OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Ummm, you just need a dryer plug, that shouldn't be 5K.
Why not more hybrids?
- Thread starter grampi
- Start date
There is a saying: "assumption is the mother of all s.... ups."
Nick1994
$100 site donor 2024
$5,000? If your breaker panel is nearby you could do it yourself in about 60 minutes for $100 or so.
I think they have the best hybride!
Very well. Only noticeable difference is front seats are higher due to the batteries being underneath them. Full third row available with plenty of cargo room. And the third row stows in the floors like the non hybrid predecessor.
Engine bay is a little tight but work able. The hybrid system only has the 2.5 four cylinder to contend with for space like the Camry.
Yeah, just for giggles I priced it out at Lowe’s… $124.
America’s infrastructure is too car centric. It’s not anyone’s fault alive today. The world of the car dominated future was decades ago. Here we are living with traffic jams, mad max levels of chaos to claim convenient parking spots, and slavery to car ownership.
It takes such a calculating and determined individual to live without a car in the US. College kids can do it since campuses with thousands of students work well with public transportation.
Electric cars won’t solve climate change. Total shutdown of the economy would, and even then, it would have to be a global effort. China using high emission equipment to harvest battery material for our clean vehicles is not actually green.
Probably the best thing to do is some sort of tax or government penalty for driving big vehicles with high emissions. Money moves people more than ethics or virtue signaling. But will people vote for a politician who proposes more taxes? Even if he offered incentives instead for cleaner vehicles, that’s just more tax burden on the taxpayer down the line. Nothing is for free.
Probably another good solution is retrofitting giant commercial skyscrapers into residences. Let the people work from home and have the ability to live in big cities without cars.
But I’m not even in favor of any of this anyways. I’m just stating what are the solutions to a problem I don’t even really care about much. Hybrids are a bandaid to a bigger problem: misguided visions of the future of infrastructure, a bloated utopia of cars that has led to heart disease, road rage, political strife, and financial strain.
It takes such a calculating and determined individual to live without a car in the US. College kids can do it since campuses with thousands of students work well with public transportation.
Electric cars won’t solve climate change. Total shutdown of the economy would, and even then, it would have to be a global effort. China using high emission equipment to harvest battery material for our clean vehicles is not actually green.
Probably the best thing to do is some sort of tax or government penalty for driving big vehicles with high emissions. Money moves people more than ethics or virtue signaling. But will people vote for a politician who proposes more taxes? Even if he offered incentives instead for cleaner vehicles, that’s just more tax burden on the taxpayer down the line. Nothing is for free.
Probably another good solution is retrofitting giant commercial skyscrapers into residences. Let the people work from home and have the ability to live in big cities without cars.
But I’m not even in favor of any of this anyways. I’m just stating what are the solutions to a problem I don’t even really care about much. Hybrids are a bandaid to a bigger problem: misguided visions of the future of infrastructure, a bloated utopia of cars that has led to heart disease, road rage, political strife, and financial strain.
That’s a lot to cover but one thing that has to be said, the automobile brought in the era of travel. Travel could mean pleasure or business but either way it spurred a new sector of the economy.
I greatly enjoy my car. Why? Because I don’t use it to commute. I’ve structured my life so that I can ride a bike to work, reserving driving for mostly fun or hauling. It turns out when you drive less, when you do, it becomes more enjoyable. I think if American infrastructure was built more like Europe’s, we would have far fewer car related troubles. But what can we do about infrastructure? I don’t know.
That's the thing to me, for me to live close enough to work to bike, means living deep into the suburbs if not city. So to do any fun driving means...driving to get out of the city. Meanwhile, hauling? if I'm living deep in those areas, I probably don't want a truck, much less a big trailer.
So I wind up living where I'd like to be retired to, and... commuting. Not sure it's the best compromise. In college I was carless, and it was nice, most of the time. But that sort of setup I think is hard to recreate. As I try to think about how I'd commute by bike where I am now working, I'm thinking, it might not be that easy--but then again, I'm thinking mostly of the car traffic. Then housing costs on top of that. Not sure if I'm ahead on the combined cost of transportation and housing, or not.
It’s sad isn’t it. Living close enough to a job to walk or bike is a luxury that has a high price tag.
You don’t need rapid charging at your home. You park overnight (many utilities have EV rates overnight that are cheaper) plugged into a 220V charging outlet that typically costs $500-$1500 to install and car is charged topped everyday. DIY would be less obviously.
These kinds of outlets on new or existing construction are extremely desirable when it comes time to sell your home.
Taxes never solved anything. Just look at London, they taxed cars to enter the city to reduce congestion, it never worked. Now they’re banning diesel and I think some gas cars, it is still congested.
Change will occur over many years and decades and that’s fine. Instant change is hard on society. In the meantime hybrids are the best of both worlds. We live in a large country. It’s easy to talk about density in certain places but in many places it is not feasible. Plus, you have societal problems and packing people together will exacerbate those.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
As I've pointed out previously, Germany, a country of 84 million people, could fit inside Ontario 3x, a Canadian province of 14 million people, in a country of ~35 million people. There's no realistic way to make American infrastructure resemble Europe's, because the area is just too vast and the population too dispersed.
The whole continent of Europe is 10 million square kilometres, roughly the same area as the country of Canada. The EU has a population of 442 million people and is 4.2 million square kilometers, or roughly the same size as the area occupied by the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.
Going from Toronto to Vancouver is 41 hours of driving and 4,323km. That's going from Central Canada to the West coast.
Going from Luxembourg to Berlin is 8 hours of driving and 739km. That's going from one side of Germany to the other.
In fact, you can go from Galway Ireland, the west side of Ireland, to Luxembourg, the east side of Germany, in ~17 hours and that's 1,368km, or shorter than driving from SW Ontario to New Brunswick.
What's that like in Detroit in the middle of winter and rainy days?
I don’t live in Detroit anymore. I’m in sunny Florida.
I think our next regular vehicle (not toy or hobby car) will be a hybrid. I went to see the new CRV for my daughter and was quite impressed. I looked at the Sport Touring model and quite honestly I will seriously consider it when its time to get rid of our 2019 Q5. MSRP was about 40k versus about 60k for the Audi. Throw in Honda reliability and I think it is a compelling option. The fit and finish was truly outstanding. As for as packaging the battery is where the spare tire would be. With current tire technology I dont think not having a spare is an issue.
Hybrids are great. They fill a niche but have some traits that compromise the best and worst of what they come from. The equine quadraped hybrid is this.
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