Goremoblie by whozit

Nice, but not cheap enough.

First, they need a more efficient compressor.

And second, until these wonder-cars can BEAT the price of a Nissan Versa, they will never have the market share to justify supporting them.

-F

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Monday, May 25, 2009 10:56 AM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Nice, but not cheap enough.

First, they need a more efficient compressor.

And second, until these wonder-cars can BEAT the price of a Nissan Versa, they will never have the market share to justify supporting them.

-F

Plus it makes a farting sound going down the road

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Monday, May 25, 2009 11:21 AM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by whozit:
Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Nice, but not cheap enough.

First, they need a more efficient compressor.

And second, until these wonder-cars can BEAT the price of a Nissan Versa, they will never have the market share to justify supporting them.

-F
Plus it makes a farting sound going down the road

THAT was funny!

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Monday, May 25, 2009 11:23 AM

I have to wonder, though - Is there a sphincter valve that you can change out to get a different sound? Tweeters, boomers, rippers, cheek-slappers, or the ever-feared Silent-But-Deadly (otherwise known as the prison-yard special)...

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Monday, May 25, 2009 4:55 PM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Quote:
As Vencat spells it out, the "air cars" plug into a wall outlet, allowing an on-board compressor to pressurize the car's air tank to 4,500 pounds per square inch. It takes about four hours to get the tank to full pressure, then the air is then released gradually to power the car's pistons.

That's a big BANG when something goes wrong.

A little rust can explode a compressed air tank with less than 100 psi.

www.truveo.com/MythBusters-Air-Cylinder-Rocket/id/2035680734

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 3:09 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

I get the feeling that, except for special circumstances, we're mostly gonna be using internal combustion, perhaps paired with hybrid, for the foreseeable future. Unless battery price and technology improve a couple of orders of magnitude, full electrics just cost too much and have too little range. If they do become viable, then the electric grid will have to be upgraded to handle the additional drain. Fuel cells have been "just a year away" from commercial-ready for 20 years now, and still don't seem to be able to make the jump.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 4:18 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
I get the feeling that, except for special circumstances, we're mostly gonna be using internal combustion, perhaps paired with hybrid, for the foreseeable future. Unless battery price and technology improve a couple of orders of magnitude, full electrics just cost too much and have too little range. If they do become viable, then the electric grid will have to be upgraded to handle the additional drain. Fuel cells have been "just a year away" from commercial-ready for 20 years now, and still don't seem to be able to make the jump.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

I agree. There ARE inroads being made into making hybrids more useful and utilitarian (as well as more sporty, even), and batteries are coming along... slowly. Also, solar tech is helping a little bit (witness the new Prius with the optional solar roof that helps run the ventilation system to keep the car warm or cool while it's parked and turned off). Fuel cells ARE making progress (just ask any Honda Clarity lease-holder), but still aren't ready for prime-time.

Still, while progress may be slow, it IS being made. It'd be nice if maybe we could drag some of our domestic automakers into the future with us, but I'm not holding my breath at this point.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 7:39 AM

Quote:
That's a big BANG when something goes wrong.

Actually no, more like a solid WHUMP, and that's about it.

See, the tanks are made out of the same stuff one of my prosthetics is, and designed so that in the event of an impact significant enough to damage them, and believe me, it takes a holy HELL of a lot to break that stuff, that they'll just crack lengthwise in a controlled blow instead of a bang.

Stuff has a bit of flex to it too, so it's really amazingly hard to damage.
That particular aspect was addressed very early in the design.

-F

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 3:35 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Still, while progress may be slow, it IS being made. It'd be nice if maybe we could drag some of our domestic automakers into the future with us, but I'm not holding my breath at this point.

Ford has the best (per Car & Driver) mid-size hybrid in the Fusion. GM should be out with production models of the Volt shortly. For gas-powered cars, domestic cars are generally on a par with foreign models in the same segment. Per J. D. Power, Buick has the best quality.

Besides, people are still buying trucks. Per the Wall Street Journal, so far in 2009, Americans have bought 1,535,583 cars vs. 1,487,577 light trucks(including pickups, SUVs, minivans, and crossovers).
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html

Pickups alone are over 10% of total sales.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 7:55 AM

JONGSSTRAW

I drive a Hyundai that gets 35 miles per gallon. I believe in freedom, but these SUV and P/U truck drivers make me sick. They drive like f'ing assholes on the road, and you can't see shit when you're behind one. I love it when gas goes to $4+ a gallon because I know these people get whacked with the cost of a fill-up. I guess that makes me a bad person, but quite frankly I see them as endangering me.

