I currently drive a '01 Volvo wagon and get 19/22 mpg. My husband and I are researching greener choice cars and are stumped on which route to go. I want to reduce my gas consumption but we are also concerned about our human footprint; that dumping an older car for a new one may create additional waste and are also concerned about long term biohazard effects of alternative fuel/batteries on the environment.BTW, we live in a rural mountainous are. Not a whole lot of alternative fuel choices.
If you want fuel efficient, Get a Gee Whiz. its a quadracycle that is incredibly dangerous and small, but its fuel efficient. Ethanol is the worst thing for the country. It uses more energy to make it than it produces, 25% more infact. Farmers find it more profitable to make Ethanol than food so it drives the price of fuel up. Dont be worried about cars hurting the environment. Unfortunatly it has no effect on it.
I have a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid. I average 30 mph. I decided not to go the alternative fuel route, but the electric hybrid works great for me. I have the sun-moonroof/satellite radio package and really enjoy it. One plus you can run out of gas and still drive 20 mph to the next exit and get gas! Ok.Dont want to admit how I KNOW this to be true. :) I like that it also tells you how many miles you have left before empty, leather seats, seat warmers, adjustable driver seat that adjusts great for my short stature. If you are short like me though I recommend getting running boards, trying to climb up into it can be a challenge in harsh weather conditions or tight skirts! :)
I'm not going to comment about hydrogen fuel cells, except to say that I think they'll be out of reach (unless and until they solve the platinum problem) but I've owned both a 2003 honda civic hybrid and a 2006 peugeot diesel (1.6 Litre HDi -- not sold in the USA). The diesel got 60 mpg. The hybrid started out at 55 and dropped to 46, even with careful driving. For hilly areas, hybrids are good on the downhill, annoying on the uphill. Diesels on the other hand, are very zippy. Until recently I thought that diesel was go, and that the only problem was that US wasn't mandating for the use of ultra low-sulphur the way that Europe is (see the wikipedia article below) But then I found the Union of Concerned Scientists report, which contains the following information Diesel vehicles can help a car travel 30 to more than 40 percent farther on a gallon of diesel fuel. However, this advantage is only partly due to the higher efficiency of diesel engines, which offer a 15 to 25 percent improvement over gasoline. The remaining increase is due to the fact that diesel fuel contains 13 percent more energy than a gallon of gasoline. so, unless we mandate that ALL new cars be super efficient (whether hybrid-gasoline, hybrid-diesel, plug-in electric, or veggie oil) , the cost factors are going to be very high. I think that, if the priority for ALL new car manufacturers was efficiency, then the economy of scale rule would mean that the retooling costs would be lower, and we could afford to have more highly processed fuel, or different types of engines. Lots to think about!
I drive an '02 VW Jetta TDI (turbo diesel) that gets 47mpg on the highway. Clean? Well, it doesn't smell as much as all the untuned gas cars where the drivers accelerate beyond necessity while they have their airconditioners on. I live in rural northeast Texas, and I'd drive nothing but a diesel because I know how to drive a diesel right, and not try to drive it like a gas car, which produces much excessive exhaust fumes. But then, all the gas guzzling gasoline powered engines that are untuned or are beyond their expected lifetimes are much worse than my finely tuned, well driven diesels. And don't worry about your human footprint. Your parents already put your human footprint on this good ol' planet back when you were born, and there ain't nothing you can do about it. And I can't stand the color green. God Bless you. Oh, and the '04 VW Jetta TDI I bought my son as he returned home from Iraq gets 53mph because it's standard transmission. and the '00 VW Jetta TDI my engineer friend in Ohio bought also got between 53 and 55 mpg. Being a railroad engineer, he DEFINITELY knew how to drive a diesel. And the '03 VW Jetta TDI my stepson bought also got in the upper 40mpgs because it was automatic transmission like mine. He was one of these up-and-coming wannabee young ones, as is his wife, so they found a job that provided them with gas guzzling SUV's so they sold their Jetta TDI. Dumb.
