The Big Three

[monsterkawi]

Love the Japenese Quality like the Nissan GTR.

[ShackAttack12]

Regarding electric cars, I'm still skeptical that they can work well enough. I mean, when Top Gear tested the Tesla Roadster, they found that it really doesn't work well enough to replace gasoline. It's got a fairly decent range of 120mi, but then takes a whopping 12 hours to charge again. You can kiss that road-trip to Disneyland goodbye. I think the future is in alternative fuels, like hydrogen. You can simply fill your car up, just like normal. With an electric car, I'd always be wondering whether I was filling my car up with power from the Mega Green Enviroplex dam, or the Smogg Industries Oil-Sucking Power Works.

Jetz, you sound just like the auto companies want people to sound like...

As of today, Electric cars can absolutely replace 75% of the US populations commuter vehicles. Most people dont need more than a 60 mile range for their commuting. People who were leasing the GM EV1's were getting anywhere from 80-120miles on a single charge. Just recently there was a group that traveled 313 miles on one charge in a Tesla Roadster. There are plenty of home brew EV's that are suiting their owners quite well. In fact, i know of a few people who do not use internal combustion engines at all for their commuting, home maintenance, etc.

I dont think hydrogen as a fuel will be the future. Hydrogen is highly explosive and very expensive to compress, store, and maintain. However, hydrogen is the best liquid to use in fuel cells because it requires the least amount of catalyst and provides the most power. Hydrogen is something the "Fuel monkeys" got interested in as an alternative to fossil fuels because its a fuel that can be sold in quantity and has to be processed, which means theres huge amounts of money to be made behind it. With pure electricity, you can get it free from the sun, wind, or water (or even lemons and potatoes ).

JETZ, and everyone else who may be interested, you need to watch this... there are 10 parts... its really interesting stuff....

[brent26]

Got to go with general motors.

[dearnhardtfan7]

My uncle drives a Dodge Ram 3500 with the Cummins turbo diesel, and with 5 of us in the cab, pulling a 17 ft dual axle enclosed trailer, with 3 bikes, tons of gear, and a 6x4x4 dog crate with a bassett hound, and rat terrier, on the interstate we get 26-30 mpg. The "american vehicles are gas guzzlers" argument is very untrue. Myself I drive a 2003 Nissan Frontier XE and unloaded I get about 20 mpg on the highway. Go figure.

[Goardy]

years of living of what can be considered the epicentre of australian car fandom has lead to me greatly greatly disliking them, they have become huge, hulking, poorly refined bogan-mobiles in my eyes.
if price is no issue, id go european fo' shaw.
from a purely aesthetic point of view, ive always had a bit of a soft spot for the older japanese cars
e.g:

[JETZcorp]

With pure electricity, you can get it free from the sun, wind, or water (or even lemons and potatoes )

If you want to power your electric car for free, I'm afraid you're out of luck. A personal windmill will take 600 hours to charge a Tesla, and that's if it happens to be windy at the moment. Solar power might work if you cover your back yard with photovoltaic panels, but when Tesla were making their Roadster they thought about putting a panel on the roof until they realized that it would handle somewhere on the order of 1% of the car's power demands, and scrapped the idea. The Lemons might work if you want to buy a swimming pool and fill it, and of course you'll have to feed it with new lemons every other day or so using a big diesel truck.

Also, don't think I'm in favor of a gasoline-powered future, as your first comment kind of suggests. I'm not. I think that in the end we'll probably see both systems become popular. While the straight electric option is significantly cheaper "at the plug," it does require that you carry around a massive amount of weight in the form of batteries. And, while it may work great for a daily commuter (everything I've done today, for example) it would be very poor at loading up the bikes and going to a riding area 100mi away from home. While it could be done, you probably wouldn't be able to do it right after work. Again, what are you to do if you need to drive 800mi to visit Disney Land or Aunt Margaret? Borrow someone's plug in their garage? Go to a charging lot and park for ten hours? Four times? Maybe we'll have the technology to get the appropriate range in the future, but we don't at the moment. I guess you'd just have to fly there, but even with the 100 mi / gal / pass that a Boeing 747 can get, you'll be burning dead dinosaurs. That is, unless the jet guys do what they say they will.

They're developing a type of fuel that can be created by algae, which should theoretically be a more environmentally-friendly way of making biofuel than making it agriculturally. As it turns out, the current process of making ethanol-based fuels from plants adds up to 1.1 gallons of gas burned per gallon of biofuel prouduced - which sucks. I don't think there's any reason to abandon the idea of fuel if it can be made in an eco-friendly way. At the same time, if battery power can show that it can practically meet the demands of a formerly fuel-based world, then there's no reason to let it go, either. Both sides have a challenge, but I think the challenge faced by biofuel is less. We'll just have to see what they do.

[jlv]

They're developing a type of fuel that can be created by algae, which should theoretically be a more environmentally-friendly way of making biofuel than making it agriculturally. As it turns out, the current process of making ethanol-based fuels from plants adds up to 1.1 gallons of gas burned per gallon of biofuel prouduced - which sucks. I don't think there's any reason to abandon the idea of fuel if it can be made in an eco-friendly way. At the same time, if battery power can show that it can practically meet the demands of a formerly fuel-based world, then there's no reason to let it go, either. Both sides have a challenge, but I think the challenge faced by biofuel is less. We'll just have to see what they do.

