Im lookin at a 1997 Chevy s10 electric in an aution. Only 60 ever made Bid so far is $2100 Use lead acid batteries to go 45 miles per charge. Im very tempted.
Whats your opinion of the GM volt electric car?
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Yesterday USATODAY ran a story of potential $8 a gal gas if iran goes through with their threat of closing the strait of hormuz, if that happens people will be trampling over each other to lease a volt for $349 a month. The small excess inventory will vanish quickly.
JP11
Minister of Fire
How long do you think Iran's piddly Navy can keep the strait closed if the US decides to use our Navy to keep it open? That article was nothing but fear tactics from the "pump and dump" speculators.
According to the article if iran lays anti ship mines it could take awhile to find them all. I think $8 Gal is entirely possible given our past history in a crisis situation. All they (IRAN) really have to do is blow up even 1 oil tanker which they are easily capable of more likely several if they go that route. Even the smallest incident will trigger panic on world markets.IMO
The entire thing is speculative. There are lots of potential disruptions in the world economies that could come about, or not.
It would be pretty cool to be the only car on the highway... Mitigating risk is something that makes sense to me. My family spends 10k/yr+ for health insurance we barely use. 2-4k a year for other insurance we hope we never use. If I could get a 1/2 van to go 100mi/day on a battery it woud be worth it for my company to spend an extra 10k per vehicle, and pay to install a 240v charging circuit at the employee's house. That's at 4/gallon, not even talking about 8/gallon. 10-20k/year in fuel/year is a big ticket item.
And what do you think your electric expense is going to do, go down? When the Whitehouse is not being run by a far left president, fuel will come down. I am not against alternative fuels. Not at all. I am against being force fed methods that are not sound, as well as blowing billions on friends of the administration's pet projects (solyndra). Make the benefit of success great, and they methods will come. Prop up the mediocre and that is all you will get.
Electric drive is equivalent to about $1 a gallon for gas ,so your electric bill goes up about 25% of what you USED to pay for gas at $4 Gal.
They could tripple your electric rate and it would still be cheaper. Its a matter of efficiency, not scarcity. The price of gas will fall when the price of gas goes up: People will drive less. Same scenario as last time and the time before that. It took 4 years of Obama in the Whitehouse to raise gas prices this high? If you want to quibble Bush was elected when gas was $1.13 and went to $4.08 by the time July 2008.
The saber rattling by the Republican party over Iran has more to do with the price of gas vs the Liberal agenda and the Chevy Volt.
The saber rattling by the Republican party over Iran has more to do with the price of gas vs the Liberal agenda and the Chevy Volt.
Its dangerous to have a one fuel transportation system,especially with "peak oil" around the corner.We should have at the least a third gasoline, one third electric, and one third CNG powering our transportation system. BTW CNG would be about $1 a gallon equiv as well.
JP11
Minister of Fire
Sorry.. I've got a couple of 20plus year old Mercedes that will still be cruising along.
Dollar a gallon biodiesel I make myself. As long as people keep eating french fries.. I'll still be driving. Guess I'll start a taxi service.
I'm hoping these will be affordable cause we'd really like to have one.
Better yet, we'd like an all electric compact SUV with 4 hub motors and AWD with traction control.
Someday...
Sorry.. I've got a couple of 20plus year old Mercedes that will still be cruising along.
Dollar a gallon biodiesel I make myself. As long as people keep eating french fries.. I'll still be driving. Guess I'll start a taxi service.
Good luck with your supply chain. What happens when you have to outbid me for the grease (unless you own the restaurant)?
$8 a gallon wont keep everyone at home. I only spend about $100 a month on gas so even double to $200 wont be a deal breaker.
