“Ah, the sound of electric power. It’s amazing” - Mark Templeton commenting on his newly acquired Tesla Roadster featured in the video below. While electric cars will surely prove to be more practical than gas powered cars we often wonder if its worth it to lose out on some of the perks that come with the typical gas hog. When I think about a Porsche, I usually thing about the growl of its engine. The sound of an engine is so important to some buyers that Porsche even promotes their different engine model sounds on their website, and even offers cell phone downloads for them. Well, Tesla could be making a new sound just as popular.
Fast forward to 2:25 in the video below and you will hear a sound similar to the modified Delorean from Back To The Future.
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While this sound isn’t like the Porsche, its not necessarily worse. It sounds great. It sounds powerful and futuristic. Could this be as strong a selling point as the engine sound from the Porsche?
Let’s think about another pro of the electric engine. Take a look, and listen to the video below.
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Can you imagine walking down the street in New York City with 100% electric automobiles trafficking the streets? This would have an incredible impact on noise pollution in dense metro areas.
Why can’t car manufacturers produce nice looking hybrid car models? The Toyota Prius is the second worst looking car on the road, behind the Pontiac Aztek. The Honda Insight is almost as poorly designed, as it looks almost identical to the Toyota Prius.
If hybrid cars looked better, I might consider buying one. Maybe they are designed to appear economical. Maybe the buyers of these cars are not concerned with styling, so no effort is put into it and cost is then reduced. Maybe manufacturers saw how successful Toyota was with the Prius so they decide dumpy looking cares are the way to go. Who knows. The point is, they are ugly and we would love to know the reason why.
The Insight will start being sold in the US this coming April, 2009. The biggest perk about the Insight will be its price. The Insight will start at $18,500 which will make it the least expensive hybrid available. Honda is able to sell at this price point because of cost reductions from the use of their “Motor Assist” hybrid technology, and also because they spent a total of 3 man hours on its styling.
Style, economy, and performance can come together - enter the Lightning GT. Hopefully hybrid car makers can take a turn towards more attractive looking cars sometime in the near future.
As written up by Gas20.org, Suzuki plans to sell cars that run entirely on ethanol gas in the US and Brazil by 2010. They note that Brazil’s economy is ready to supply these new cars with fuel as in Brazil, ethanol is just as prevalent as gasoline. They use sugar cane to produce ethanol and claim it is a self sustaining industry.
Unfortunately, in the US, crops used to produce ethanol are also used to feed cattle and sustain other critical parts of our comprehensive agricultural industry. The mandates to increase ethanol as fuel have driven the costs of these crops so high that farmers and consumers are starting to feel the impact. So, will these cars really sell that well in the US? Will our economy allow ethanol to be prevalent enough to fuel Suzuki’s new lineup?
Miles per gallon on a pickup was as important in 1979 as it is today. Take a look at the commercial below for Ford pickups from 1979.
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The measure of miles per gallon became an important factor in consumers minds for the first time when buying cars in the late 70’s / early 80’s. The oil shock forced car manufactures to focus on fuel efficiency as a stronger selling point.
This Chevy commercial offers to “electronically certify each car under manufacturers specs, to get maximum gas mileage“.
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What’s really interesting is to compare gas mileage of pickups from the 80’s to those of today. The following Ford commercial claims 20/30 MPG for the most powerful pickup in its class.
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Today’s most fuel efficient F-150 gets 14/20 MPG. While this rating is much lower than trucks of the early 80’s, its still very competitive in its class. So how did car manufacturers let fuel economy slip so bad over the past 25 years? With consistently low gas prices, fuel economy was less important than power, comfort, and luxury.
