Monday, March 19, 2007

Pissing On Kal's Suggestion


Kal wants me to buy this car to help the environemnt.
Base Price: $92,000, without a stereo system.
Only seats two, but no mention of lack of comfort for those two.
Range: 250 miles, if you are lucky. And it'll take seven hours to get you that far. On flat land. In nice weather. Without a head wind.

Last night, I took four adults out to dinner in my car.
If it was up to Kal, two of us would have had to stay home.


(most options, taxes,fees etc... $21,000 out the door).Plenty of room for fishing pole, rifles, luggage, cooler, and still able to drop the seat for a comfy snooze.


Going fast is great, for 3 hours... and then what? In a best case scenario, you have to stop for 3.5 hours to recharge. Vacations and road trips would take twice as long to get 'there'. And without luggage.

And I guess it's fine if you like paying for motels and restaurants. With this car, there is no room for an ice cooler,or to drop the seat back and take a snooze on the side of road.

No thanks,Kal.
Tesla may be a nice car for wealthy Republicans to drive on the weekend to show off their wealth, uber-coolness and enviro-consciousness, but it has no place in the life of those of us huddled masses whose lifestyle you think isn't practical enough.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, see, you just drive the enviromental car around town. You rent or carshare for those times you need bigger transportation ;).

It's cute, though, that car.

Gino said...

but is it practical to spend so much money to 0-60 in 4 seconds...just around town?
LOL

i got more on this electrocar thing when i get the time.

Kal said...

Gino, I don't want to tell you what to drive, I was just pointing out that the future is out there now.

As a practical matter, very few people drive more than 200 miles at a time. And this isn't a car you'd go out for groceries in. But 0-60 in 4 seconds kicks @ss. Not to mention a flat torque line with 200 lbs-ft of torque from the git-go.

Now, do I think everybody will be driving a Tesla in ten years? No. But I do think your Santa Fe is going to be getting 35-45 MPG when it goes hybrid in ten years. And there's no reason why it shouldn't be hybrid, at the least.

I know you like your cheap oil. But the guys who made the buggy whips really liked them too. It's time to embrace the future.

Law Fairy said...

What about a Prius? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me there are lots more than just these two options. Prius is affordable, spacious, AND environmentally conscious.

PLUS you get to drive in the carpool lane. Here in SoCal, that's worth its weight in gold.

Kal said...

lawfairy -

Gino doesn't really strike me as the prius type...

Me us, but I'm a big wuss.

Brian said...

When you charge up an electric or hybrid car, there's still something burning somewhere to produce that electricity. Coal still accounts for 50% or so of power generation in the US, followed by nuclear and natural gas at about 19% each.

Odds are, you aren't reducing pollution as much as displacing it. (Which may be worthwhile if you live in SoCal or the NE corridor, but it isn't exactly going to save the world.)

Electric cars are nice, but they are at best a stopgap to hydrogen and fuel cells.

Gino said...

silly brian.
thats what carbon credits are for.

drop lots of money on a lesser car, and then pay more to assuage guilt for not reducing carbon further.

or better yet, start your own carbon credit company, and pay yourself.

Kal said...

Well, once coal large-scale coal gassification becomes economic, you turn the coal into cleaner burning natural gas and sequester the carbon.... (how's that for a five dollar word).

Although Brian's spot on about fuel cell vehicles. Eventually you'll plug your car into your house, and your car will generate the electricity for your house!

And the best way I can think of to get the hydrogen for fuel cells (because we don't want to stop at natural gas) is for large-scale off-shore wind which both produces electricity, but in non-peak hours, electrolyzes seawater and creates hydrogen.

Love the new name, Gino.

Kal said...

Oh, and Gino, if you're interested in offsets, here's a business opportunity:

http://www.cheatneutral.com/

RobertDWood said...

I would like a Tesla. They're pretty much quiet, so they'd be perfect for stealth ops at night. :D

VLW said...

Law,

What about a Prius? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me there are lots more than just these two options. Prius is affordable, spacious, AND environmentally conscious.

The Prius is not all that great unless you do a lot of long-distance driving. My mother-in-law has one, and the gasoline-powered cars we've owned since 2004 (a Saturn and a Suzuki) have got better mileage in the real world. In fact, when we did have the (sadly no longer available) Suzuki Aerio (that we bought for a paltry $10 k) kept getting mistaken for her Prius.