yeah, after finding out that the MPG don’t deliver what they want, so they decided to stop looking at the hybrids. My ‘06 Volvo S-60 has 21/30 mpg with a TURBO and i average 22.1 mpg (per message info center). I don’t even drive that slow. Just regular driving.

Ok, time to rip on all the people who bought a hybrid because they want to make a positive change in our culture of waste. Regardless if it works or not, good intentions be damned! They deserve to be mocked and harassed. Get to it LLN readers…

I was a big fan of hybrids when they first hit the market, but the problem is, when the oil runs out, they will be just as screwed as the a-hole driving his H2. Hybrinds are a bridge maybe. Diesel is the future, It can be made easier than ethanol, it is more efficient than ethanol and real performance can be had with diesels (see Audi’s R10 as an extreme example). I applauge people for wanting to reduce their consuption of resources through purchaseing a gas-electric hybrid, but it is uses gasolie, which will run ou. If everyone drove a gas-electric hybrid, it would slow down the use of oil, but it really doesn’t do much to decrease dependance or actually stop using oil. Peugeot is working on diesel-electric hybrids that will get ove 100 MPG. Even now, you can get a Jetta TDI and run it on 100% Biodiesel and use zero gas.

I work for a Toyota Dealer and I see no signs of this tapering off. All Of our hybrids are still pre-sold weeks before they arrive. I get three calls a day asking about them. I wish I had eight truckloads, they would be gone in a week, and I have yet to discount one.

There are only so many people willing to wear their agenda on their sleeve…

Guess that helps expalin the Pilot’s 30% jump in sales last month.

Get back to bible class you ignorant hick 1952 MG TD

The Hybrid **** is a scam and so is the Ethanol gas. America isn’t polluting anything Asia is and everyone wants to blame America for everything.

Even saving 1 gallon of gas is worth the money if you want to do anything to reduce consumption.

Joy… not sure I understand your comment.

Because I laugh at those whos ego’s and attitudes are bigger than the car they drive, and I cringe as they try to shove their agenda down my throat, I am a religous-right uneducated ‘hick’?

you are a full blown moron.

Not America just lazy ignorant born again right wing christian fundamenal AMericans

Not moronic enough to drive a Stratus

don’t you guys realize that hybrids are the leading cause of smug!

I’m so over hybrids. With tax benefits ending or being scaled back. Real life mpg ratings being lower it takes well over 3 if not over 5 years to see a real advantage.
Bring me eurodiesels to get real good fuel economy.

Let’s keep oil for cars and not to generate electricity, let ramp up solar and wind to generate electricity. this will reduce consumption.

And of course imporve fuel economy for SUVs and trucks.

The only advantages for hybrids are taxicabs, delivery [ fedex, UPS ] and public transport. They are all heavy stop, traffic, go and that is where the payoff is.

I am a buttlick!

Diesels for life!

Just out of curiosity, what is wrong with the
“I DRIVE A DODGE STRATUS!!!”?

I flog the **** out of it, it returns 24city and 32hwy. I have had zero problems, it is a friggin appliance, just like a camry. It is flex fuel capable, and has 30k worth of warranty left. Oh yeah, I picked it up at 1 year old with 20k miles for less than 10k.

If finding a good commuter car at a good price makes me stupid, guilty as charged. Oh, and I do not scream to everyone around that ‘I am better than you’

TDI > Hybrid

So am I

And people got mad at Ford for scaling back its hybrid plans. Meanwhile, demand is leveling. It’s all a PR game.

Ultimately, I think diesels are a better short term investment (don’t have to dig up 100 lbs of nickel with heavily polluting machines to make the battery – even Lithium+ batteries appear to be only a small step forward if they can stop catching fire) and public transport infrastructure is the best long term investment.

Forgot to mention: my $16000 2004 Civic averages 29 and my $13000 2005 Focus averages 30. My civic is a SULEV or Tier II Bin 4 and my Focus is a PZEV or a Tier II Bin 3. My friend’s Tier II Bin 3, $25000 Prius only averages 42. With my Terrapass to offset my carbon, I’m not emitting anything more than a Prius. A good small car is really all you need.

just tring to point out for the last few years over the screams of the tree hugging dirt worshiping fools who will grab anything their ‘environazi leaders’ tell them is a good thing, that there are much better alternatives and that the Hybrids are/were a bridge technology/fad. Naturally they still won’t listen.
By they way Hymenally, no one on this board sounds more uneducated than you. And that is saying a whole lot.

Exactly how is it that a Honda Pilot is referred to as a “small” SUV? V-6 yes, “small”… err… no.