Not that I'm a biofuel fan but they aren't a net loss: "Cynics claim that it takes more energy to grow corn and distill it into alcohol than you can get out of the alcohol. However, according to the DOE, the growing, fermenting and distillation chain actually results in a surplus of energy that ranges from 34 to 66 percent. Moreover, the carbon dioxide (CO2) that an engine produces started out as atmospheric CO2 that the cornstalk captured during growth, making ethanol greenhouse gas neutral. Recent DOE studies note that using ethanol in blends lowers carbon monoxide (CO) and CO2 emissions substantially. In 2005, burning such blends had the same effect on greenhouse gas emissions as removing 1 million cars from American roads."

The ironic thing about electric cars is they end up burning coal to generate the electricity, which is pure carbon.

[JETZcorp]

Wow, I did not know that about ethanol. Thanks JLV.

Regarding the fact that electric cars use coal for power, there are some big caveats that need to be mentioned there. First, they only get power from coal 55% of the time in the US, because that is how much of our power is coal-fired. Also, because the process of going from coal to usable energy is more efficient than a traditional internal combustion engine, you're doing better than gas. But, you also have to take into account all the power that's not coal-fired.

Nuclear power is essentially a zero-emission source of energy, and generates roughly 20% of the power produced in America today. The only byproduct is depleted Uranium, which can be safely loaded on a train and put into a mountain facility in Arizona which is designed to last longer than mankind itself. The containers used to transport this material can withstand side-on impacts by other trains or be burned in jet fuel for hours on end without being compromised. If they were somehow breached and a bunch of Uranium spilled over on one side of the tracks right by your back yard, all they have to do is load it up in the train and take off again - and they can do it with their bare hands if necessary, because depleted Uranium isn't all that dangerous unless you're in contact with it for many years. I know I'm a little off-topic here, but I think that IF we were to make a switch to battery-powered electric cars that get energy from a power plant, Nuclear Power should be the energy of choice to meet the increased power demands of America. Being an Oregonian, however, I'd be charging my car off Bonneville Dam... and The Dalles Dam... and John Day Dam. Yeah, Columbia River FTW.

[Sonnette]

Good day Gents,

Just my 2 cent Mopar or No Car. Had the pleasure to have a ´66 Charger which I rebuilt a while back and there is nothing better then that would use it as daily but it is to uptight at least more then my 520i

But i rode it mostly in my free time.

Kind Regards
Sonnette

[firthy689]

My uncle drives a Dodge Ram 3500 with the Cummins turbo diesel, and with 5 of us in the cab, pulling a 17 ft dual axle enclosed trailer, with 3 bikes, tons of gear, and a 6x4x4 dog crate with a bassett hound, and rat terrier, on the interstate we get 26-30 mpg. The "american vehicles are gas guzzlers" argument is very untrue. Myself I drive a 2003 Nissan Frontier XE and unloaded I get about 20 mpg on the highway. Go figure.

That is because diesels achieve much better fuel mileage then petrol engines, therefore making your argument slightly invalid

[JETZcorp]

I don't think it's invalid at all. Diesels are amazing things, and I think that they're going to take over the economy-car market if two-strokes don't start hitting the scene pretty soon.

Just my 2 cent Mopar or No Car.

High-Five man, high-five! Oh how I'd love to get my hands on a 'Cuda, Challenger, Charger or Roadrunner - with the Hemi of course! I told my mom just a few minutes ago that I wanted a Superbird and she laughed. Not because it's expensive or rare, but because it's "too fast." Who would've thought my mom would be so much like the NASCAR administrator people - that was their reaction, too.

[firthy689]

I don't think it's invalid at all. Diesels are amazing things, and I think that they're going to take over the economy-car market if two-strokes don't start hitting the scene pretty soon.

I probably didn't think that quite through.

Diesels are already quite popular in Australia, we have two of them and they really prove their worth all the time, only problem is that the cost of diesel here is about 10 cents a litre higher then petrol. But then that extra cost for fuel is overcome by their far superior fuel economy.

[DJ99X]

It wasnt that long ago diesel was far cheaper than petrol. Guess the petrol companies caught on to the growing trend of diesel engines

[yomo]

But then that extra cost for fuel is overcome by their far superior fuel economy.

Yeah but most diesel cars are up to $10,000 more expensive than petrol. So you either need to drive a shit load or keep the car for the best part of half a century

diesel also produces more smog because In the end diesel is just dirty fuel

[Judge]

Well I had to go with Ford here, allways been a huge fan thanks to this beast:

Yet though this new beast is looking even better ahah!:


I have to say, I'm also a big fan of Mazda's! ( Sorry for the following lack of english... )

My brother owns a Mazda Rx-8, and the rotary ( is it that? ) engine rides so smooth! not to mention the transmission's little noise on the back... I don't think you can actually hear it well here but..: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urFrJsufqe4

We're trying to sell it and get a nice Beemer, and in like, 2 years... we'd like to get one of these flaming new Camaros..(L)

Best Regards,
Judge.