I find the Democrats to be the most antisemitic party out their, with their failure to back Israel, our obvious friend.
“If the train tracks around our great nation had not been ripped up by oil companies and car companies, we wouldn’t hear complaints about trains being foolish. ”
Sure we would.
Because when suburban living became the main mode of living *and* working for a plurality of Americans, trains became foolish. It had nothing to do with oil companies.
The old model of commuters dashing to work in the city from their suburban homes is gone. Today, many businesses have moved to the suburbs too, in giant industrial parks. The population density is way too low to make trains cost-effective anymore.
And as for long-haul travel, if a businessman had to travel round trip from New York to L.A. by train, it would take two days in each direction, leaving that much less time available for conducting business in L.A. No businessman will opt to do that when he can fly out to L.A. in just one day, conduct business there, and take the redeye back home after business is concluded.
You do forget one thing: if trains hadn’t been replaced by cars, trucks, and aircraft as the primary means of transportation they would likely have evolved more than they have, providing capabilities they currently don’t have.
So instead of slow lumbering monsters rolling across the landscape we might have 300mph+ trains running coast to coast, with maybe a stop in Denver.
The suburbs can be connected with light rail to hubs, transporting people from stops near their homes to stops near their places of employment.
Not saying it’d be more efficient than the current situation, just that we can’t just say that the current state of railway transport is what we’d have had if things had evolved differently in the 1940s and ’50s when the railroads died for passenger transport.
Who’s responsible? Noone yet everyone. The fed built the interstate system, making long distance car and truck travel possible. WW2 caused a glut in pilots and aircraft, plus airfields all over the place looking for new work after they were no longer needed as USAAF training bases, eventually giving rise to cheap shorthaul air transport (in Europe, where most airfields were destroyed in WW2, this never became reality, we use trains instead…).
And just as soon as you get enough money or power to NOT take the redeye back that night, you’re more than happy to spend the extra day or so. If there were anything like decent service at a reasonable price, lots of people would opt for the train. I lived the last thirty years on airplanes and in hotels, and the further I got up the food chain, the longer my trips took. When I was young and dumb, sure I’d take that 5-6 AM flight to Anchorage, work all day, and take the 7-8PM flight back to Juneau, and I was salaried so I couldn’t comfort myself with the OT pay. Later on, going up the evening before and leaving the next morning, or even mid-morning when that flight was available, made a lot more sense.
Many years ago I had a business in ATL that required that I go to NYC once every month or so to buy merchandise. The drill was to drive all the way from NE ATL to Hartsfield in SW ATL, 30-40 miles, at 4:00 AM to catch the plane to, usually, LaGuardia. By the time you got there, took a cab from the airport, got checked in and got lunch, it was 1-2:00 PM before you got to the garment district. Somebody suggested that I try the train. Southern Railway not only still existed, it still ran its own passenger trains in the early ’70s. You could board the Southern Cresent at Brookwood Station in suburban North ATL at about 5:00PM and get a Pullman berth for about the same price as First Class airfare. You got a private room, real linen, real silver, real flowers on the table, a whole lot of Yessir, may I help you, Sir, drinks and conversation in the club car, a good night’s sleep, a good breakfast, the Red Cap would take your bags through the tunnel to the old Statler Hilton where you could have lunch and be in the garment district by 1:00PM. That was an easy choice and I never flew to NYC again. Of course, a few years later even Southern gave up and gave the passenger service to Amtrak where comfort and service are a foreign concept. My wife and I have been talking about taking the train all the way around the US – Seattle to New York, to ATL, on to New Orleans, then to LA, and back to SEA – and if you go for a private berth for the whole trip, the price is astounding, so at a higher level of service, the private berth, Amtrak doesn’t even pretend to be competitive with air travel. If we did it, we’d have to look at it like taking a cruise, but the service and amenities don’t even compare to cheap cruise lines. That said, I think there’s a market these days for comfortable, convenient, long distance train travel, but the railroads don’t want the interference with their freight traffic and the government simply can’t run something like that. With Amtrak you get the same thing we have with the Alaska ferries; the hippies and activists yell a lot, so the bottom end of travel, just a seat and a public restroom and shower room, is very cheap, and subsidized both by the government and by everyone who opts to have better accomodations.
As a single person who lives in a large city I love my electric bike (I’d call it a scooter, but that term is used for electric wheelchairs these days).