How do you KNOW its a fantasy, are you willing to gamble your offsprings future on it being a fantasy? Surely it is better not to waste and not to pollute anyway?

James, since you have it all figured out perhaps you can elighten us as to the motives of the lefty liberals that drive them to spew their global warming fantasy propaganda?

You know, what evil nefarious plans do they make that requires them to fabricate global warming?

I don’t belive global worming, it’s all crap!

Colon from New York, how are you so sure?

It’s Colin with an I, and I just am.

We are going through a weather cycle! for the next 20 years, there will be stronger storms!

Colon that just clinched it for me as a scientific argument.

I’m going through a menstrual cycle for the next 20 years, I’ll need larger tampons

Random because they will do anything to get the white house back because they are sore losers and have attacked Bush for fun ever since they lost. They want to swindle the sheep into believing they know everything so they’ll get votes. Everything that has gone wrong in America is the liberals’ fault they try their damndest to de-rail anything decent in this country. Thats why criminals walk free half of the time, their panty waist way of justice is to punish the innocent and reward the guilty. They also are responsible for the lawsuit happy way of thinking.

James, you mean you want Bush in office? Everything that is wrong with America is Bush’s Fault. AT least coastal America knows the truth.
Clinton was the best president you ever had, the economy was good and youwere respected abroad then look what happened

Very funny silverlake. the real polluters are southeast asia they spew **** into the sky every day. We dont, we’ve got morons buying useless pieces of **** hybrid cars because they are afraid the sky is going to fall before next year. Fear mongering.

No I voted him to keep Kerry the ultra liberal out of office. Mr give another medal for doing nothing John Kerry.

When did this become a left vs right argument? Yeah, Bush is a frigging idiot, undoubtedly the worst president (and worst administration) this country has ever seen but that has nothing to do with this article.

F.T.

P.S. Bush is an idiot. Rumsfeld is an evil idiot. Cheney is a crooked, evil idiot.

When I read James’s first post I thought he was serious. Then I read a couple more posts and was confident that he was just being cynical and funny. Then I read another, and I’m still laughing, but this time it’s becuase I really do think he is serious.

James, you should vist old man Morgan over and idriveamerican.com – you guys will get along together great. Maybe even start your own malitia.

A a Canadian meteorologist and car nut, let me say that I also think Global Warming is BS, I like Bush, and hybrids are crap. I saw the Al Gore movie, and it was nothing more than an hour and 45 minutes of presidential campaigning. Clinton a good president??? I think history will show that Richand Nixon was one of the better presidents, certainly better than Clinton. But, I still love Americans, and I get pissed at the anti-American attitude of many of my friends. God Bless Americe, Canada’s best friend!

Bush Is not only the poorest excuse for a president EVER IN HISTORY hes also the poorest excuse for a human being in history..

colon from new york……..how is your ass!!!

Good. It’s about time people started realizing these things can’t be driven hard.

I used to want a hybrid but it did not take long for me to realize that the technology is still growing & improving & buying one now would be kind of a waste when the next generation (probably plugins) comes out & mine is outdated …

aww, ted terd is upset

aww, ted terd is upset!

Clinton a good president??? I think history will show that Richand Nixon was one of the better presidents, certainly better than Clinton. But, I still love Americans, and I get pissed at the anti-American attitude of many of my friends. God Bless Americe, Canada’s best friend!

Thank you Dave you’re most intelligent, few people know that Nixon created the EPA and will be recognized long after his failures are forgot. To those who feel Clinton was good a President you have to short a memory or an incomplete history, he will be remembered as one of the “could have been” Presidents. Hybrids are externally costly: your thinking of the final product for the consumer that it will save money and gas, but your not thinking of the plant that had to make it’s two drivetrains and its energy consumption and pollution. Besides your short attention span with the eco car your forgetting – Strategic News Cycle Tactics: Watch as gas prices drop, news broadcast will blue sky the economy, and increase the Iran threat. These are the reasons that Republicans will win and Democrats need to go to school on them.

Random stfu you pinhead. You don’t have a real comment so piss off. Hell yeah Dave god bless our Canadian friends. If you can’t read Random Jerkoff go back to school.

ok, first of all I would like to mention this is actually a natural cycle that we are going through, with “global warming”. We are just speeding it up by a few decades or centuries with cars and pollution.
Secondly, my car has a 3.0 liter V-6 (91 Taurus) and I have been capable of averaging somewhere between 28 to 32 mpg (educated guess based on highway driving @ 70 mph no stops and how much my fuel tank holds).
Secondly I don’t believe that the hybrid craze will level off. They have been capable of leveling off the supply and demand some, that’s all. And I for one expect fuel prices to go up even more around christmas or Thanksgiving, and it will go down 10 cents but stay 15 cents higher than it was before (like the current situation). Exxon is making sky high profits, and so is the government off of the high gas prices.
You’ll also probably see alot more hybrid SUVS in the future. The Prius is the currently the only unique hybrid (does not share platform with an all gasoline version). It’s got alot of appeal, good interior and very functional.