Everybody wants a volt that I talk to ! I don't get it I hate car loans and will do my best to never have one again. Electric from the saving fuel standpoint ok I get that part but if it's from the save the planet standpoint that's just wrong. More pollution is created just to make the materials for the car than a normal car as well as the cost factor being way way higher to manufacture it. My real issue with electric is that we can barely keep the grid up as is which means if everyone is charging there cars at night then down goes the grid! Maybe if they made a FULLY self charging car that would be different but I have not seen one yet. Not starting a fight lol I'm just pissy about some things lol. Also if this was already brought up sorry I did not want to read 9 pages of posts.
Pete
Pete
all this electric car stuff is nice, but i need a TRUCK
i have thought about the electric car issue thought about parking garages which have "parking meters" like on the side of city streets, imagine pulling in , plugging in, swiping your card and getting billed for current while at work or shopping or whatever, garage gets a small surcharge for the service above the going kw rate. grid will need some serious work to support it though unless thers availability of on site generation via wind or solar on the roof of the parking roundabout.
i have thought about the electric car issue thought about parking garages which have "parking meters" like on the side of city streets, imagine pulling in , plugging in, swiping your card and getting billed for current while at work or shopping or whatever, garage gets a small surcharge for the service above the going kw rate. grid will need some serious work to support it though unless thers availability of on site generation via wind or solar on the roof of the parking roundabout.
Pete, Mike; The beauty of electric cars is that most charging will be at night. Grid usage at night is low, electric cars will actualy balance use for the electric companies. Eventualy the electric car batteries themselve will be part of the smart grid.
Would be real nice if here in Mass they offered off peak rates that I see in many states...must just be a mass thing
I do not think that Is true in some cases sadly. When I lived in California we had random brownouts ( electricity turndowns ) day and night to keep the electricity flowing. Granted I lived in a heavily populated area !
Pete
Here's a good explaination why the president can't control gas prices, from 2008!
http://www.treehugger.com/fossil-fu...dents-cant-control-gas-prices-2008-video.html
http://www.treehugger.com/fossil-fu...dents-cant-control-gas-prices-2008-video.html
Check out the sidebar on that site headlined "THe TRUE cost of gasoline may be HIGHER that $15 a gallon",and that dont even factor in the 2 wars.
eventually the batteries will be better and range will be extended to "travel" distances, hopefully soon, i actually like the idea of electric vehicles. the "grid thing' is a bit disengenuous though as many people's commutes are over half the advertized range of a lot of electric only vehicles, my comment was directed towards that , kind of a cottage industry if you wanted to call it that, having the ability to park in a roundabout (which im sure lots of commuters do anyway) with a "pay per kw" recharge available would be a viable business opportunity, kinda like "paid parking" is now, also, "plug in" emergency batteries would be worth developing (kinda like having a small gas can in the trunk in case you ran out on a trip) maybe a "plug it in and let it dump into the cars internal battery then take out take home and recharge" type of accessory
short term though , these kinds of innovations take time and they above all take a healthy economy to get developed, so in the interim, gas prices have to go down cause until the electric car age arrives as a standard, we are still an economy locked into cheap gas, as it goes we go. so my thought is this , we develop what we have here and "hoard it" take american crude off the world market, or tax the crap out of its export to force oil companies to sell domestically in order to make any reasonable profit. in essence though, (and i give obama's admin high marks for it) keep the higher cafe standards and phase in higher ones. make the auto industry build cars that get great mileage. and drill now here so we can get the economy going well enough to not rely on drilling here later. this is the quandry we are in, one way or another we're gonna have to drill here, why not use the means we have now as a bridge to electric, rather than languish with a squeezed economy that just needs some relief at the pump to take off and develop electric faster due to having the strong economy in which to do it. in other words, we need cheaper gas to get off of gas, but we need someone who is able to present this in a positive way to all us hardheaded americans who simply want the free milk without buying the cow.
Not buying it Mike. Waiting until gas prices drop for electric cars is like waiting till the fire burns down before calling the fire department.
By the way car batteries will indeed make the grid smarter.
By the way car batteries will indeed make the grid smarter.
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