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 2:14 PM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I drive a Hyundai that gets 35 miles per gallon. I believe in freedom, but these SUV and P/U truck drivers make me sick.

Try towing a 5,000 lb trailer or hauling six bales of hay or 20 bags of mulch with your Hyundai. Everyone is not you, nor do they have identical needs, transportation-wise.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 2:22 PM

JONGSSTRAW

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I drive a Hyundai that gets 35 miles per gallon. I believe in freedom, but these SUV and P/U truck drivers make me sick.

Try towing a 5,000 lb trailer or hauling six bales of hay or 20 bags of mulch with your Hyundai. Everyone is not you, nor do they have identical needs, transportation-wise.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

Maybe that's true to some extent in the sticks, but what I see in suburbia commuting on the major highways during rush hour into the city is just a bunch of totally un-necessary bullshit vehicles driven by maniac pseudo-macho men or 4 foot tall women on cell phones. It's pure ego, and again I both laugh at and despise these people. If yer haulin' some hay you're not in the 90%+ majority I've described that I witness twice a day, five days a week.

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 8:02 PM

Ha, I laugh at your puny double digit mileage per gallon.

-Frem

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:33 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Ha, I laugh at your puny double digit mileage per gallon.
-Frem

Two-stroke? Hows that thing do on emissions, Frem?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:44 AM

While pickups and trucks are still popular here in the U.S., their sales are off by MASSIVE amounts. The Ford F-150 is no longer the top-selling vehicle in the U.S., either; it lost that spot last year when gas hit $5 a gallon.

One thing that's helping drive truck and SUV sales is "subsidies" - dealerships knocking the things down to half price. In the past year, I've witnessed Toyota Tundra pickups selling at $18,000 of MSRP, Nissan Armada SUVs at $17,000 off, Dodge Ram pickups at $18,000 off, Nissan Titan pickups selling for $18,000 (NEW!), and the like. Even when gas was hitting $5 a gallon in some areas, those deals looked pretty tempting. $18,000 can buy you quite a bit of gas, even at $5 a gallon.

And in a possible sign of things to come, the Honda Insight just became the top seller in Japan, marking the first time that a hybrid vehicle topped the sales charts in any country.

With the new CAFE standards coming online, trucks are going to start having to meet fuel mileage standards much closer to what the cars are required to get, meaning that either (a) trucks have to get mroe fuel efficient, or (b) cars have to get a LOT more efficient, so their numbers can help pull up the lower numbers of the trucks.

It's going to be interesting, and my bet is the days of the super-ginormous Canyonero SUV are all but done. You'll see a shift away from trucks (except as ACTUAL work and farm vehicles) and towards smaller, more sensible cars.

I've owned full-sized pickups. For all their utility, I don't have any desire to own one again. When I need a truck - when my cars simply can't do the job - I'll go rent one from the Home Despot for $20 a day. Hell, it's so much cheaper than owning and insuring my own truck, why WOULDN'T I do that?

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

"You're a idiot." -AuRaptor, RWED, May 27, 2009.

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 10:47 AM

Quote:
Two-stroke? Hows that thing do on emissions, Frem?

Actually it's remarkably clean - the stock exhausts on them things are horrid for it though, just a straight pipe with a baffle, and all they do is jam up the works by restricting the exhaust so badly the increased back pressure wears the engine, and they clog up fast enough to be a real pain in the ass.

One grumble I have ALWAYS had with 2-stroke is that they never come up with any kind of decent exhaust system for them, and then blame the engine for the piss poor emissions - what the hell does one expect when all you got is a variation on a straight pipe ?

I got a reed valve on the intake manifold, and the porting is a max efficiency design combined with a high performance expansion pipe on there, which is about all you can do till they actually make a pipe with some mitigation, so the only way to reduce emissions is to run hot enough to burn as clean as possible - at full screaming howl there's actually very little emissions, the only touchy point would be at the low range of second gear, but even then, it would take a year to eject as much pollution as some vehicles do in a week.

2 strokes are quite capable of clean operation, the bad rep comes from the stupidity of never actually developing a modern emissions system - if you put a straight pipe on a 4 stroke, it'd run pretty dirty too.

Oh, and btw, since mine is an auto-injected version with a large fuel tank and sizeable reserve, along with an oil tank under the seat that's good for a damned long time - my range on that thing is virtually unlimited, since I can fuel up anywhere I please to.

It also has alternate fuel capability with about a half hours worth of work, but that DOES have to be pre-mixed, since you need a much higher oil ratio in order to keep the alcohol from pitting and degrading the aluminum parts.