It cost me about $1,200 and the cost of my commute to and from work is about 15 cents. I can take the battery out of the bike and bring it inside to recharge from any outlet (except the ones at work. My boss has been very clear about this).
With this warm winter, there have only been three days I’ve had to leave the bike at home and take the bus. This has taught me to hate public transit and love global warming.
I don’t know if electric cars will ever catch on, but you’ll only get my electric motorscooter (it looks like a Vespa) after you pry it from my cold dead fingers. I always wear a helmet and practice defensive driving bordering on paranoia so it will be a long long time before my fingers are cold and dead.
And nobody every seems to talk about the electricity this car uses. You can’t just drive a volt home and plug it into your wall. First you have to pay for the stupid electrical connections that will allow you to “plug in” the Volt into your home’s electrical system. Then, after that’s done, you get to see the high electrical bills pile up. I live in New Jersey and electrical bills are high, real high, especially in the summer when everybody is using lots of air conditioning. If your electrical bill jumps by several hundred dollars a month just to keep your Volt going, then its pretty much a wash when it comes to your gas savings (and nobody seems to mention who is going to pay for the initial connection you will have to create in your garage for the car’s battery).
You could probably get a small Honda, Hundai, Toyota, or even Ford econo-car for about half the price of what a Volt costs and you don’t have to pay for any electrical hook-ups in your garage. Also, the amount you save on the car will pay for A LOT of gasoline, espcially if you don’t use the car that much. And nobody seems to mention what a person is going to do if they live in an apartment with no garage space. How will the car then be re-charged? I have yet to see a single re-charging station for a Volt or a Nissan Leaf ANYWHERE. So, if you live in an apartment, you had better have a very long extension cord!
Finally, with the Volt’s battery blowing up, I’m not sure the resale value of that car is going to be that great. Do you? This car is an idea that has come and gone. It’s just infuriating that the American taxpayer is still paying for it.
And nobody every seems to talk about the electricity this car uses.
The Chevy Volt—and the other electric conveyances that people have been singing the praises of in this thread—are, for the most part, coal-powered, since they take their power from, for the most part, coal-fired electric plants. You know, the same coal-fired plants that Barack Obama, snake-oil salesman for the Chevy Volt and electric-powered transportation generally, swore during the campaign that he would drive into bankruptcy. Some few, some very few, of those contemplating the marvels of electric-powered transportation may be charging up at outlets powered by hydroelectric power, and a smaller number still from nuclear power, but the advocates of “clean energy” and the Chevy Volt are overwhelmingly driving coal-powered vehicles.
I want to say that i think the volt is being unfairly villified here, It is actually only about 33k (subsidized) it is not that small….decent sized inside with 4 bucket seats. This pricing is not much more than an average car. It runs on electricity until the batteries are low, then, it starts its GAS BURNING ENGINE which it uses as a generator to power the electric motors(much like the batteries will) This gives you the benifits of an electric car(40 miles or so for about $1.50 electic bill) and aprox 40mpg after that.
Give it a chance, it is a pretty nice car
Yep, a real beauty. My brother’s boss bought one. He commutes about 40 miles a day. After he got his first electric bill he spent the day stomping and spitting around the office. He cursed enough to make the paint peel on the walls. My brother laughed until he cried.
The guy no longer drives the thing. He drives his Ford f-150. He cant sell the POS so it just sits……..
If the guy is the boss, maybe he has the clout to put the thing up on a pedestal in the parking lot with a plaque decreeing it a monument to government stupidity.
Maybe, someone can buy a volt and cover it with Obama decals, like, absurdly and moronicly so, and just drive it around the country as a mockery. People can make donations, and it could be a full time gig for someone.
Hey, Northern Light, enjoy the ride! I have a HD Soft tail and a Kawi KLR, but I ride my electric bike 8 out of 10 times around town here in NY. Like I said, no parking fees, no parking tickets! And, big bonus, I can park outside a bar and ride the damn thing home. Slowly.
I’ve seen a Chevy Volt in the wild – once. I’ve also seen a Microsoft Zune in the wold – once. In both cases, someone with “deep pockets” (in the former case, access to the taxpayer’s pockets) was pushing a product the consumer didn’t want. Only a government bureaucrat could think consumers would pay BMW prices for a Chevy compact.
Only a dumb$$s wouldbuy a car that has no infrastructure to properly support it; I drive a VW TDI Jetta wagon and laugh out loud everytime i see a Prius on the road that 8 times out of ten has an Obama sticker on it!
