Interesting movie

Then they weren't comparing comparable cars... the one story I can think of that showed similar results was the USA Today "Jetta Diesel vs. Prius" comparison where the author gets mileages of 44mpg for the diesel and 38mpg for the Prius - except it turns out due to the flexible bladder in the gas tank he got wrong data and the real number was 51mpg for the Prius.

Several of the teeny tiny diesels get better mileage than a Prius (Lupo, Yaris, etc.) but they are all exceptionally smaller cars - lower performance, no options (in the the case of the Lupo no AC, no power anything) - but they do get exceptional mileage... at 20x the pollution levels of the hybrid.

Real cost, or cost actually paid by the consumer?

--
Aaron

Since you have already dug out the statistics, please provide a link for us.

Boy, Isn't that the truth.

I bought it in Boston. In one year it had started to get rust spots. Drove it cross country to Arizona and the orange rust turned a gray color and stopped. I guess the high temperatures / low humidity took it to a higher level oxide and it ceased progressing.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Cars don't kill people, idiot drivers kill people. And, up until the government went on a "protect the stupid from the consequences of their own stupidity" crusade, people who didn't bother to pay attention to their driving got killed. But the government wants to repeal the law of survival of the fittest.

Here's the way cars _should_ be:

All of the crap that saves the idiot driver from his own stuipdity just increases the overall stupidity of humankind. I guess this is a very good thing for the careers of the politicians, because stupid people are easy marks. Stupid people make stupid voters. "Let's all vote on what everybody's favorite color is!"

Thanks, Rich

Energizer Bunny. The Timex "takes a licking, and keeps on ticking." ;-)

Cheers! Rich

I agree. It's also exceedingly rude to have some great big video on your home page - people should have the option.

Apparently, you need javascript enabled and Flash installed. I don't do either, so I guess I'm not much help there. On second thought, I don't think you're supposed to be able to save it - if I "get" this "Flash" stuff, you're supposed to download a plug-in of some kind, and it plays it in the browser, on the fly. Maybe try File->Save As?

Good Luck! Rich

Actually, no. I was sorta a part of this a few years ago, when I decided I wanted to buy an electric car for running around town it.

Suddenly, you couldn't find one, not for love or money. I am afraid that in this case, the conspiracy was real. Electric cars would have worked, and they were squashed every where and every way they could be.

See if you can find out why the discontinued the Corbin Sparrow, a neat little 3 wheeler. Seems that the Cal legislature had an amendment on a bill that basically said three wheel Electric Motorcycles (which is how the Sparrow was officially classed) were NOT eligible to use HOV lanes. Since there was really only one three wheel electric motorcyle being manufactured, this one was pretty obvious...

Charlie

I can not seem to find either the original posting archived, or the older data. However summary data for 2004 can be found at:

However, current 2004 data isn't that different, except the distributions are slightly skewed to reflect the larger number of vehicles on the road now classed as light trucks. The way data is being reported also changed, requiring one to look much more closely at the numbers, rather than try to generalize from the classifications of passenger car and light truck.

The high risk killers to drive are still minicompact, subcompacts, compacts, intermediate and compact SUV's (such as a Suzki 4x4), all typically under 2200lbs. See tables 74 and 75 on pages 109 and 110. These classes killed 19,269 people out of a total of 31,693 in the passenger car and light truck classes (61% of the total in these classes, where larger cars and SUV's only accounted for a few percent of the total ... with smaller pickups being the other danger zone).

Note that back on pages 22-25 that broad classes of passenger car and light truck have nearly identical fatality and injuries per mile driven as classes, but when you adjust both those classes by vehicle based on the distribution of deaths/injuries as found back on tables 74/75 size/weight it becomes clear just how much safer the heavier vehicles are.

Likewise, the broad classes make it more difficult to instantly make judgements about Chaper 2 data, without reflecting more carefully on the distribution of various subclasses, but with a little picking the data is there using some basic analysis.

Consider the data on pages 49, 55 and 63 in that context. I wonder the the detailed FARS data is available somewhere ... much easier to extract exact data from dropped in a database.

An oppertunity to dig into? The people that signed the bill maybe had 'contributions'. And where those come from would be interesting.. ;)

us.

The data is incomplete. For instance, what proportion of each vehicle type are most common on the roads? Withoput that data, one could infer from the data and chart on page 64 that we should all abandon passenger vehicles and ride motorcyles.

Granted it's incomplete, as I noted, finding the FARS data would allow confirmation of several points, along with registration data which includes annual miles driven between manditory smog checks in the states that require that data. On the other hand, with provided deaths per 100 million miles data included in the report, it pretty clearly states motorcycles are VERY high risk -- conclusively!! :) See page 28 ... Fatality Rate per 100 million Vechicle miles traveled in 2004 was

39.89 for motorcyles, 1.15 for light trucks, and 1.18 for cars. Likewise, per 100,000 registered motorcycles 69.33, light trucks 14.01, and 14.32.

There is enough data however to firmly damn small light cars and small light SUVs -- especially small light SUV's which represent a relatively small amount of the market place in sales, and have a significantly high death rate.

Both small cars, and small SUVs are a direct result of CAFE regulations. For a long time there was a movement to force 55mph on everyone for safety ... but look at the tables which show that nearly

3/4 of deaths are 55 and below. If people are really concerned about legislating safety, then legislate unsafe little cars off the road -- starting with highly unsafe little compact SUVs and cars.

I've been T-boned in a Q45, barely moved the car... little cars SUCK!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

1: The site doesn't tell the file size, just the running time. 2: What browser did you use? its in the temporary internet folder if you used IE, somewhere else with other browsers. It is a 5.15 MB .flv file. 3: It doesn't play when I click on it, and neither Macromedia or Shortwave come up in the "Open with" window and i don't have time to play with it right now. 4: Either stop complaining about the size of files, or get used to the fact that 95% of the internet has forgotten about dialup users.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Now that everyone understands about the file size issues, I can recommend youtube.com for daily browsing. I first got into it looking for Ronaldinho clips, but got seduced by car chase and plane crash videos. Now I look at the "most watched" vidoe clips every day.

Yesterday, for instance, there was a copy of the Ann Coulter interview. I have no comment on her politics (I am sure others will). However, on a non-political issue, I disagree with those that say (due to certain details of "her" physique) that "she" is a post-surgical transgender patient.

I watched the PBS half hour interview on this project the other night which was a bit interesting, enough that I'll probably look for the DVD when it comes out, or maybe find it in a theater. I've been interested in EV conversions for a while. With the price of an EV conversion (Kit

• extras) being just under ten grand, it's not something to just do lightly. It rather seems to me that everything is over priced more than just a bit from being nearly semi-custom, and some major mass production and economies of scale are really needed to make it viable.

speculation, with some agendas to trash certain political advisaries in the process, so it's not a particularly "neutral" editorial piece, but certainly points are worth raising and pressing.

The whole engineering aspects behind EV's is actually pretty interesting, trying to navigate a whole series of techologies in the search for high effieciency sweet spots for the system level design.

a very interesting note that saves lives in even single car accidents.

"Stability control, which _automatically_applies_brakes_ to individual wheels if they sense a vehicle is veering off course..." sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

A lower center of mass sounds like a better solution.

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

How about driving less than 100 mph?

Why? My vehicle has a low center of mass ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.