Oh, and just to yank Whozit's chain a little ?
That's a HEMI, I kid ya not, dome piston, hemi head on it, runnin a champion L86C tight gapped with points advanced to get a good clean burn.

That whole shebang is prettymuch custom built by hand, and I could bore you to catatonia going on about it...

It's a gearhead thing.

-F

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:19 PM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
While pickups and trucks are still popular here in the U.S., their sales are off by MASSIVE amounts.

For the first four months of 2009, crossovers and small SUVs had less of a decline than any car segment, including small cars. Cars overall had a 35.7% decline and light trucks, inluding SUVs, pickups, crossovers, and minivans, had a 38.9% decline. The biggest losers were the bigger SUVs and large cars.

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
While pickups and trucks are still popular here in the U.S., their sales are off by MASSIVE amounts.

For the first four months of 2009, crossovers and small SUVs had less of a decline than any car segment, including small cars. Cars overall had a 35.7% decline and light trucks, inluding SUVs, pickups, crossovers, and minivans, had a 38.9% decline. The biggest losers were the bigger SUVs and large cars.

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html

"Keep the Shiny side up"

Which is pretty much restating what I already said.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

"You're a idiot." -AuRaptor, RWED, May 27, 2009.

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Friday, May 29, 2009 3:43 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Which is pretty much restating what I already said.

Well, not really. Vehicle sales overall are off by large amounts, but pickup sales aren't off any more than anything else.

Actually, so far this year, more crossovers (classified as light trucks) have sold than small cars. So the crap about "Detroit doesn't make the small cars everyone wants" is not backed up by actual sales.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Friday, May 29, 2009 6:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Which is pretty much restating what I already said.

Well, not really. Vehicle sales overall are off by large amounts, but pickup sales aren't off any more than anything else.

Actually, so far this year, more crossovers (classified as light trucks) have sold than small cars. So the crap about "Detroit doesn't make the small cars everyone wants" is not backed up by actual sales.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

Your own quoted statistics don't back up your assertion.

Quote:
Cars overall had a 35.7% decline and light trucks, inluding SUVs, pickups, crossovers, and minivans, had a 38.9% decline.

Or did you mix up the quote? According to those stats, CARS declined 35.7%, while LIGHT TRUCKS declined 38.9% - or 3.2% MORE of a decline that cars. And I'm assuming the "cars" category would include the small cars that Detroit doesn't build.

I'm wondering how the "crossover SUV" Dodge Caliber's sales stack up to the "car" it replaced, the Dodge Neon. I don't see many Calibers, but I sure remember seeing an awful lot of Neons.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

"You're a idiot." -AuRaptor, RWED, May 27, 2009.

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Friday, May 29, 2009 8:35 AM

Meanwhile, there's the Tata Nano, billed as "the world's cheapest car" at approximate $2200 brand new.

http://infodbmag.blogspot.com/2008/01/tata-nano-pictures-photos-images
-tata.html

It's not luxurious, it's not pretty, but it's already selling out, well before the first production models have left the factory. Tata is having to hold a lottery to decide who gets the first 100,000 cars. They predict that they'll be able to sell a million within a few years, and that's only in India.

Interest has taken off recently, and now they are looking at bringing in a model to the U.S., complete with larger, more powerful engine, air conditioning, air bags, ABS, etc., for about $6500 out the door.

And with around 1.2 billion people now residing in India, if Tata were to sell cars to only one person in a hundred, that's still some 12 million cars.

Wowk. :)

I look at this, and while I couldn't really see it being my *ONLY* car (unless it had air conditioning, of course), I could see it being my primary car for 95% of my driving.

As I said, "pretty" it ain't - but it IS pretty damned useful.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

"You're a idiot." -AuRaptor, RWED, May 27, 2009.

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Saturday, May 30, 2009 1:51 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
According to those stats, CARS declined 35.7%, while LIGHT TRUCKS declined 38.9% - or 3.2% MORE of a decline that cars. And I'm assuming the "cars" category would include the small cars that Detroit doesn't build.

So you consider 3.2% a "MASSIVE" amount?

Well, that explains a lot.

Try this one on.

For the first four months of 2009, the Ford F series pickup is back on top of the sales figures with 110,336 units sold to the Toyota Camry's 92,523. The Chevy Silverado also outsold the Camry with 93,720. The Honda Accord was down at 84,491 and the Toyota Corolla / Matrix line (the best-selling small car) at 78,132.

Nine of the top 20 sellers so far in 2009 are trucks of some sort.

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html#autosalesC

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Saturday, May 30, 2009 9:01 AM