Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Here is a video explaining why I think the Volt is the best vehicle for energy insurance or Peak Oil....despite it costing more upfront.

http://youtu.be/sYPI0RO_qM4

MrEnergyCzar

I think I'll stick with my bicycle. It's more fuel efficient, it pollutes far less and is cheaper both initially and in terms of upkeep costs.

Beery1 wrote:I think I'll stick with my bicycle. It's more fuel efficient, it pollutes far less and is cheaper both initially and in terms of upkeep costs.

Fair point but if you need to transport a kid, drive to work etc... the Volt gives you no range anxiety, like a pure electric, and two ways to fuel the car for redundancy...

MrEnergyCzar

"Chevrolet Volt dealers opt out over expensive tools"

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/chevr ... ive-tools/

Wasn't it the Volt that turns into a brick if the battery runs out?

For the price of a vault you could buy a cheap efficient secondhand Jap car and use the rest of the money to buy silver ingots to trade for fuel/food as you need it.

Or a small French diesel. They're amazingly efficient. The Citroen C3 can do 83.1 mpg (imperial, which is over 69 US mpg). And they're dirt cheap.

http://www.carpages.co.uk/guide/citroen/citroen-c3-vt-1.4-hdi-16v.asp

Thanks for that MrCzar.

Pops wrote:Thanks for that MrCzar.

Thank you Pops. Some day people will embrace using less oil in their daily lives and not make excuses not to. This happens with all addictions....

MrEnergyCzar

Shaved Monkey wrote:For the price of a vault you could buy a cheap efficient secondhand Jap car and use the rest of the money to buy silver ingots to trade for fuel/food as you need it.

You could do that but if your goal was to use the least amount of oil, while driving in present society with a car, you'd end up using more oil that way....

MrEnergyCzar

Quinny wrote:Wasn't it the Volt that turns into a brick if the battery runs out?

That was one of the very early Telsa sedan's where one of them bricked.

The engine generator comes on in the Volt after the first 38 electric miles. The battery stays between about 30 to 80% state of charge at all times..... In theory, if you purposely drained the Volt gas tank and left if unplugged for many months, you might be able to completely drain the battery.

MrEnergyCzar

Naw, electric vehicles are too complicated and expensive for Luddites like me. I am doing an Equestrian Conversion instead:

Peak oil/peak economy/peak climate to me means we first worlders will be getting a lot poorer. Buying an expensive new car may be OK for some, but no way I could possibly afford it on a peasant's salary.

My peak oil doom-mobile is a Kawasaki KLR 250 (pic is not my bike, obviously):


Cheap to run and easy to work on. I've already had to rebuild the carb and do other minor work, not that difficult. I think I can figure out how to fix almost anything else I'd need to keep it on the road. Ideally I'd get a junk bike for parts, but unfortunately the 250 KLRs aren't as common as the 650s, so I'm still dependent on the supply chain.

My old Ranger is a bit more difficult to work on, but still fairly easy compared to a Volt, I'm sure, and parts are cheap (I'm replacing the wheel bearings right now, ~$78 for both front wheels).

Gasoline is a relatively minor part of my vehicle expenses, insurance and maintenance are more expensive. I drive maybe 3500 miles a year, about a quarter of that on the motorcycle---even $10/gal gas wouldn't break me, though I'd probably do a better job of consolidating my trips.

agree
my car uses about $300 of fuel a year
and costs about $1200 in insurance and registration.
and $100+ in servicing (if you factor in tyres, oil and possible repairs over a longer period)
So even a 5 fold increase in fuel isnt really going to effect my driving.
There will probably be less stuff to buy in the shops so I will probably drive less though.

Peugeot 405, $2k 50MPG city, 60 country.

Also, keep in mind that besides maintenance cost there's also distance traveled. Usually, mileage becomes better with longer distances, but you're not really conserving oil given the need to travel longer distances.

davep wrote:Or a small French diesel. They're amazingly efficient. The Citroen C3 can do 83.1 mpg (imperial, which is over 69 US mpg). And they're dirt cheap.

http://www.carpages.co.uk/guide/citroen/citroen-c3-vt-1.4-hdi-16v.asp

I have that engine in my Ford Fiesta

Shaved Monkey wrote:For the price of a vault you could buy a cheap efficient secondhand Jap car and use the rest of the money to buy silver ingots to trade for fuel/food as you need it.

There you go, a practical solution that gets "reasonable" mileage, that the vast majority of even lower middle class folks could easily use.

I think that most of the people buying a well over $40,000 POS GM (getting the taxpayer to foot $7500 of that of course, as though that's free money), when it's just a hybrid with a horribly large, heavy, expensive battery just want to say "look at me". Big deal.

One good thing the Obama administration is doing which will make far more difference over time than almost all the other "knee bent running about" (in the words of John Cleese of Monty Python) is the much higher CAFE standards that are coming. Pushing up fleet mileage significantly (IF they actually enforce the higher standards) will save a dramatic amount of oil, while "green tech" has a chance to develop and mature.

I figure if I ever got the e-vehicle bug (unlikely), I'd get something cool like the LEAF, and keep my 1994 gasoline pickup. Still don't much like user facing computers embedded in vehicles though; anything user facing should be commodity swappable at will.

AgentR11 wrote:I figure if I ever got the e-vehicle bug (unlikely), I'd get something cool like the LEAF, and keep my 1994 gasoline pickup. Still don't much like user facing computers embedded in vehicles though; anything user facing should be commodity swappable at will.

Yes, most all plug-ins are going with the digital interfaces... the Ford plug-ins are kind of a blend of half digital and half old style...
Same with the Honda Accord plug-in....

MrEnergyCzar