Everyone complains about gas prices yet the U.S. has imported oil since 1970. Gas cars are only 20 percent efficient, wasting the rest in heat, friction and pollution. If anyone is to blame it’s the big vehicles that waste the most and are most dangerous to everyone.
I drive an efficient all-electric five passenger Leaf; they are being made in Smyrna, Tenn. It goes 50-60 miles on a dollar of USA made electricity. I only charge up at night when there is excess in the grid and I’m sleeping. It only takes one-to-two hours with the local ECOtality charge EVSE connection.
We need choices and they are here now. The Tesla is an American made EV and they have the family S sedan and SUV model X being made this summer. They are faster and four times more efficient than other vehicles.
Jim Stack
Chandler
Accuracy posted at 12:46 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
The 2012 Nissan Leaf, totally electric “zero-emission” car, starting price has increased to $35,200 (before tax refunds). Compared to LEAF’s main rival, the battery-electric-powered 2012 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids, which runs on battery power for approximately 35 miles before a gas-powered generator activates to power an onboard electric drive unit, that starts at $39,995 (before tax refunds).
While, the Toyota Prius C starts at $18,950, a compact version of the $24,000 popular Toyota Prius hybrid, which gets an outstanding fuel economy rating of 51/48 city/hwy mpg. Toyota and Ford are also working on all-electric vehicles.
Many people used to think of electric cars as a box with batteries, something that is small and not very stylish, and can get you from point A to point B, as long as those two points are not far apart. But, the perception of electric vehicles is changing, especially as gasoline prices rise.
sockratties posted at 1:14 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
Jack – I agree with you. I went one step less and bought a hybrid but I still doubled my mileage over a conventional car.
There are a few things that need to be worked out, hopefully before everyone follows your lead.
Green power is not coming on line as fast as it could. Read the letter that was posted just after yours from the lady who is working to get land leased to solar power companies. The bureaucracy is too much of a burden and should be streamlined.
The power grid can't take the load if everyone starts plugging in their cars. Cities and power companies need to start now so they don't get behind the curve or the cost of electricity will skyrocket or some government agency will find a way to place a surtax on electric vehicles to pay for the upgrades.
Time-of-use offered by SRP is one way to smooth out power loads that occur during business and air conditioning times of the day. APS and SRP both still use a lot of coal generating plants and more of this dirtier fuel will be used to meet the additional need. More attention needs to be paid to clean burning coal fired generating plants.
Most of the visitor parking with plug-ins that was in place when the first electric cars (remember the GM E-1) hit the market have been removed or disabled. Stores and malls need to get those back in place to attract customers who drive plug in cars.
Cerulean posted at 3:19 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
As a comparison to combustion engines that are hot, dirty and only 20 percent efficient, electric vehicles are about 80 percent efficient.
Arizona Willie posted at 3:40 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
I'm driving a Kia Optima Hybrid and I wonder what people who buy the Prius are thinking.
Although they advertise 50 mpg they are being sued because their real world mileage isn't close to that.
And, the Prius curb weight is a tad over 3000 pounds. The GVW on my Hybrid is 4862 I think it is.
A lot more metal around us. The Prius must be a tin can in comparison.
And we're getting 37 mpg in town / freeway, on a trip on actual highway it will do well over 40 mpg and that's real world figures.
So we have a heavier safer car getting just about as good mpg as the Prius.
All the hybrids need to move the battery from the trunk area and put them under the car and then there would be room for multiple batteries in parallel to get even better mpg.
I'm looking forward to when they have the all electrics getting better range. That's the only thing keeping me from going that route now.
We'd better be doing something fast because we've already burned up half the worlds's petroleum reserves and the rate of consumption is increasing rapidly.
It's likely the world supply will be gone in 100 years or less.
truth posted at 4:18 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
When a gas powered car gets 200 miles to the gallon the only difference will be we wil pay $ 20.00 a gallon, when I have more time I will tell you how Chevron, Firestone and General Motors destroyed the U.S. transit system.[sad][sad][sad][sad][sad][sad][sad]
Leon Ceniceros posted at 4:41 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
$100,000.00......for a Tesla
$35,000.00........for a Nissan Leaf
$40,000.00........for a Chevy Volt
$30,000.00........for a Mitsubishi "i"
Wow..........where do I put my signature on the Sales Aggreement ????
EXCUSE ME.....COULD SOMEBODY BRING ME BACK TO.....PLANET EARTH [sad]
If if wasn't for the Obama makes all of us "TAX-PAYERS"....cough up the..."FEDERAL SUBSIDIES IN THE THOUSAND AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ($5,000.00 - $7,000.00) FOR A CHEVY VOLT (by the way...the Chevy Volt Production Line was closed for a month and it by be for an indefinite time because ........NO ONE HAS THE MONEY TO BUY THEM !!!!)
These Electric Cars have an Electric Battery Cost starting at $4,000.00.
