Autoblog

+1. The Yaris? The Venza? The Corolla? Toyota hasn't made a decent looking car since they brought out the 06 Rav4.

And no, the FJ Cruiser isn't decent. What it is, however, is two years too late to the now defunct retro party.

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+2
There are no Toyota cars that I would consider. They are far too boring. I guess that's why old people seem to buy them. They are like the Japanese verson of Buick.

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I like the last gen Corolla and current gen Auris hatches personally, but that's about it of their current like-up since the death of the MR2S

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hahaha I love the graphic.

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The problem at the root of this is the "all or nothing" extremist political climate we have today. The real solution is to work hard on alternatives WHILE improving our efficiency with fossil fuels AND looking for more sources of those fossil fuels.

Even if I magically created an affordable, efficient method for isolating hydrogen this afternoon, it would be many years before enough vehicles were using it and enough fueling stations were offering it to be able to turn off the oil tap, but people raving on the alternative-energy side want to completely stop using oil yesterday, and people on the "gas is great" side want to put off alternative energy research until we burn the last gallon of Super Unleaded.

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DKB is correct. We need to do all of the above. We must conserve more. We must generate more power from alternative energy. We must build more nuclear power plants.

But we also need to drill for more oil. Production is falling from mature oil fields in Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Political instability is reducing oil production in Nigeria. On the demand side, China, India, and Russia have greatly expanding middle classes. As a result, the demand for oil is increasing greatly.

While we do need to conserve more and exploit alternative energy production, we also need more oil.

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DKB said it best! ::applaud::

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DKB & Jared

I really like that methadone approach !!! (Not so much)

From what I've seen of life the only way to break any addiction is cold turkey.

Nobody would assert we must stop using gasoline yesterday but the notion is to not continue to expand the addiction. Every cent spent on expanding oil infrastructure is wasted money and puts any real solution that much farther into the future. Spend the money on a solution not more of the same.

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baffledu: You are being completely unrealistic.

We can't get conserve our way to a solution in time. It will take a decade before new nuclear power plants are online. Will be decades before the wind power percentage breaks 10%. If we did try to conserve our way to a solution within the next 10 years, the cost increase would drive our economy from recession to a depression.

In the meantime, demand from Russia, China, and India is growing in double digits. We either produce more or we will have shortages.

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Jared ... I thought we were talking about fuel for vehicles. America imports not one drop of oil for electric generation so building windmills, nuclear plants, solar, biomass, hydro etc. are all wonderful things but have no bearing on liquid fuels for transportation. The confusion about the two distinct seperate issues is part of the current problem.

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The elephant in the room is numbers.

Americans are conserving more. Americans are using less.

But all of that and then some was cancelled out because since 1990 the US population has increased by over 50 million people.

And that's not even touching the billions of people in the developing world who are rapidly developing fossil fuel infrastructures of their own.

This isn't sustainable for your lifetime. Wind doesn't make it sustainable. 100 mpg doesn't make it sustainable. Global thermonuclear war... we'll see.

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Jared ... I thought we were talking about fuel for transportation. America imports not one drop of oil for electric generation. Build all the windmills, nuclear, hydro, biomass, solar, etc. you want and it will not stop one barrel of oil from being imported today or 20 years from now. The confusion about the two seperate and distinct issues of electric generation and liquid fuels is part of the problem in understanding the current snafu.

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Think about expanding oil infrastructure this way.

Would you round up more ponies and build more waystations for the pony express once the telegraph was invented? Would you invest in building more harse carriages once the automobile was introduced?

Nobody asserts America should stop using gasoline all at once but to expand the addiction, drill more, build more refineries when there is a homegrown, pollution free, more efficient, means to power transportation is ludicrous.

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Alas, baffled, hydrogen is not yet a more efficient means to power transportation, because we have no efficient means of producing it. The only energy-positive way to produce it at present is from fossil fuels, so that doesn't solve the root problem. If we had huge amounts of excess electricity from alternative sources (wind, solar, nuclear, ?) to isolate hydrogen via electrolysis it might be viable, but unless you live relatively near a big hydroelectric facility, electrical generation requires artificial energy inputs.

I'm not saying that hydrogen won't be a usable energy-storage medium in the future, but it's not a practical one now and there hasn't been a huge breakthrough announced that I know of. Unless/until it's economically feasible to move the world with energy stored in hydrogen, we'll need to either find more supplies of fuels that are viable now, or suffer the economic consequences of energy shortages.

To refine your analogy a bit, the pony express continued to be useful until the telegraph lines reached most inhabited places, it didn't cease to exist the day Morse tapped out "What hath god wrought?"

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I read somewhere the largest and cheapest supply of hydrogen is from oil wells, and barring that, it's from carbohydtrates which we also drill for.

So how does switching to hydrogen help us any?

Perhaps you can split water, but where do you plan to get the energy to do that?

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to be honest, i'm surprised no one has even mentioned bringing back the 55 mph speed limit. I've already brought my speeds from 70 mph down to 57 (cruise control) and my mpg has gone up from 22 to 29-30. Considering that i still see many giant soccer mom SUVs doing 80, 85, and 90 mph on the freeway (so cal is fabulous aint it?) i'm sure the US as a whole could save a lot of fuel just like we did 30 yrs ago

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^

Housing may cost more but you usually end up winning in everything else.

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