$40,000 for a POS like that and no support? No thanks-I’ll spend $40K on the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid and still get better fuel economy than the Prius and knowingly not give any money to GM: Guv’mit Motors!!!!!!!
I own a Prius because I have a long commute to work and like getting 50 MPG. If I can find one, I’ll put a “Drill Baby Drill” bumper sticker on it (although I do worry about the ever so tolerant liberals damaging my car). Just because I get 50 MPG, I’d rather pay $2 a gallon instead of $4 and we have a lot of oil in this country if only we could push the damned environmentalist faction to the side.
A Volt doesn’t need a lot of infrastructure. You put gas in it like other cars. If you want to charge your batteries in a reasonable, you’ll need to put in an expensive charger at home otherwise you can plug it into a 110 volt outlet. When the batteries get low, the gas engine will get you where you want to go just like other cars other than all-electrics such as the Nissan Leaf.
As I understand it,
the Prius depreciates faster than a gasoline-powered car.
When the day comes to trade it in, you’re going to lose so much money on the resale due to depreciation that it will more than outweigh the savings in gasoline purchases.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/06/Autos/tipsandadvice/hybrid_resale/index.htm
The only way the Prius makes sense is if you plan to keep driving it till it falls apart and then call a junk dealer to haul it away.
I tend to keep my cars for about 10 years. By that time, they have lost most of their value regardless of make or model.
I got the headline pun immediately. I’m surprised this car wasn’t nicknamed the i-Recall (ala iPod, etc.)
Bryan, how could you resist spitting on the windshield? Or….did you leave something out of your story?
I heard that the Boy Scouts, in keeping up with the times, are revising their scouting handbook, specifically the chapter on how to start a campfire.
Step 1: Gather plenty of dry wood.
Step 2: Stack the wood in a pile.
Step 3: Park a Chevy Volt as close to the pile as possible.
Step 4: Start the Chevy Volt.
Much more efficient than rubbing sticks together…
Several things …
Whenever the range of an electric vehicle is given I wonder if that figure is for when it is going downhill with a tailwind during daylight with every system except the main motor disconnected. How far will it go at night with the high beams on and the heater and defroster and the windshield wipers and fan motor and the radio all going at the same time? Will it slow down or come to a stop if you use the cigarette lighter, too? Wouldn’t that be nice when you’re trying to get home some evening in heavy traffic during a nasty snowstorm.
So the hybrid cars come with a gasoline engine that takes over when the battery goes dead. If the dopey thing will only go 30 to 40 miles on battery power alone and will go a couple of hundred miles on the gasoline engine, then it seems that the logical thing to do is to just get rid of the excess complication of the battery, generator and electric motor and whatever else goes with it and have the gasoline engine drive the thing directly. Once upon a time steam powered cars ran rings abound gasoline cars because reciprocating steam technology was more advanced than internal combustion but as gas engines improved you had the choice of not hauling around the weight and complication of a boiler.
And then there’s the fact that every energy transmission and conversion step is less than 100% efficient. I’d like to see someone calculate the efficiency of burning X amount of fuel to generate electric power that had to be tramsmitted, stepped up, stepped down, used to charge a battery and then drawn from the battery versus buring that same amount of fuel in an engine that turns your wheels directly. I bet that would be an eye-opener.
But, sitting in your city or your college town, you can’t see that electrical energy being produced far away in flyover country. That’s the whole thing about the coastal ecotopias; they love the fruits of all that nasty stuff done in flyover country, but they don’t want to see it. Here in “America’s Wilderness Crown Jewel” we’ve learned that it is all about footprint; what the greenies and their urban liberal running dogs can’t see, they have trouble opposing. We’ve gotten pretty good at hiding mines and oil fields.
What’s so damn neat about a coal-burning car? We gave that up on the railroads a long time ago.
Well, I thought about it for about 10 minutes, then I bought a brand new 2012 Toyota Tundra V8 with a 10,000 pound towing capacity that was built in San Antonio. Life is just too short to settle.
Sorry, Mr. President….By the way, are you enjoying your Airforce One vacations???
