Car safety stats (risk of death vs risk of killing other drivers)

That is a great law. In Illinois, liability coverage is the same no
matter what vehicle you drive. Hummer is the same as a Civic.

 

I'll disagree with this. While I am no huge fan of Chevy these days,
the Volt has a very good chance of being successful.

40 Miles per charge on pure electric, and a small motor to charge the
battery and extend the range to ~ 300 miles. The 40 miles is more
than enough for most people. Of course, we'll have to see how it
actually performs once released, but it's a nice looking car, and the
pricetag will be affordable.

Tesla is working on releasing the model S, a 4-door that does a 45
minute charge for a 300 mile trip. The price is 50 Grand after the
Federal tax credit, and the car is good looking, fast and efficient.

So what? Water is fine. And nuclear waste is much smaller than it
used to be (ie: efficiency is growing). The disposal of said waste
CAN be done in a clean, efficient manner. It is cleaner than the
exhaust that is thrown up by coal plants...

 

In my experience, the collision insurance for small cars is higher,
but the liability is higher for the beasts.

I went from a used Chrysler minivan to a Civic Si. The liability is
about 30% lower on the brand new car than it was on the minivan. With
full coverage, my Si only costs a couple hundred a year more to insure
than the minivan did with liability alone.

 

Most SUV's are incapable of off-road travel these days. The
suspension cannot handle it. Many dealers require you to sign a
waiver saying that you will not take the SUV off-road, and if you do,
damage will not be covered by warranty.

Most Jeep Wranglers are 4's and 6's, and are quite capable towers.

I always found the Land Rover to be ugly as hell and overpriced. If I
wanted something for off-road, I'd probably pick up a used Jeep... I
only say used because who knows if the new company will maintain
quality (which has already deteriorated some)...

 

Oil is NOT a "finite resource";we continue to discover new fields.
And I agree that we need to reduce oil consumption,and we achieve that by
going to smaller,lighter vehicles with better mileage.
Reserve lt.trucks and SUVs for where they are truly necessary.

EXCEPT that most people are not going to be replacing their current gas
vehicles for an electric car. Nor will there be electric light trucks or
SUVs. Hybrid SUV's do not take the place of the workhorse SUVs.
You won't be towing anything with one of them.

except that recharging infrastructure is not in place yet.

If Japan and France can do nuclear power cleanly and safely,so can the US.

And one hailstorm or heavy storm destroys your solar panels.

 

I'll say it has, it's the most unreliable car on British roads according
to Motoring Which?

 

Like Three Mile Island?

 

You bet!

And, the French model is probably the best volume/record wise and a
Westinghouse design at that.

If we could muster the courage to build 100 plants evenly distributed in
the US, a major dent in foreign oil imports could be affected. It won't
be long before plug in electric cars for urban areas will become viable.

But I'm sure all we'll hear is more song 'n dance smoke 'n mirrors from
Washington. When you get to be my age, the same ol' tune just starts to
git a little more boring...

JT

 

That wasn't me, but I'll disagree. New discoveries or not, Oil is not
being produced. Or, if it is, not nearly at the rate we are using it.

Most people CAN. Most people do not use SUV's for towing anyhow. And
you don't need to have one thing that works for everyone. You can
still have trucks run on gas, or whatever, while you also have daily
commuters running full electric, hybrid, or whatever.

110V Outlets are everywhere. Believe it or not, I even have a few in
my house. Heck, I even have a couple 220V's.

Absolutely!

 

It's not even so much from Washington, though. It's the population.
Everyone wants cleaner better power sources, but noone wants them
built near them. Not in My Back Yard...

At some point, we have to make tough decisions and do things that
aren't as palatable as we'd like. Nuclear power is safer and cleaner
than most other forms right now, but there's always that fear of a
meltdown in the general population.

 

Not surprising. The old Jeeps, from before Chrysler took over, were
great vehicles.

Chrysler amazes me. They are all about style over substance. IMO,
Chrysler makes some of the best looking cars on the road. It's a
shame that they are unreliable pieces of shit...

 

IMO,Obama doesn't want the US to have plentiful,cheap energy;
he blocks nuclear by hindering safe storage of waste at Yucca Mtn
repository,he wants carbon taxes,killing coal-fired electricity(50% of US
electric),and solar and wind will not make up the difference.
The Dems block production of domestic oil fields,block refinery expansion
and new refineries;raising the cost of vehicle fuels.
Thus driving out the automobile.


Looking at the BIG picture,I see that Obama is trying to weaken and destroy
America.He's crippling us in energy,seriously weakening our
military,ruining our economy,going soft on terrorism,looking weak to our
enemies.All his policies work towards MORE unemployment.

