Hybrids and ultra efficient cars are bad for society?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’m also of the drive it into the ground school of thought. In fact, of all the cars that we replaced, they were still drivable for in-town, but not safe or reliable enough for long-distance travel on the higway. One was sold for scrap when the bottom started rusting out, but all the rest were just because they could not be safely taken on the highway.

The more-and-farther thing may be true for the city, but it’s still not really true for the highway. You’re running nearly purely on the gas engine when traveling at constant highway speed.

As for the plug-in hybrids (or electric cars), I don’t have a problem with them if they can get the recharge fast enough. I can only go about 300 miles at a time in my little Subaru, which I think is the number I’ve heard for the range of a really good electric. That’s fine, as I don’t want to drive more than about 4 hours at a time without taking at least a few minutes to get up, stretch, hit the restroom, maybe get a bite to eat, and so on. But I can gas up and go in less than five minutes if I want to. If I have to stop for an hour every four hours to let the battery recharge, I will not be happy. They’d have to be able to recharge in no more than 15 minutes. Oh, and I wouldn’t pay more than I am now in gas. As for the question about payments, if you figure that you spend at least $100 a month just to get the car running, does it really matter where it hits you? Sure, the grid and powerplants would need an upgrade, but we would have the benefical effects of being able to get pollution centralized and possibly even go nuclear.

42

Yeah, but don’t forget that many people won’t notice what they spend in gas per month, as it’s spread out over time (in the sense that they might not be able to give you an accurate total off the top of their head, even if they can state that they did pay a different amount to fill up this time vs last time). They will notice a sudden spike in their light bill. You can nickel and dime someone to death, but when you start charging them real money they begin to get pissed, even if they’re getting their money’s worth.

As for the recharge on a hybrid, you’re still not going to be getting that good of a deal out of them, if you think about it. If you do a lot of driving at night or with the A/C on, you’re still going to wind up running the gas engine, since those things tend to kill a battery pretty quickly. (Admittedly, you’ll still have some savings, but you won’t be able to forgoe gassing the car up altogether.)

43

The floor pan on my Pathfinder rusted out a couple of years ago. I found out when I stuck my finger though and burnt myself on the exhaust pipe. Kinda funny, but could have be very dangerous. I fixed it by pulling out the carpet, laying in a piece of galvanized metal then an insulation blanket (the aluminized stuff they use on fire walls) and put the carpet back. So far so good. But I will say that I was close to getting a new car instead.

44

That break even point for savings is based on the current selling price of those cars. As pointed out earlier, costs will go down as more of them are made.

First: If gas is $4-5/gal, you can bet that many people would plug in at night if that option was available.
Second: You pay for light? I pay for electricity. (Sorry, coudn’t resis.) It would increase their electric bill by different amounts in different areas. Electricity costs vary widely across the country. Some places it would be cost effective, others not.
Third: If tenants want it, the market will provide.

Actually, this would be very little problem. The electrical grid peaks out during hot days. Cars will be charging at night. The electric companies would love it.

45

The GM EV1 was really the most innovative thing we’ve seen in automatives in a long time. No hybrid BS, pure electric car. You plug it in at home and it recharges for way less than the price of a full tank of gas.

Had a lot of problems though:

-Even after they upgraded the batteries only had a 130 mph range.
-A full recharge took 8 hours, so be wary if you get home on low energy and want to go out again anytime soon.
-Cost GM way more than they made from the program (they never sold EV1s, just leased them out.)

One thing I’m pretty sure about is that we could have a very serviceable electric car right now that would have a range equivalent to what any of us might need and much easier recharging options had history come about differently.

This would dramatically change our world. Our domestic demand for gasoline would shrink to probably 10-15% of what is before, we’d be getting our power from power plants which use natural gas, coal, water, or nuclear reactions to get energy, and all of these resources save natural gas and water are (or could be in the case of nuclear) extremely easy to get in the United States.

Obviously I think big haulers, construction & farm equipment would still need some sort of oil derived fuel. And our military would probably still definitely need a fossil fuel source. We’d also still need oil itself for lubrication, medical, and industrial purposes but the domestic demand for oil would be extremely reduced with the extreme reduction in gasoline demand.

I was amazed when I read a book about the early American auto industry. Among early cars electric cars that you recharged at the local filling station weren’t out of the ordinary at all. But they were quickly pushed to the wayside.

I’d think the lack of battery technology advances that killed GM’s program probably would not be there if we had been developing electric cars for nearly 100 years.

As far as hybrids go I’ve read in a recent U.S. News & World Report article that to save money on the average hybrid you need to own it for about 7 years. And during cold periods the hybrids efficiency is greatly reduced (one guy that kept a log of his MPG had numbers lower than an equivalent pure gas powered vehicle over an very cold period in the Northeast.)

The article basically said people are willing to pay a premium on hybrids because they are either fooled into thinking it pays for itself quickly or they are in favor of reducing the emissions of their car and contributing to the overall development of hybrid cars.

Personally I don’t see hybrids changing much, the big revolution is going to come when we find a fuel other than gasoline that is widely used to power our cars.

46

True.

Well, I don’t quite share your faith in the market providing what folks want. When was the last timeyou got to pick your complete cable line up? (I don’t watch sports, so why should I have to pay for six freakin’ sports channels I’ll never watch.)

Yeah, but why not plug up while you’re at work? I mean, it’s not like you’re going to be paying for the juice.

47

Yeah, but what does cable TV have to do with a free market? Talk about your non-benevolent monopoly.

