* Batteries not included

It is not looking like the average consumer will be inclined to buy a Volt.

My brother and I recently started carpooling, after living about 1 mile apart and working at the same place for over 15 years. So it can happen!

As many have said, $4 gas is not unlike the imminent prospect of hanging (or Chapter 11 in the case of certain friends of ours). It does tend to focus the mind.

“I understand that VALERO (formerly Shamrock) only uses domestic oil. Since we are not selling domestic oil for $140 a barrel – shouldn’t Valero gas be about 1/2 the price of others?”

DonC,
“Duh, if you read the posts you’d understand we were only talking about the unprotected ares. So I fail to see what is wrong with quoting the part of the report that relates to the subject of the discussion.”
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Read my link again. The part you quoted and claimed it would take 20 years to develope was in reference to PROTECTED areas, not unprotected as per the discussion.
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DonC,
“In this regard, the entire oil company backed “Drill Here Drill Now” campaign is just a canard. The fact is that Exxon has large areas which is has under contract which they’re not developing now. In fact I think something like 3/4 of the public land leased for oil and gas drilling isn’t even being explored. Why not?”
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There are three main reasons. (1) The leased regions contain too little or no oil. (2) Some of the areas, such as many of the offshore sites, would entail a lengthy and expensive legal fight with the environmentalist which the oil companies could lose. Until just recently, all new offshore drilling had banned in all but a few locations. (3) Most of the unprotected areas were far from shorelines in deep waters. Oil in deep waters is expensive to produce, and just in the last few months has become viable because of the surge in crude prices. For example, Brazil estimates they will need to sell oil from their new deep water fields at near $200 a barrel to make a profit. They expect oil to be at that price in about three years when the fields become productive. Future production of oil from the US or elsewhere will not lower today’s prices, but can help keep the future price of oil a little lower in that time frame.

DonC,
“Acutally the 69% figure seems quite low. What I’ve seen are estimates that 75%-80% of our oil use goes to transportation, the vast majority of which is used in (potentially) single family vehicles.”
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I took my figure from the latest and highest estimates I could find from legimitate sources, such as the DOE. A barrel of crude is 42 gallons, about 19.15 gallons of gasoline can be produced per barrel. Less than half of the total crude oil is used as gasoline. That gasoline is used in all gas powered engines, from personal transportation to delivery vans and even lawnmowers. Most gas IS used for personal transport, but we are well under half of the total crude oil consumed.

DonC,
“If we have a president that displays less than zero leadership skills and a helpless “woe is me, I’m such a victum” attitude like you have expressed here…”
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Why the personal attack? You could not be more wrong in your projection of me. I am a very patriotic American and I feel neither helpless nor a victum. I possess enough science knowledge and logic to realize there are no quick fixes to our oil dependence in the near term, meaning less than a minimun of 10-15 years from today. I like the E-Flex platform very much and look forward to its availability to help, but it will take much more than PHEVs to gain independence from crude.

DonC,
“If you don’t want to stand up and get serious about our national security then that’s your choice. Hopefully there will be patriots who are more willing to sacrifice for their country and to stand and fight rather than a bunch of mamby-pamby defeatists who just want to throw in the towel.”
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Again, you insult me without reason. I am a Purple Heart veteran and I guarantee you would not say that to my face! If I were required to draw my own opinion of you based on your uninformed assertians, I would have to conclude you were a moron. See how personal attacks work?

Let me say that the $35K cost is the cost in EUROPE and it’s that way because their taxes are so high there. The US version will be $17K max.

YES there’s a monthly “mobility pack” charge but Jan Willums has thought this out too: if anything should happen to the battery pack, they take the battery back and install a new one. This is true EVEN IF THE BATTERY HAS REACHED THE END OF ITS LIFESPAN. This is exactly the same as buying an EV where the battery lasts forever.

Th!nk also will not be building the cars in Norway and shipping them worldwide forever. Plans are to build assembly plants in the market locations, and ship the parts from where they’re made (motor=France, body panels=Turkey, chassis=Thailand) to the plant, assembling them in the final country of use. Made in the USA with American labor, made in Canada with Canadien labor, made in Brazil with…

Some have called it the IKEA model.