My current car, a 1999 Buick Century, has 85K miles on it and ever since it has passed 60K it has needed a major repair every 1000 – 1500 miles. I drive very little being retired, so repairs had been cheaper than a new car, but the head gasket the dealer says it needs has me searching for a new car. It won’t be GM. Their quality is horrid. Most people I know who have Hondas and Toyotas drive then over 100K miles and have few or no major repairs. All of our GM cars have a history similar to our Buick, 60K before they start falling apart. So that is my prediction, 60K max before your Volt starts to need expensive repairs.
You have to compare the unsubsidized price. Just because the rest of us pay part doesn’t mean it isn’t a $40K car. (Which will buy a larger much nicer car from BMW, Mercedes, Audi, or Lexus.) For the same $33K as the subsidized price, you could buy a Toyota Hybrid Camray with the leather, sunroof, and JBL audio package and that gets 38 MPG city/40 Hwy, is a much larger car with a nicer interior, and quality construction that won’t start falling apart in a few years. The money you save on repairs and not paying to install a charging station would cover any difference in fuel usage.
This does not mean I wouldn’t consider an small electric car. If a quality builder from Germany or Japan could sell a true electric compact car the size of a Honda Fit for the same $18K, and it had air conditioning and a real world city range of 40 miles with the heat or AC on and it wasn’t a fire hazard, it would be perfect for our second car. I don’t know how much energy or pollution it would save, but no pumping gas in winter, oil changes, or other gas engine problems would make it worth it. My dad’s golf cart is really convenient and never has any mechanical problems because the drive train is simple. Just unplug it, drive, and plug it back in.
60K – 80K miles, or about the end of the typical auto loan, is about it for an American car before it starts needing serious repairs, and by serious I mean repairs averageing about the same amount as making a car payment. Somehow, I think they plan it that way.
I might someday buy a Ford product if they came up with something I really liked, but since the government’s hostile takeover of GM and Chrysler I’ll never buy another one, and I’ve driven Chryslers for the last twenty-odd years until last year. I simply refuse to support the communist thugs of the UAW.
My current vehicle is a Bubba-Benz, the Alabama-made Mercedes-Benz ML 430. I don’t know that I’d buy a new one, they’re Godawful expensive and the initial depreciation on them is just awful, but used and well-maintained they’re a good bargain. Like all German cars they have 300 parts where 3 would do, and they take a special tool for most of those parts, but they’re immensely competent vehicles if well cared for. Mine has almost 150K miles on it and from ten feet could pass for new. It takes conscientious maintenance but even M-B maintenance, it’s over $100 for an oil and filter change if you can’t do it yourself, on a high-mileage vehicle is considerably less expensive than payments on anything better than an econobox, and one Helluva lot less expensive than payments on a decent luxury or near-luxury vehicle.
If somebody came up with a decent pure commuter car, I’d consider it; two passengers, enough cargo capacity to stop at the grocery on the way home, and decent creature comfort. It couldn’t be a strippo shitbox and it doesn’t have to be really cheap, but it would have to be a decent value that you could justify having purely as a communter while you owned another larger vehicle for other activities. I don’t think that car could be electric with today’s technology, but maybe somebody will come up with a breakthrough; mass trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific travel wasn’t practical with DC-3s, but the B-707 changed that. Something a little more “American” than a SmartCar would have potential, though on roads crowded with F-250s and semis, sitting in a SmartCar and looking up at wheels ain’t my cup of tea.
I have a 1989 Porsche 928S4. It gets 20 mpg. It has 320 hp and I drive it rather conservatively. It also has about 200,000 miles on it but looks about three years old. It’s my pride and joy. But I tell you this not to inflate my ego, but to state flatly that, every time I am coming up next to a Prius and start to slowly pass them in a 55 mph zone, they always…always…speed up. IN fact, in one very odd incident, I had one just pull in behind me as tight as on a NASCAR track and tailgate me for a mile. Were it not for the fact that I love my car and don’t want to needlessly damage the rear-end, that Prius would’ve been eating Porsche parts.
It’s a very odd phenomenon. Seems to happen a lot with drivers of those cars. Not sure of their mental processes but it’s probably worthy of several hours of psychoanalysis. My own uptake is that they are trying to prove something, though I know not what. From a strictly performance standpoint, the Prius cannot out-do my car in anything. As far as gas mileage is concerned, I pay at the pump and have the right to burn as much gasoline as I can afford and perhaps that’s the whole rub for them. My car is also paid for. I maintain it myself and it won’t catch fire arbitrarily. Not that the Prius would…just sayin’.