Also, these Electric Cars have..........NO RESALE VALUE....PERIOD...ZIP...NADA...NOTHING.........GET REAL "TREE HUGGERS"....ELECTRIC CARS ARE NOTHING BUT..........."EDSELS WITH A SOCKET"....[wink]
sockratties posted at 5:45 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
AzWillie -- My Prius gets about 48 mpg when I don't use the AC. It drops to about 46 in the summer when the AC is on all the time. It's a 2007 and has been consistent since I bought it. I actually reached that 50 mpg mark when I drive with cruise control on and traveled 60 mph. I did it once from Mesa to Tucson just to see. Of course I-10 is posted at 70+ most of the way so that won't happen again.
The lawsuit you allude to was regarding the Honda Civic Hybrid which is very different from the Toyota. It is an electric assist motor and the car never travels on electric alone.
Toyota is supposed to come out with a plug-in version of the Prius next year using lithium-ion batteries and a limited range electric only option.
One change since I bought mine is that the power steering pump is now run by an electric motor removing the last external drive belt (mine is still belt driven) which saves a little more on mileage. The AC uses power from the hybrid battery so it effects average mileage whenever it is being used. The cooling option they advertize is simply a ventilating fan that moves outside air through the car using a solar panel in the roof. They make it sound like AC but I don't think it will do much good in AZ summertime. It'll make it more like a convection oven.
One BIG effect is keeping the tire pressure up. When the weather turns colder they can drop from the recommended 36 psi to 30 overnight and mpg drops dramatically.
Rich posted at 6:32 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
Had a 1965 Ranchero, 289 V8 three on the tree. Solid steel, fast as any new car, 25+mpg in town. All the way to Ventura on a tank with maybe enough to get to Santa Barbara when you shoved it down into overdrive on the highway. No bells whistles or cute little digital displays, not even seat belts. Went car shopping for a small pickup. A bunch of them didn't make 19 mpg, those that did, wouldn't get out of their own way.25 million things to go wrong. Bells, whistles and shoulder belts that limit your vision driving. Take heart you have inflating bags to suffocate you in an accident. How we can take a nearly perfect machine, and improve it until it isn't worth having is beyond me. New cars are godawful junk and less efficient. Could government have had a hand?
antirino posted at 6:37 pm on Wed, Mar 21, 2012.
If you get your power form SRP or APS, you Nissan Leaf is running at least partially on the burning of coal.
Dale Whiting posted at 7:51 am on Thu, Mar 22, 2012.
Jim,
Are you sure you're not from Plains Georgia? James Earl Carter came up with your idea in 1976. Then Ronald Reagan reversed that idea. We lost our fuel economy standards schedule which required the production of increasingly more efficient vehicles each year [unless of course you drove an SUV] and we lost the 55 mph highway speed limit standard. And we never did develop standardized designs for nuclear power reactors. Jimmy oversaw the developkment of such designs when he worked in the US Navy.
I guess "big government" has no place telling us Patriotic Americans how fast we can drive or how efficiently we must drive! In today's Boston Harbor, we've dumbed those ideas overboard!
Dale Whiting posted at 6:09 pm on Thu, Mar 22, 2012.
That's "dumped." We also dumb down ideas like fuel economy standards.
Arizona Willie posted at 9:25 am on Fri, Mar 23, 2012.
In this mornings Arizona Repulsive newspaper, buried on page D4, is an article about gasoline prices. At the end they answer the question " are prices high because the world is running out of oil? " with a simplistic " Not Yet ".
They go on to effuse about shale oil and make the statement " the Arctic which is largely unexplored, is thought to have 25 percent of the worlds known reserves. "
Huh? What?
It is < THOUGHT > to have 25 percent of the worlds KNOWN reserves?
Umm, no sir, KNOWN reserves means just that ... geologists KNOW the oil is down there ... not that they WISHY / THINKY / HOPEY it is down there.
The author proclaims blue sky oil reserves that are NOT known to exist ... they only HOPE there is some oil in the Arctic because we are in FACT halfway through the KNOWN oil reserves.
Yes, Virginia, the price of gas is going up == in part == because the supply is going down. And, unfortunately, it is going to get a LOT worse in coming years.
Much of the shale oil the author postulates is very very difficult and expensive to get to ... and may not be worth the effort and cost (especially when techniques like fracking are used when often pollute our water sources ). Gas won't do you much good if you can't get a drink of clean water.
The TRUTH ( which governments and oil companies don't want people thinking about ) is that we have perhaps 100 more years, if we are lucky, to convert all transportation to alternate energy sources.
That's going to take time, effort, money and a lot of luck.
No matter what, over the next years the price of gasoline is going to go higher and higher.
This is only the beginning.
VofReason posted at 1:40 pm on Fri, Mar 23, 2012.
Sounds like an easy sell. Wonder why they don't sell well? I mean the market says what the market is- no?
manny99 posted at 7:16 pm on Wed, Apr 18, 2012.
when the government puts forth the mileage tax you will still think your buying gas.
i read a artical about huge oil deposits on the canadian american border.
the canadians are pumping away on it. and the canadian oil companies are wondering why we havent begun drilling on our side.