OT: They will never get it.

Kelly C · Mar 21, 2009

I read a article today stating that all the car companies have thousands of hybred vehicles sitting on the lots unsold.Since gas prices have come down.
D"oh!!! Do they think we are stupid or what?
Who in their right mind who is not a tree hugger from California. Pay a $8000 premium just to get a extra 10 mi gal? If that.

If your a working man/ Woman who is buying a commuter car. Your after the best bang for the buck. Your most likely going to put 100,000 mi on a car in 3 years.
So your after one that when you factor in cost/gas and ins you can swing it and still come away from the week with some living money.

For me thats a $9000 car that gets 40 mi gal.
Not a $28,000 car that gets 50 mi gal.
Both are gone after 3 years but with the $28,000 car you still owe for it.

You watch we are going to get these things shoved down our chops and have to buy them. There goes the commuting budget.

Bob · Mar 21, 2009

Having a FIT, are we???

Kelly C · Mar 21, 2009

Why yes I am.

larry cook · Mar 21, 2009

once in awhile it does you some good. kinda schedule mine for once a week, if more than that then i go hide somewhere away from people.
l cook

waltdavies · Mar 21, 2009

Excuse Me but that is 50 in the city an 30 on the road.
How ever there is a company in Ca. that has one that gets 200 miles on only the battery no gas what so ever. And it only cost $125,000, neat car though.
Walt

Kelly C · Mar 21, 2009

Oh and after 2 years the battery packs will only be 50% effecient. Cant wait till the 1st battery packs need to be replaced after 2 years at $4000.

I see it coming. The big shots in Washington are already mad that we are not just slurpin these up as fast as they can make em.

So far the only company that I see trying to do it right is Ford. They are working at improving the gas engine. Maximizing that technology until the new stuff gets perfected.

bill mar · Mar 21, 2009

100,000 in 3 years? seems a little high,I thought the average miles per year was around 15,000. bill m.

Anonymous-0 · Mar 21, 2009

Not a problem. We used to put on over 50,000 a year....

Hugh MacKay · Mar 21, 2009

Kelly: Mark my word, those hybird cars will make no difference. Very unlikly they will give better milage unless they have a $100. tune up every month. So if mankind drives these, it will still require the same amount of oxygen to burn the fuel. We already have proof man, animals and insects have become very tolerant to harmful chemical emissions. We are starving for oxygen, oh I know official tests will say no.

I live in one of the bad spots for bad air here in southern Ontario, major cities in a semi-circle to west, south and east. All it takes to create almost perfect air that you can draw back in your lungs and really feel great, is a 3 mph north wind. You probably notice the same in MN

My dad got 26 Imp mpg with a 57 Chevy, I get 26 Imp mpg with my Buick Lesabre. Roughly same weight, roughly same room.

Anonymous-0 · Mar 21, 2009

I read in Popular Sience that the battary in the Chevrolet Volt will cost $10,000.00 and will allow it to go 40 miles before the gas engine kicks in. I calculate that if you used the battary entirely for 100,000 miles 2500 gallons of gas would be saved and with gas at $4.00 a gallon the cost of gas saved would be $10,000.00.

kyplowboy · Mar 21, 2009

Hugh,

The part about the mph gets me on my soap box too. Back when gas was high I seen a comercial for the new chevy station wagon (equinox I think they call it) and the whole point to the comercial was that this station wagon got 24 mpg. My 93 F350, 4X4, 7.3, 5sp, HEAVY steel flat bed gets 12 pulling 4 big round bales of hay or a 16' stock trailer jam packed full. What they were brag'n bout in the comercial was that the over educated goof balls in Detroit figured out how to get a station wagon down the road with right at half the fuel of my beat up H*** wagon. And they BRAG about it!

Ok, my fit is over, some one else's turn.

Dave

hillbillyOH · Mar 21, 2009

...and there are HUNDREDS of thousands of non-hybrid cars sitting on lots unsold.

