(Apologies to those who filter OT posts for not making sure the tag was on
my previous message. It's been added.)

On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 08:07:37AM -0800, Russ Smith wrote:
> I think, however, that any remark made by them (or anyone for that matter)
> that fuel efficiency should be one of the primary focuses of vehicle design
> and that our vehicles simply are not fuel efficient enough given today's
> technology are perfectly valid.

I can't agree. First off, I think safety trumps efficiency. Second, an
efficient car that gains its efficiency at a much higher cost than that of
the fuel saved is flatly stupid, economically. This puts it in the same
category as so much else that enviro-wackos want: if it's a massive increase
in cost to be marginally more effective environmentally, it makes no sense.

> Admittedly, with Denys living in a part of our country where many people
> make their living in the oil industries, there may be bias there away from
> doing so, but wouldn't you like to have your SUV, and have it get 80 mpg?
> It's possible, and should have already happened.

Actually, I'm more likely to have that bias than Denys is, since I lived in
Houston for the first 41 years of my life.

I don't for a minute believe that it's possible to build my SUV in such a
way that its fuel economy quadruples, retain all its current driving
qualities, retain its safety level, and not increase its cost by an order of
magnitude. (And I'm being charitable because it's a luxury SUV in the first
place. Were I to drive a Toyota RAV4 instead of a Lexus RX300, the cost
factor would be at least 20.) To think otherwise is simply dreaming...
because otherwise Toyota would be pumping them off the line as fast as they
could make them. Witness the fact that the Prius (which wouldn't do me a
damn bit of good anyway, since nearly all of my miles driven are at highway
speed, where a hybrid gains no advantage) has a year-long waiting list, and
its economy is nowhere near 80 MPG, and it's nowhere near as versatile as an
SUV.

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