----- Original Message ----- From: <Gaertk at aol.com> To: <dragaera at dragaera.info> Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 4:44 PM Subject: Re: Petrol Prices > In a message dated Mar/21/2005 10:21:21 PM Eastern Standard Time, Frank Mayhar <frank at exit.com> writes: > > >Gaertk at aol.com wrote: > >> I'm looking at cars too right now, trying to find something cheap, > >> reliable, and reasonably fuel-efficient. Right now I'm favoring > >> the Toyota Echo; anyone here have any experience with one? > > > > If you are a city-dweller, I highly recommend the hybrids. It > > impresses me a lot when city mileage is much greater than highway > > mileage. Were I to buy a new car at the moment, that's what I > > would get. I _like_ the idea of 50mpg or better. > > I'd love that too, but I can't afford it. From what I've seen, a > Prius or Civic Hybrid will cost me twice as much as an Echo of > equal age and mileage. And the Echo gets pretty good mileage too: > Consumer Reports says 38mpg for manual transmission, Carmax says > 35/43 for automatic. And I'm not actually driving very far (11 > miles round trip to work). > > > --KG You have to own a hybrid car about 10 years to save any money, due to the higher purchase and repair costs. Any actual assistance rendered to the biosphere by driving one is moot, as some of the methods used to produce the components are almost as bad as the emissions on a regular car. Honestly cars are not the main cause of pollution that we need to worry about, but the industrial complex has money (or is non-regulated) and no one wants to give up airtravel, so we will continue to choke on our on gases. How long until we have an Overcast here on Earth? Jeff