48

Even in areas where there’s more than one cable system, you still can’t choose the individual channel lineup. Simple fact of the matter, is that the free market isn’t always very perceptive as to what the customers want. See this thread for some examples.

49

What makes you think most consumers want to be able to pick individual channels? One of the satellite TV services in Japan has a “per channel” pricing plan where you pay for only the channels you want, and I decided not to go with that system. If I got that, I’d feel compelled to watch every channel I’m paying for, or else feel like I’m wasting money. I’d rather have a big bundle of channels for the same price everyone else is paying, and I suspect I’m not alone in this.

50

There’s been several threads on it here at the Dope, and I’ve read a couple of articles where cable networks have been seriously concerned by efforts in Congress to do “ala cart” cable. According to a friend of mine who used to work for a cable company, the most expensive channels for a cable company to carry are ESPNs, so I’d save big time.

51

There seems to be a lot of confusion in this thread over the concept of plugging your hybrid in to charge from your house or another electrical supply. If you are one of those who understand, feel free to skip this post. As for the rest of you, please reread the quote above, along with the associated cite. Remember these points:

[ul]
[li]A ***hybrid ** * car specifically refers to a car that contains both gas and electric engines. The gas engine is used to charge the batteries and add power to the electric engine. [/li][li]An ***electric ** * car is a car which only has an electric engine, and solely derives power from recharging when plugged in to a wall outlet[/li][li]A hybrid doesn’t *need * to be plugged in to recharge. If this were available, it would be an option. Most existing hybrids don’t even come with this option available, although adding this option would be simple (even for existing cars - the concept is pretty well understood.) In the future, hybrids will likely offer this as a standard option.[/li][li]The electricity which comes from your electrical outlet costs much less than the electricity generated by the gas engine in a hybrid car (see the site linked in the quote above.) Therefore, when you are faced with the need to charge the batteries in your hybrid, plugging your car in to the wall will cost you much less than filling the gas tank and driving.[/li][li]To follow the last point, if you drive a hybrid in a city environment, you can save a lot of money by plugging the car in to recharge at night or anytime you aren’t driving it. Your car’s batteries will gain energy without having to burn gas. Reread the cite in the quote.[/li][li]Still doesn’t make sense? Reread the cite in the quote.[/li][/ul]

52

Thanks, Tucker. I was starting to feel like I was talking to the wall.

53

There are places with more than one cable TV company competing? Really? That seems odd given that the cable company generally owns the wires, and would be loathe to lease them to competitors. What cities are these?

54

Parts of Nashville are served by bother Comcast and Charter. There’s other cities as well. Each cable company has to string their own wires, though, so they’re not sharing the wires.

55

Just because the battery is warranteed for 8 years doesn’t mean it will die on on year 9 day 1. (A battery pack used in a cab lasted > 200,000 miles, and that was the less sophisticated 2003 or earlier model. (not sure how old it was)
And the $3k price assumes one has to replace the whole unit. (there are like 20 modules)
Note that in California and some other states the warrantee is longer.

Brian

56

Just looked it up. It is 10 years / 150,000 miles. (of course, some may last less than this) Toyaota cliams 15 years.

Brian

57

No you’re doing fine.
People also have to keep in mind the resale value of the Hybrid. If you haven’t replaced the batteries and you’ve owned the thing a few years the guy who you’re trying to sell the car to, or the dealer looking at it as a trade in, will KNOW that they WILL have to replace the batteries pretty soon. You might have a hard time giving the car away at this point. I’m serious. Imagine a seven year old Hybrid that still has the original batteries in it…whose gonna want it?
Not only will they have to replace the batteries but the technology might be such that there are NEW hybrids out there that get double the mileage. Or a possible fuel cell alternative.
I could not see myself getting one unless the batteries were warrantied for at least ten years. That way you can get out of the car at 5 years and the next owner would have at least five years left on the batteries.

58

To go back to the OP…

Cars have little if any effect on roadway wear and tear.
The majority of wear and tear comes from commercial vehicles (i.e. dump trucks, cement mixers, etc.) which are extremely heavy compared to cars
and mostly from freezing water. Water gets into cracks in the roads, freezes, expands, and busts up the road.
Snow plows also are a major contributor to road damage.

Take away ice and snow plows and roads can last very, very long. That’s why there is always major road repair all summer long in Wisconsin, New York, Minnesota but places like Florida and Arizona the roads seem to last forever.

59

Commenting on the actual OP? How quaint. But thanks for bringing it back up as I had forgottenI had actual pertinent comments on that.

If the cause of major road damage was crushing damage under the tire, then smaller tires might have some impact on road wear if, as discussed earlier, the smaller surface contact was not compensated for by the decreased weight. But unless we are talking about asphalt hot enough for the tires to sink in, that is not how roads are damaged.

In addition to weathr factors mentioned above, roads are weakened by vehicles that are heavy enough to actually flex the road. Since small hybrids only weigh in the range of 2000 lbs, each tire carries only 1000 lbs per axle. 1000 lbs will not flex a typical road. (Yes 1000 lbs balanced on a sharp spike may penetrate an asphalt road, but that would have very little relationship to typical road wear.)

Loaded semis can be up to 80,000 lbs on interstates. Their specific load limits are based on number and location of axles, and by state regulations. But a typical semi has 5 axles, for a load of 16,000 lb per axle, 32,000 per tandem axle groups at mid and rear. This is what flexes and wears roads. The road doesn’t flex much. You can’t see it as the truck goes by. But over the years, the repetitive 1/16" (made up number) flexes fatigue the road and begins cracks.

60

Parts of the Detroit area are like this as well. In my city, we can choose between Comcast and Wide Open West (formerly Americast).