It will be, when gas price goes up again. That’s why fuel-efficient cars are popular in Europe.
I’m all for raising the tax on gasoline and using it to fund alternative energy development. That is, if there’s any left over after paying for costs associated with cars and gasoline usage.
This is wonderful and there is a large list of ways that Nanotubes technology can and will revolutionize the world. However, none of this has a definite time line for mass production.
Nanotubes can be used for:
Jim
Things like nanotube technology will be nice if they work out, but plug-in hybrid vehicles are achieveable today and can greatly reduce the amount of gasoline needed, especially for people who mostly drive in the city or locally.
That’s rather spooky: I too am hoping for some commercial models to be available in 2-3 years when I have run my Ford Focus into the ground.
Jim
Am I your doppleganger or are you mine?
Jim
I’ll be on board to buy a hybrid or other gas-efficient vehicle once they start making vans with such an engine. At the moment, those of us with large families are frozen out.
And I mean full-size vans here, not just mini-vans. My current car is a 12-passenger Ford E350. It guzzles, but the only other option is to split the family between two cars.
I regret to inform you that you will have to wait a while.
Hey MacTech, I’ve taken your idea and run with it:
Fade up to close-up of: Stars and Stripes waving, in the style of 1970s TV network shutdown, with National Anthem over.
Zoom out to reveal: flag is being burned by crowd of angry Arab protestors. Over: anthem fades into fanatical Arabic shouting.
VO: For years, you’ve been paying for this.
Cut to: Black. Beat of silence.
Cut to: Burning Iraqi oilfields.
VO: And this.
Cut to: Black. Beat of silence.
Cut to: Afghan guys with AK47s on the back of Japanese pickup truck driving past women in burqas.
VO: And this.
Cut to: Black. Beat of silence.
Fade up to: pastoral forested Midwestern scene, during fall, seen from above treetop level. Camera moves downwards between trees and speeds through countryside just above road level. Music over: contemporary country rock.
Dolly back to reveal: sleek, modern car zooming quietly along highway.
VO: Remember when we didn’t have to rely on people we don’t like?
Cut to: same car zooming through desert.
VO: Remember the pioneer spirit?
Cut to: same car driving down Manhattan street.
VO: Remember when we controlled our own destiny?
Cut to: close-up of Stars and Stripes logo on back of car, rippled as in the first shot, with chrome caption below logo:
REMEMBER INDEPENDENCE
Fade out to black, REMEMBER INDEPENDENCE morphs into white subtitle. GM logo beneath.
VO: The GM GreenMachine. American and clean.
Fade out.
That is all good work. However, can you please put my American flag bikini model in there somewhere (or at least one with Stars and Stripes Daisy Dukes). I think that was an important subtle touch.
Well Shagnasty, I was actually trying to be sincere in execution - if not intent.
However, if you insist, I’m seeing an actual Daisy Duke here - it’d have to be Jessica Simpson, since Catherine Bach is a little old - and anyway I know her people. She could be in the background of all the shots - hand over mouth looking shocked and pointing at the burning flag, wearing a skimpy thong and laughing at the ladies in burqas, wearing a gas mask in the Iraqi oilfields (appeals to some people), and driving the car - it’s a convertible now - in all of the later shots. In the revised version, the Stars and Stripes and strapline are actually on her bikini butt, as the zoom out reveals. And instead of fading to black, the ad fades to her sucking a red-white-and-blue popsicle and winking.
Goddamned clients.
It’s beautiful now. The problem with campaign consultants, especially foreign ones, is that you get a little too Ivy Towered and academic sometimes.
I have lived and walked among the people this should speak deeply to and those types of models really touch some people and cause a rise in patriotism.
Given the market research you have revealed, perhaps we should rename the product.
“Drive the GM PatrioticAss. By the way, it’s a hybrid (whatever that means). Mmm, titties.”
Brilliant!
and of course, the voice-over must be read by the “In A World” movie trailer guy, or if he’s not available, James Earl Jones…
VO: [James Earl Jones] The Chrysler EcoHemi (cut to scene of the prototype Dodge Challenger in Hemi Orange driving down a dirt road and jumping a conveniently located berm, the “That thing got a Hemi?” guys lean out the 'windersand yell YEEEEEE…HAAAAA!) , it IS your Destiny! <kkksh…kssshhh…)… Luke…
I think just about any product could be marketed to men with the slogan, “Mmmm, Titties…”
jjimm: That was awesome, they should film it now. Hell, the Japanese companies can even play on the same theme about what good friends we are and how we need to stand together against the terrorist. It would probably help the entire line of cars.
Jim
The problem wth the ‘screw OPEC’ angle is that it isn’t accurate. There is no scenario under which reduced U.S. oil consumption will lead to less funding for terrorists. What happens if suddenly the U.S. stops buying oil? The price of oil drops temporarily. Which stimulates demand for oil in places like China and India. They defer converting their oil consumption because oil becomes cheaper than the alternatives. So they use more, we use less, and OPEC laughs.
In fact, it could have a perverse negative reaction in terms of Mideast share of oil sales. Oil from the Middle East is the cheapest to produce. Right now, oil is expensive enough that non-middle east oil sources, which are more expensive to produce, are taking market share. For example, Alberta’s tar sands. If oil consumption were to drop, and it drove the price of oil down below the level of profitability of the more expensive oil sources, the share of the world oil market under OPEC control could go UP.
There are good reasons to conserve oil, but ‘starving the terrorists’ isn’t one of them. And somehow, I think the slogan “Drive hybrids - because the Chinese deserve cheaper oil more than we do” isn’t going to fly.
At the very least, the ad campaign mentioned in the OP will provide a good laugh to those of us who understand what “fungible” means.
Well, like most technology, it’ll be pretty tough to contain by national borders. Unless the US (the west?) uses a particularly nasty type of protectionism, the alternative fuel technology will spread and I see very little reason China (or India, or anybody else) would not want to take advantage of it.
So “FECK OPUC” may very well be the ultimate result. Which is unlikely to solve the fundamentalist Islam terrorist issue. In fact, it may lead to an even larger disenfranchised Arab population because their oil economy will have tanked and cause an increase in poverty among these oil producing nations.
Everything you said sounds right to me, but I think the point of the Op’s and jjimm’s posts are to just market Hybrids better. As we know marketing has very little to do with truth. Maybe truthiness but not Truth.
Jim