Recent Comments:
Video: Why some BMW owners have a bad reputation {Autoblog}
Sep 12th 2008 12:05PM Since when is it a bad thing when a driver of an overpriced car lets down his obligatory ostentacious guard and just enjoys himself. If he were yelling at a 4 year old for getting ice-cream on the seat you'd be calling him a tool for caring more about the car than his daughter.
Y'all need to meet some bipolar friends and get to the edge now and then. It's not that scary. I thought it was funny, not arrogant or tool-like in any way.
ITM Power now has a demonstration house with home hydrogen station {Autoblog Green}
Jul 10th 2008 2:36PM My reaction to the seemingly wasteful triple energy conversion is that if you need wind/solar to create your energy, that is transient (especially solar), so storing it as hydrogen is a clean storage process. While a simplistic view is to plug it into grid to store, eventually all power would have the same timing and the power company would have challenges storing it all for night time. Resevoir pumping is how some Nuclear plants store up reserve energy during off hours. But at a home level the hydrogen storage does have merits over local battery arrays.
I don't like the idea of Nat. Gas reformation at all. That's not change we can believe in.
Next BMW M5 will nix V10 in favor of twin-turbo V8 {Autoblog}
Jul 8th 2008 9:19PM No, I own 3 BMWs (if you count my 2007 MINI), but there are separate and distinct BMW demographics. I assure you the distaste I have for the excessive M5 has nothing to do with wishing I had the money (I do), but everything to do with wishing others understood the beauty of automotive engineering. 4050 lbs. and a 4 and a half liter V8 is something I'd expect from a 60's muscle car, not a modern European car. BMW is pandering to people easily impressed by LARGE numbers. Everything on the M5 is large except the fuel economy which is today, laughable.
Next BMW M5 will nix V10 in favor of twin-turbo V8 {Autoblog}
Jul 7th 2008 12:18PM Why not a 5.6L V8 twin turbo. Or a 6.4L V8 twin turbo. They're only numbers. M5 ownership and its raison d'être has always mystified me. It's the penile implant for a man with two kids (or is it 3) who are too spoiled to dive into the back of a two door coupe. Or is it a way to show off to the boys at the country club that your company pays you far too much? Isn't your presence at the club fulfilling that need. This car has as much class as a Lincoln.
BMW chimes in on proposed U.S. CAFE standards {Autoblog Green}
Jul 2nd 2008 11:41AM I own a '72 BMW 2002, a 2000 Z3 2.3L 6 cyl, and a 2007 MINI Cooper S. BMW can easily exceed the new Cafe standards, but they'll look like dumbasses as they do it because it means doing the following:
1) scrap X6 in year 1. a 400hp 4.4L V8 crossover was DUMB with a capitol D.
2) scrap 760, 540, X5, and 6 series. These are the flagships and they all need to go, or at least be limited in production. These are no longer relavant cars, and never were outside the US. Just because rich people can afford to burn money on bloated vehicles, it doesn't give them the right to burn excessive fossil fuel and that's the spirit of Cafe
3) Bring back 735 (or 2.5L turbo) if you must build this car
4) bring diesels across the board, including MINI
5) make the 1 series the planned top seller and get its weight down 20%
Would that make BMW rich? I don't think so, but BMW was always about staying independent and trying things no other manufacturer would.
BTW, I'm really happy with the mileage of the turbo 1.6L MINI Cooper S engine, but concede that it should probably be the pinnicle of their hp. No more "beat last year's power". MINI could also use a date with the wind tunnel to improve its efficiency. Focus on insane mileage while still delivering spirited driving. BMW also needs an EV saviour imo. Dump the hydrogen IC dream.
Craigslist Find of the Day: 11 gallons of diesel fuel {Autoblog}
Jun 27th 2008 1:11PM Volvos from that era aren't scrappable. Only Ford Volvos go in the trash. Advertise it for free and someone will make that car run again.
Mazda to cut fuel consumption 30 percent by 2015 {Autoblog}
Jun 23rd 2008 11:00AM Mazda and Subaru (and prolly Mitsubishi) are lame on mileage. Plenty of companies have been guilty of this problem, but Mazda seems to compete in their segments with heavy cars/crossovers and larger less efficient engines to compensate. If you've compared Mazda with other cars you've seen this problem. MX5 is a great example.
RX8 should have been scrapped before it was born. Of the 3 owners who I know that bought them, one sold after a year, and two bought motorcycles in response to the heartstoppingly poor mileage. The sad thing is one owner was upgrading from an RX7 R1 so he should have known better.
Ford Flex gets fridge {Autoblog}
May 23rd 2008 3:59PM I always use the built-in ass scratcher as an example of the avalanche of unnecessary auto paraphenalia. This won't announcement won't change that, but it's a sure sign that some smart ass is sitting at Ford right now pleading that someone else that Ford'll turn around if they would just adopt the ass scratcher on the 2012 model year lineup.
Enough with the bloat and the crossovers. They were dead before they launched. Natural selection of transport is about to be demonstrated to the US, in regards to this country's poor judgement that the SUV was a good idea. History will judge the crossover as really stupid unnecessary evolutionary step away from the most irresponsible segment to ever be pushed on the public, not unlike light cigarettes.
Lutz declares that first Volt mule is running 40 miles on battery power {Autoblog}
May 15th 2008 12:58PM Yeah, I'm not knocking GM for building the Volt, I'm jaded that they had the best shot at doing it right last time, and they let Oilies and GM Corporate momentum literally crush their design. Now it appears even though we've been paying taxes for the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium that was built to fund U.S. Battery companies/Universities to get us over the EV battery hump along with Detroit contributions, we're 13 years on, and are still getting less EV mileage than a lead acid homebuilt. In the context of the state of technology in 1993, we (this society) look pathetic.
To understand USABC:
http://www.uscar.org/guest/history.php
Or if you can find it:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067942105X/qid=1134125290/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-7039298-0296112?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Lutz declares that first Volt mule is running 40 miles on battery power {Autoblog}
May 15th 2008 11:58AM Just this week Audi was stating that EV battery tech is years away from primetime. What the hell have the USABC been up to if we can only do 40 miles on a battery pack when Ovonic's batteries powered an unadulterated Impact mule to 200 miles plus in 1993?
I understand that this is intended to be a series hybrid, but undersizing the battery pack just because 40 miles is the average person's usage isn't going to make the endeavor worthwhile. PHEV should still try to maximize EV mileage, and the series hybrid motor should be there for long trips, not to augment every other day's driving.
Here's the state of ev batteries in 1995.
http://www.greencar.com/perspective/electric-car-battery/
