I will donate $100 to the DNC if Debbie Stabenow can get her fat ass inside a Chevy Spark..
I wonder what kind of car Debbie drives?
If it isn’t electric or a hybrid, then she’s a hypocrite.
This is American thinking. Leftists don't think that way.
They think "we should make it a law that people must drive only the cars that we allow them to drive, because we know better".
It’s not going to work while the left has the option of additional force.
I want to see her drive her “baby” through Sprinfield exit at 5:10pm on I-95 DC to Richmond.
I have a ute and think it’s too small.
I want to see her drive her “baby” through Sprinfield exit at 5:10pm on I-95 DC to Richmond.
I have a ute and think it’s too small.
I drive a Ford CMax Energi. Love it so far. Great MPG equivalent. The plug-in hybrid is cool. It could be better if it ran on coal. No, I am not a tree-hugger.
“This is my baby,” she said turning back to admire the micro car. “
Until she gets back into her Black Escalade.
Now we have good looking cars whose lives are limited by the complexity of the electronics. I have had to trash two nice looking cars because the electronic fixes were too expensive and they wouldn't make inspection without them. Planned obsolescence. And corporatist leftists just loooove it.
Same with appliances.
“I tried to restrain myself as McCarthy emerged from a tiny Chevy Spark tucked along a wall at the General Motors display. “
A throwaway car to appease government regulators. Cost of doing business to the car companies. We all get to pay for it in the end.
"This is my baby," she said turning back to admire the micro car.
I guess we know where it got its looks then.
I don't think that the people at the EPA ever talk to the people at the NHTSA.
GM sold 418K Silverados, and 184K Sierras, total of 602K. They’re basically the same truck. For 2014, Ford is going with and aluminum body but GM is staying with steel. Also, Ford is going with their V-6 for their base engine but GM is going with their 5.3L V-8. My perception of pickup folks is that they’re a fairly conservative bunch. So, these differences may test how strong brand loyalties are. Guess we shall see....
If GM were building cars that people wanted, we would have some identifiable version of the 1957 Chevrolet.
It could be done, you know. Using today’s technology, and tucking it in a shell very similar to the 1957 model, it would certainly attract a lot of attention.
“Innovative” models like the Volt or other versions of electric-powered vehicles that are much too dependent on charging at a wall socket are wishful thinking, if there is to be an appeal to the buying public.
My personal vision of future power drive lines includes mounting a hydrostatic motor at each wheel, with some version of internal combustion engine driving a hydraulic pump that would build up pressure in a reservoir. When the pressure in the reservoir became sufficiently high (but before overpressure), the constant-speed primary power source would shut off, restarting automatically when the pressure fell below a certain point, much like an electrically driven air compressor. As the brakes were applied, the hydrostatic motors become brakes, pushing pressure back into the reservoir, then as the forward motion commenced, the pressure would again drive the hydrostatic motors. In stop-and-go traffic, this would eliminate a great deal of idling time, and the entire mechanism would not be subject to the weight penalty of a battery-electric system. The system would be controlled by a master computer (not much different than most new vehicles today), adjusting road speed to pressure available at the hydrostatic motors. Already I can see refinements of this concept, adapting the speed of each wheel when rounding a curve. Each wheel of the vehicle is turning on a different steering radius, requiring that adjustments be made, to maintain maximum traction at all points. True four-wheel traction, with no complicated differentials, U-joints, or transmission drive lines to compensate.
Do we have the engineering technology available to produce this system? It has been around for industrial and agricultural applications for at least 50 years that I know of, usually in much larger and heavier machinery. But it could be adapted to light truck and passenger vehicle use, entirely road-legal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wac1ofVYfd0
Actual energy efficiency, apples to apples, of electric cars are vastly overstated.
Electricity generation is at most 60% to 70% efficient. Then there are additional energy losses in transmission, battery charging and battery discharge.
By the time you add all those up, a gallon of gasoline-equivalent fuel burned to produce electricity finds it pretty difficult to compete with a gallon burned to actually drive a vehicle down the road. Last time I checked, electricity still comes out ahead, but not by much.
When talking about the new crop of mini-cars and other automotive products developed by Congress and its supporting bureaucrats - they make excellent coffins.
Have you seen the safety ratings for those things?
I have a Corvette.
On one of the Corvette Forums I frequent, there was a picture of Slow Joe Biden sitting in the new Corvette Z06 at the Detroit Auto Show.
I made what I thought was a silly off the cuff comment about the picture and half the Board attacked me for being Political, with a whole bunch saying Obama and Biden saved GM and the Corvette in the process.
I mentioned that if Obama and Biden had their way, there would not be a Corvette and everyone would be forced into a Hybrid or an Electric. I mistakenly thought Car Guys would have known that, but there were more than a few that went on about Biden owning a Hot Rod Pontiac, making him a real Car Guy too. They just don’t see it.
If you own a Chevy Spark would it make you a sparkee?.