I’m not a kid so I have no desire to show off or race anyone these days. It’s a neat, classic car that’s a ball to drive and still looks great. It’s my personal taste and from that standpoint alone, I get a great deal of joy out of it. Yet these Prius owners have some bug up their butt about it, it would seem. Anyone know why?
I wish I could find a 928 that had been owned by somebody who could afford it. They’re great cars so long as you understand the care and feeding required. Saw one on a consignment lot a few months ago that looked really nice from 50 feet, but when you got close you saw how run-down it had become; restoring a Porsche interior ain’t for the faint of heart or thin of wallet.
Unfortunately, premium cars all too often fall into the hands of people who don’t understand that the purchase price is merely the down payment. If my almost immaculate M-B ML 430 fell into the hands of someone who had to stretch to buy it, it would be dead on the side of the road in a few months. I wish manufacturers would do more to protect the value of their premium vehicles. Most of them depreciate horribly and by the second or third owner are in the hands of someone who simply can’t afford to keep them up, so the decrepit older vehicles on the road further drives down the used value making for a vicious circle.
Try Rennlist. It’s a blog/discussion devoted to Porsches of all types but the 928 gang really has some great discussions for those pesky problems with some great posters who really know the cars well. Plus, looking for a good car to buy, it’s a great place to start. Many people on the board probably even know the very car that’s being sold.
The 1989 seems to be the most popular for us with thinner wallets but good mechanical skills/time. Best bang for the buck, maybe. Many parts are readily available save one, the digital dashboard which seems to be a weak spot. When it works, it’s great but the circuitry fries in various ways and one finds this gauge or that no longer working. Originals are available from 928 International and the dealers, for a very healthy premium, of course.
But, I’ve done everything on a 928 from rebuilding the motor to replacing the transmission, drive tube, brakes, you-name-it. It can be done. Best to have a garage or car-port and a creeper for underside work but it’s all do-able. True about the interior. However, there are many restoration places that will not cringe at doing it…but again, cost is a factor. Best to get one with as close to a pristine interior as possible. They are all “works-in-progress” and they are driven, not sitting in the garage. I drive mine everyday.
Didn’t plan on hijacking this discussion but if you’re serious about looking into one, try Rennlist. I actually found mine on Craigslist in FL. Had been well cared for all its life. Any car will last if you keep after it and parts are available. Many manufacturers are producing parts for 928′s still.
As for Prius drivers, I’ll just stay away from them, I guess. ha ha.
I’ll check it out. It’s just something I’ve been thinking of. It would be a summer toy; three inches of ground clearance ain’t the hot ticket in winter in Alaska. I had a couple of 911s; rebuilding a 2.0L 901 engine on the bar in the den is good foreplay for a divorce. A few years ago I saw a 911 Turbo with a “For Sale” sign in the rear window at a gas station in Juneau and I felt that surge of car lust and walked towards it; then I caught that unmistakable whiff of oil on hot metal and it all came back to me. A 911, at least the old ones, is like that woman who is every man’s dream in bed and an insufferable bitch everywhere else. There are few things this side of adolescent sex more fun than a good-running 911 on a curvy road on a pretty day, but what a total PITA they are! I still have a Uni-Syn sitting on a prominent shelf in the garage to remind me of what it is like to sync those 3 barrel Webers. Like the little girl with the curl, when they’re good, they’re very, very good, and when they’re bad, they’re HORRID.
But I tell you this not to inflate my ego, but to state flatly that, every time I am coming up next to a Prius and start to slowly pass them in a 55 mph zone, they always…always…speed up. IN fact, in one very odd incident, I had one just pull in behind me as tight as on a NASCAR track and tailgate me for a mile. Were it not for the fact that I love my car and don’t want to needlessly damage the rear-end, that Prius would’ve been eating Porsche parts.
I wonder if that Prius driver was a hypermiler. They’ve been known to do some pretty insane things to boost gas mileage and tailgating is one of their tricks. Me, I drive mine like an ordinary car.
“I have a 1989 Porsche 928S4.”
Cool car.
I have noticed that most Prius drivers have a lead foot in the city, which is where I usually drive. You cannot repeal the laws of physics, and driving with one pedal or the other all the way down, all the time, really increases fuel consumption. I am sure that I could match their real world gas mileage in the city driving a similar size modern Toyota or Honda because I drive with a light foot.