It all fits in with what he said and wrote before he was elected to
President,and with his background as a foreign-raised child.
Obama is really an America-hater,just like Rev.Wright.

 

Then educate the public.

Nuclear power would also mean more good paying jobs.

 

Only because the Dems block domestic production and refinery expansion.
Look how the price of oil shot up so high and then drastically dropped.
(IMO,-somebody- was manipulating the market,for political reasons.)

Most people don't buy one vehicle for city use and another for interstate
driving. Their one car has to do both.
and many people cannot afford to buy a new car,hybrid or whatever.

yeah,like some OTHER property owner is going to foot the bills for charging
lots of other peoples vehicles.We don't even have the extra electric
capacity to power millions of new electric vehicles.

 

dude, "storage" is the dumbest fucking idiot disaster yet proposed for
this planet. it is dangerous, ill-conceived, and incredibly ignorant of
reality.

very briefly,, "storage" means we have fuel rods, [among other things]
in a highly reactive and physically unstable condition, in a fucking
water tank. i'm not an expert on this stuff, but i do know that
irradiated metals get extremely brittle and because of atomic
displacements, suffer a physical decomposition condition similar to
extreme hydrogen cracking. so, left long enough, your rod falls apart,
and all your fissile material pellets drop to the bottom of the tank.
now, do you know what happens when you get this happen on a large scale
and you let enough kilos of pellets accumulate close together? ask the
russians, they know. they lost a mountain in siberia "experimenting"
with this. it's called "critical mass" and something does "BOOM".

what we should do, and what the japanese, russians and french do, is
reprocess. that means you take all that shit apart, you melt and
separate all the individual elements, you re-use the stuff you want, and
the shit you don't want, you oxidize and melt into glass [like hockey
pucks] with dilution sufficient that no matter what you do, you cannot
"accidentally" or neglectfully achieve critical. so even if society
melts down and 10,000 years from now, some idiot starts pulling those
things out of a repository somewhere, all they'll manage to achieve is a
lump on someone elses helmet, not vaporization of yucca mountain and
half of las vegas. or anywhere else for that matter.

usa + "storage" = utter fucking retardation

dude, read what i just wrote and focus on the facts - this bullshit is
way beyond ignorance and xenophobia. focus your, er, "energy" on
getting your idiot representatives to do the right thing - reprocess.
write them today.

 

I'm all for reprocessing,but RIGHT NOW,we need secure storage.

and it's NOT "ignorance and xenophobia".Oblama has written and spoken on
what he would do and why.

But go ahead and keep your blinders on.

 

I am judiciously skeptical of the Volt, but I suspect there will be a
number of vehicles with similar performance in 2 - 4 years. But these
vehicles are hybrids. Not that there is anything wrong with hybrids -
I would certainly consider one if I was in the market. However, a
pure electric vehicle is a lot shakier proposition from a marketplace
standpoint.

I would not be in a hurry to buy either a volt-like hybrid or a pure
electric because I am concerned that the batteries will be stressed
much more severely than current hybrids.

The price is $50K for the 160 mile model and it isn't clear whether 45
minute charging will be on that model. The range would be OK if it
didn't cost $50. That price insures that this will fill only a tiny
niche. The market isn't that big for $50K cars and most buyers will
not want to make the compromises. And if you think the long term
plans at GM are suspect, you have to think that long term Tesla
anything is like a lottery ticket.

The previous poster cited the need to wash solar panels with "WATER"
as a serious flaw. I am actually pretty ambivalent regarding nuclear
energy. I don't think it is as bad as the vocal opponents but I also
don't think that it is as benign as its vocal supporters claim.
Hopefully, they will never kill as many people as coal fired plants
have.

 

Remember this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/461446.stm

One Chernobyl destroys your city.

That is the problem with the hazards of nuclear energy; they are very
granular. The plant at Chernobyl ran for nineteen years without
harming anyone. Then one day it destroyed a city.

 

This is the truest statement in the tread. Nuclear power may be the
best choice in the long run. In the mean time, higher energy taxes
are needed to encourage conservation.

The possibility of a major nuclear accident is real. It is extremely
unlikely on any given day, but if you build enough of them and run
them long enough, it will happen and it will be truly awful.

 

This varies state-to-state. I live in Illinois. I once got a cold
call from a car insurance agent. I told him I might consider a policy
from him if his company charged significantly less for liability on my
Integra than what they would charge me for a Suburban. He assured me
that the Integra would be much cheaper. I told him to run the numbers
and call me back. To his credit, he called me back and said he
couldn't believe it, but I was right. The charge for liability
coverage was exactly the same no matter which vehicle I had.

What state do you live in?