First, only in the good ole USA is there any debate on if global warming is a fact or not. Climate scientists from around the world are unanimous on the subject. The only “scientists” who publicly don’t agree with the very obvious facts are those who are paid by the right.

But I guess the brainwashed masses here will never see the truth, it’s all a lefty conspiracy by all the nations of the earth with those dern smarty pants scientist with the edumacation and such. Why I’ll bet the UN is behind all, and they fly around them dern scientists in their gal-dern black helicopters! It’s all a plot to keep me from buying baby jesus lawn ornaments from Walmart and carrying them home in the back of my H2 while I eat a chili dog and slurp a big gulp! A gal-dern conspiracy ah tell ya!

Anyway, back in the real world, hybrids are a good intermediate step but right now diesels and SULEVs just about equal them. It’s good that people are buying them no matter if they are better or not, in the end it is showing the auto manufacturers there is a market for new technologies. It will take time, money and research to end our dependance on a finite resource (oil).

So when are we goint to send all the huge toxic batteries to Thailand to decompose in rivers and cause thousands of toxic deaths?

All for the envirowhacked greenies, of course.

Nixon, with the Democratic cngress also gave us wage and price controls, 21 years of the 55 mph speed limit, took us off the gold standard and helped create the China monster that we have allowed to invade our homes with goods made from slave labor That is Nixons true legacy. :Looked at throught the prism of cold, hard facts instead of partisan emotion, its pretty crappy. Mc Govern’s may not have been better, but Nixon’s what we got.

Hybrids should be renamed hype-brids as their sales are based on hype. I believe a study of them has shown that their actual life cycle energy usage is equiavalent to a Hummer H1, when you consider the energy it costs to build them. The same type of thing can be said about the so=called hydrogen economy. It takes 25 truckloads of hydrogen to transport the energy equivalent of 1 truckload of gasoline. Even if most gasoline is delivered through pipeline, it seems as if the infrastructure required for hydrogen is unsustainable at this point, even if we develop economical ways to produce the fuel.

Ethanol has the same problems, although to a lesser degree. Other biomass fuels have more potential.

I don’t htink that we are going to replace oil entirely, however, a patchwork solution may be our best bet. We should be focusing on utilizing the appropriate technologies where applicable. I won’t hold my breath for the Democrats or the Republicans to come up with the solution. They are part of the problem.

America has to be better without bush, he is a laughing stock. I’m ashamed he was re-elected

I just ordered my second hybrid. The dealer quoted me 4-6 month delivery on this second one. Doesn’t sound like hybrids are slowing down to me at all. I wish the demand would drop off. It would sure make it easier to get my vehicle. Amazing how Toyota keeps pushing the limit on hybrids. No wonder they are unstoppable!!

Right, so many people who are fighter pilots, with MBA’s from Ivy league schools and are elected and re-elected as a governor and as President of the United States are idiots. But on the other hand, you guys are all MENSA candidates.
Give me a break, you drooling idiots that hammer on Bush like he is some kind of dummy are really prescious. THAT is what the laughing stock of this nation is. The screaming infantile morally and ethically bankrupt left. Thank God you are such a minority.

not to mention, automobile oil usage is only ~15% of all petroleum usage. China and their newfound industrial complex/revolution/expansion is driving up the costs of oil, steel, and many other duable goods.

but pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, just Blame the US First… after all, we are morally wrong, and everyone else is morally superior…

God I love it all I have to do is tell the truth and the left goes nuts, oops forgot they don’t like the truth they like to lie all the time. Bush has failed in certain areas but he’s been a good president despite that. Can’t say the same for drop trou Clinton, a little longer and we would have no military because he tried to wipe the military out.

you know the world is in trouble when someone thinks refering to someone as a Bible believer is an insult.
How 1940’s Germany.

Hmmm,anti-hybrid are Bible people and hybrid people are,uh,fast-wave intellectuals?Anthropology as a science is a pathetic farce and a bad joke.The hybrid program/scam is lying quietly on it’s Dorian Grey death bed,just like I thought it would.