And I have never seen a Prius without at least an Obama 08 sticker on the back, and many are covered with Democrat, Communist, or Feminist stickers. That leads me to guess most Prius owners are Leftists of some stripe, which explains their obnoxious and anti-social behavior on the road.
I’m looking for a “Drill Baby Drill” bumper sticker to put on mine, except I fear some dumbass liberal will key my car. Yeah, a lot of Prius drivers are liberals but not all of us. I’m a technology geek who likes getting 50 MPG in town.
The bumper sticker on my Prius reads: “Global Warming is Caused by the Sun.” It really confuses people because they expect all Prius drivers to be left-wing nutcases.
One HOT, Fiery and Explosive car, the Volt!
Obama, Michelle, the kids and the dog should use one for their travels. A roof rack and trailer would allow them to cart extra baggage, caviar and truffles with them.
I notice that the charging lead is three times longer than it needs to be, because the people that drive the Volt are too stupid to park it nose in.
I’ve never seen a Volt, I’ve seen smoke and smelled burning electricity though!
I’ve also driven several versions of electric fork lift and have not been impressed with the performance. I’ve driven a half ton P/U made to run on Propane and was amazed at it’s gas mileage and crappy performance.
The truck had a hybrid system that with a switch would go from running propane to running regular gas……what a sick joke, when it was running on propane, gasoline leaked out all over the road when it ran on Gas it had power issues also and leaked gasoline all over the road.
The problem was the high cost of gasoline and the way one company attempted to solve the problem but caused a whole lot of other problems, fire, pollution, and taking the drivers life in vain just pulling into traffic.
I thought you were going to call it “The Chevy Vomit”. Just because it’s already had one recall and cost is way out…GM says they are doing it for us… Duh I don’t think so.
Soooo much misunderstanding of the Volt technology. I’ll try to explain as simply as possible why GM went this route instead of all electric. Also, you should know that the Volt was under development long before GM was pushed to the brink of insolvency by the 2008 financial crisis, which froze up the ability to finance, or lease new vehicles.
GM was already a highly leveraged company with an unworkable long-term model due to built-in cost differentials between themselves and foreign gov’t subsidized imports. A managed bankruptcy was their only way out long-term, as Gov. Romney suggested long before Obama’s boy Ratner entered the picture. I disagree with the tact the Obama administration took by flouting Federal Bankruptcy laws, screwing the GM bondholders and awarding an equity stake to the UAW. But I digress.
GM took the route of using a small internal engine to operate an on-board generator to deal with the “range anxiety” of current battery technology. Doing so allowed GM to use a smaller, less expensive battery and also lowers the recharge time to a full cycle. Once the battery reaches a 60% discharge the on board generator fires up imperceptively and creates electrity to run the electric motor that is ALWAYS powering the Volt down the road. A full recharge with 240 volt station takes about 4hrs, 8hrs on 110 volt.
You’ll never get stranded in a Volt and could drive one coast to coast, if you wanted to. Once off the battery, and with the generator on you’ll be getting approx 40MPG equivalent. With the intial range, electric only, of 35-40 miles and 375 additional miles on gas/electric, your overall range is close to 400 miles, without a refuel or recharge.
The initial 35-40 miles will get the majority of Americans to work and back without a recharge, which costs about $1.50. Compare to 35mpg at $3.50 a gallon for the same drive and it starts to make sense. Diesel electric locomotives, (they power freight trains for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term) use a similar system, running a diesel engine powered electric generator to power the electric motors at each wheel. Very efficient!
An internal engine can operates best at it’s peak thermal efficiency, which is possible when you are using the motor to run a generator, as opposed to using it as a primary power source to move the vehicle. That’s as simple as I can explain it but suffice it to say, using the internal combustion engine this way is more efficient, and with less emissions, wear, etc. Not too mention, the Volt is a fun car to drive with instant torque, 275 ft lbs worth. You can lease one for about $300 per month. The price will come down as sales increase and batteries get cheaper, (think cell phones).
The Volt is not for everyone, nor is it the end all answer. It is merely a stepping stone to whatever is next. Internal combustion engines will be around for a good long while getting more efficient all the time, whether they are used as with the Volt, or as a primary power train.
As side note, GM has advanced fuel cell technology. You’ll see more of that in future years to come.
Disclaimer: I do not work for GM. I currently drive a Honda. I am seriously thinking about leasing a Volt. I drive just under 40 miles round trip.