40 mpg is not that good…..

(Look at the Skoda Octavia 2.0L TD as well.)
With fuel prices going up I certainly wouldn’t look at anything in the UK with less than 41 mpg (US) combined. At least people in the USA are now thinking about fuel running out and the resulting crash in the world economy. The third world are still using horses and carts and still make a living. Looks like they will be sitting pretty whilst we think about which end of a horse to feed the hay in

Also, Biofuel is not the answer, unless you want to run your car whilst millions starve to death.

“Wait until you’ve had a car that can barely get out of it’s own way.

A 2.0L non-turbo engine is just barely adequate for an intermediate sized car (speaking from expereince). So, I figure, the 1.4L turbo engine will be the same way.”

Are you kidding, my Scion XB has a small 1.5L engine with 93HP to the wheels and it is more than adequate for anyhtiing that most people would ever need. I regularly get 36MPG and have gotten 41 when hypermiling. I have never had any problems pulling out into traffic or getting out of the way of an approching vehicle.

Instantaneous variable generation as the wind changes, creates oscillations in the Grid, that EEs have not been used to addressing, on that scale. With relatively stable generation, they can handle instantaneously chanting small consumption demands that statistically represents only a small oscillation in the grid. But when variable power generations large amounts from a wind farm declines because the wind effects all the same mills, the power oscillations are large enough to destabilize the grid. This creates grid wide blackouts. Such have occurred in Europe in the Netherlands and Britain and Texas.

So wind and solar obstructed by clouds are both limited tot less than 20% of the Grid or even significant subsets of it.

Windmills have a life expectancy much shorter than other generation. Most windmills are worn out in only nine years, the variable stresses in bearings, rotors and exposure to the elements result in only 9 year lifetimes per the UK power utility experience that manages 2000 windmills.

They have an up time of only 24.1%. That is in contrast to Nuclear and Coal plants that achieve over 90% up time generating power. So wind is available much less than other generation. They must be shut down when wind is less than 8 mph and over 33 mph, for example ands seldom run at rated nameplate power.

Experience with Wind is revealing that our ancestors were not dopes when they abandoned it as a source of electric generation in the early electric years. And no it wasn’t a Conspiracy for you left-wing Kos kids.

Your comment is only slightly off. If you used Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico you could generate about one third of the present US electricity. Of course that would involve killing about a million species and frying every plant and and animal into extinction, in the three States and probably the surrounding ones as well.

Solar is dangerously polluting when used on a large scale. It alters the ratio of sun energy absorbed to reflected; scientifically called the Albedo, and heats the Earth.

Are we not supposed to be fighting global warming?

It is very inefficient; throwing away about 90% of the newly absorbed heat. This waste heat will just be thermal pollution. It woud raise the average temperature to 150 degrees or more in those States, killing millions of plants and animals and driving many into extinction.

Just imagine trying to get an Environmental Impact Statement approval.”… We will drive about a million species into extinction. We wil turn the aree of three states into the the surface of a Mars, devoid of life….”

Oh I forgot when the the EPA recently imposed a moratoria on applications until some proposals obtained a required EIS.

The howling objections of the eco-wackos were such that Environmental Impact Statements don’t need approval any more, despite what the Law says, for the first time sine 1970!

I predict the eco-wackos will rue the day they did that. What goes around, comes around.

I, a true environmentalist, would never let any big project go without an EIS. Even as I agree some EIS procedures have been used to delay and stall some projects. That is what an EIS was meant to do, raise issues, within reasonable limits.