What's your point?

ericlb · Mar 21, 2009

well, you'll never get me in one, first unless you're a cubicle dwelling office guy, or a soccer mom running kids all over its a usless vehicle, it wont haul much and will tow practily nothing at all, there is more to buying a vehicle than gas millage,[ tree huggers would like you to forget that] most of us here buy a vehicle for what it can do, not how good a milage it gets, also these hybreds are like most all of the new vehicles, there so hi tech that the reliability is very questionable, and it takes a computer geek to fix them, i'll just keep my old chevy and dodge, they just run, period

S.Crum · Mar 21, 2009

I have a twist on all the hub-bub for touting fuel mileage and saving money. I drive an 89' f-150 that don't owe me nothing. It's big, ugly and not real efficent. I beat all that by not driving unless I NEED to. That is to work and back, hauling stuff up to the post office and trips to town. Usually with about 30 seconds of planning I can combine all these trips into one. Maintenance on this old cuss amounts to about 200 bucks a year. My figuring say's that even if I bought a new vehicle that got twice the fuel mileage I couldn't justify the costs of initial purchase, depreciation, insurance, enhanced maintenance etc. of a new vehicle. Our society has been brainwashed into settling for nothing but the best and newest. The whole push on these is to get the old vehicles off the road and get vehicles on the road that cannot be serviced by anyone but a highly skilled tech. We studied this back in the 70s in auto tech school. Our teacher was somewhat of a hippy but very down to earth and very intelligent. He had us read George Orwell's book '1984' before discussions on this topic commenced. We are seeing the effects of this trend now 30 years later.

John B. · Mar 21, 2009

I've talked to some owners of the hybrid cars and they love them. It's not the MPG they're excited about,they love only having to fill the tank once a month. It's economical even if it only gets 20 mpg but that's only when the engine is running. It's not using any fuel when you're running on the battery. It's an average of how many miles traveled versus how many gallons of gas used with in those miles.

IH2444 · Mar 21, 2009

For me it is a 2,000 used car with 75,000 on it getting 34 mpg.

Beats the heck out of driving a 10K one.
Can buy lots of gas with the price difference between new and old cars.

I don't need the Status Upgrade Vehicles.

railhead · Mar 21, 2009

I'm with you. Bought a 96 4 banger with 130K miles for 1900. Paid for, pretty good mileage. Who cares how it looks, I need it to get me where I earn my living, nothing more.

Goose · Mar 21, 2009

How many people would buy $30,000 worth of a particular common stock if they knew for a fact that it would be worth half that in three years and cost them maybe 7% interest to own it? Yet that's what they do when they buy a new car.

I'm driving a '92 Olds 88 that I bought for $1700 cash seven years ago. It gets 28-30 mpg on the open road and about 24 all around, and is a comfortable car for all the windshield time I get. It has 238,000 miles, has actually cost very little in repairs, and I'm looking to replace it with something similar without spending over $3,000. The deals are out there if you take time to find them.

SOMEONE has to buy new vehicles, but until it's more cost effective than my way of doing things, it's not going to be me.

RickL · Mar 21, 2009

around here thats low push 3000 month on low side running mail route. usually can get to 300000.00 mile with not to bad in repairs. out of vehicle before start over,has to be dodge thou had chevy can't get half out of those

Anonymous-0 · Mar 21, 2009

Ahhh,,,Did Michele Moore get the memo??????

Anonymous-0 · Mar 21, 2009

I don't understand what you guys are getting all wired up for. Not only are hybreds not selling but nothing else is either. Sure, gas prices are down now, but anyone that expects them to stay low is in for a supprise. The fear-hatred some have toward the Prius amazes me. Why all the anger about about what people choose to drive, its just a car.

Bill Shafer · Mar 21, 2009

Got a friend that bought one of the save the world cars. Out of the six months that he had it. The shop had it four. Then lost his butt trying to get rid of it.

Steven f/AZ · Mar 21, 2009

I have been looking at new cars - namely the Honda Civic. The Civic EX vs. the Civic Hybrid is the big question... If gas were $5 per gallon, I would only save about $705 per year, or a total of $3525 in 5 years time. But the Hybrid costs about $4000 more to begin with!

Figure gasoline averages $3 per gallon for the next five years - saves $423 per year or $2115 over 5 years.

EVEN BETTER: My 2001 Accord averages 27 mpg, Civic Hybrid averages around 40 mpg. At $3 per gallon fuel, the hybrid would save me $542 per year or $2708 over five years. Payments on the Hybrid would be around $350 per month if I were to trade off my Accord. The fuel savings don't even equal two months of payments!

$350 per month x 12 months = $4200 -- I highly doubt I'll spend anywhere near that much repairing my Accord in a single year...

I plan to drive what I have for another 50k miles or so, then buy another vehicle with around 50k on it (most of the depreciation done already) and start over.

Hybrids are a fashion statement, not a way to save money or save the world.

Bill-KCKs · Mar 21, 2009

The CEO of Ford wants a floating gas tax to guarantee a minimum gasoline price of $4/gal.

He can't sell his little roller skates, so he's trying to force people to buy them.
Wall Street Journal Article

OT: They will never get it.

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