Where: Toyota Santa Monica 801 Santa Monica Blvd Santa Monica, CA (on corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Lincoln Blvd) When: Monday Oct 22 –12:00 p.m. (noon)

See http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=16452

1. Oil companies and OPEC are part of a crafty, diabolical, Grand Plan to make us use m,roe and more oil while hiking up the price more and more.

2. Oil companies are too stupid to invest in other kinds of energy.

Which is true?
Are they smart or stupid?

(It’s sort of like the people–the same people in most instances–who believe that although George Bush is the dumbest person in the nation; he is the Chief Implementor of a Grand Plan to take over the middle East and the world).

CAFE fails because it forces people to buy cars they do not want and prices they cannot afford. Get it?
I’ll only say that once because if you don’t get it after that, you are unlikely to.

“Fleet mileage” (whatever the HELL that is) may have declined “in the past 10 years” (or whatever the flavor of the month is); but consumers have ALWAYS outdone CAFE in the choice of vehicles they buy (as shown by Csaba Csere). Here are some other things he has to say:

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“5. CAFE puts the burden on automakers to produce products that buyers don’t necessarily want. Last year, when gas prices went over $3 a gallon, Americans, for the first time in nearly five years, started buying more cars than trucks—at least for five months. By February of this year, after gas prices dipped in the low $2 range, trucks once again were outselling cars, by 20 percent. Forcing manufacturers to sell fuel-efficient vehicles in America without the encouragement of high fuel prices is like trying to make steakhouses sell tofu-fillet sandwiches for the same price as a chateaubriand.”

and:

“6. CAFE laws imply that Americans can continue to drive the vehicles they want, if only the stingy automakers would spend a few more pennies on efficient technologies to improve vehicle mileage. Not only is this nonsense, but it also denies the reality that major reductions in energy consumption will require changes in the habits and lifestyles of most Americans.”

and:

“The bottom line is that CAFE doesn’t save any fuel because it fails to motivate drivers to worry about fuel economy. Anyone who professes to be worried about conservation and thinks the solution can be found in some version of CAFE law is too simple to understand the problem, too cowardly to ask voters to make some sacrifices, or sufficiently cynical to promote a law that accomplishes nothing other than capturing self-aggrandizing headlines.”
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http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/12936/top-10-reasons-why-the-corporate-average-fuel-economy-law-is-d-u-m-b.html?al=128

People who believe in conspiracy theories are usually not very smart at all. The internet has now given them a voice (regrettably).

I think the focus should be to forget about cafe and lets just move as fast as we can towards serial hybrids. Investing money in improving a 100 year old technology can only give small gains as most of the easy gains have already been made.

People people people. The oil companies make more than just gas and to think that they fear electric cars is rediculous when they price of a barrel of oil is at all time highs. Demand for oil is out the roof and shows no signs of letting up. Understand this: the oil companies know that as long as there is oil there will be demand for it, regardless of phev. Just look around. Virtually everything you see is made in part from oil. It’s not just the gasoline.

If you ask me, one of the best ways to get this tech kick-started would be for the federal government to sign up as a potential customer (based on performance of the final product so the government doesn’t get screwed). That reduces risk to the automakers and battery manufacturers and gives the government incredibly low service-cost vehicles.

A huge federal government committment to purchase “X” % of these types of vehicles to make up their fleet as long as they meet whatever requirements, spread evenly among all US makers that meet the requirements. Sounds like a plan with winners on all sides to me. Then the prices fall and trickle down into everybody’s range.

I’m with you. The technical discussions and speculation are much more interesting. It’s funny that I keep hearing more criticisms that America’s focus has shifted from science and math from the Apollo days to something else.

GM’s request for government dollars is almost like an excuse should the Volt not arrive as promised: well, the government didn’t help with battery development the way the Japanese government did.

And the CAFE is a joke. For every high profit, gas guzzling truck the bow tie manufactures, they just import a Hyundai to offset the emissions balance sheet.

I don’t think any Oil company should be allowed to buy any energy or battery company. They will just bury the technology to keep us on oil until we use up every last drop of it.