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What kind of gas mileage do you get?

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HaRuMaN:
Yeah I'm a member over at fitfreak. 

paigeoliver:
I daily drive a V8.

Producing a new car ALSO uses a lot of energy and a lot of oil, and despite what you might think it is actually more sound to use up that V8 vehicle and THEN buy a more fuel efficient one that it is to take the V8 off the road before it is used up.

If you want to throttle someone then throttle the long commute people. My weekly commute in my V8 is a grand total of 72 miles using 3.5 gallons of fuel (for the whole week). Plenty of people use more fuel than that in a single day in their hybrid and somehow feel superior because they get good gas mileage, even though they are driving 75 miles to work in San Francisco each way and that is the closest they could afford to live to the smug capital of the world.

So, hows your commute Apollo??


--- Quote from: Apollo on April 17, 2008, 04:54:05 am ---40mpg in my 1.6L Suzuki Vitara

Anyone driving a V8 as their regular drive who does not have to tow anything should burn in hell.

--- End quote ---

Wade:

--- Quote from: paigeoliver on April 17, 2008, 09:30:08 pm ---Producing a new car ALSO uses a lot of energy and a lot of oil, and despite what you might think it is actually more sound to use up that V8 vehicle and THEN buy a more fuel efficient one that it is to take the V8 off the road before it is used up.

--- End quote ---

How many are retiring a gas guzzler and putting it in a shed to rot away?  A vehicle that runs well will get driven by somebody.  People aren't taking V8's off the road before they're used up just because they get bad gas mileage.

I agree with the idea that the biggest part of our oil problem (that we can control) is suburban sprawl.  If people in the US didn't leave themselves dependent on long commutes to/from work, the whole oil price things would be a non issue.  But this is where we are.  I think we were foolish to put ourselves into this position, but generally, our country doesn't usually do the smartest thing, does it?

Most people live further from work because they could afford a nicer house the further they drove... and in today's housing market, it can be tough to unload a house.  I know people who owe more on their house than they can sell it for!  Not around here, thankfully (we've had positive growth).  My wife and I saw beyond this before oil prices were a problem.  We paid more for a house a few miles from downtown, in a nice, established, safe neighborhood with several different paths to work, and only a couple of traffic lights.  The extra we paid for our house has been MORE than made up for by saved time and travel costs.

The fact is that it's still a lot easier for most americans to switch to a vehicle that gets double or triple the gas mileage than it is for them to move.

Wade

patrickl:
Sure people won't just destroy old cars. Which makes it all the more important that people don't buy new V8's when there is no good reason for it. Or that in general people buy cars with better fuel economy. We're stuck with the burden of these new cars for 10 to 15 years.

This is another reason why electric cars would work. If we find better, cleaner ways to produce electricity, the pollution "created by" the electric car decreases.

shardian:
The prices of new and used SUV's has fallen sharply the last couple years. Most buyers do the math and realize the money they are saving in the lower price more than offsets the cost of gas for several years.

I am currently driving a P.O.S. Volvo that gets 20mpg. I was looking to buy a newer car in the 4k range that gets in the upper 20's mpg (these are damn near impossible to find too - other than junkers in the same shape as what I'm driving or worse). Driving the Volvo will cost me an extra $600-$700 per year in gas than a car that gets 25-30 mpg.

So instead of emptying my savings or paying a $150 car payment a month, I simply pay $50 more in gas per month.

Damn, these calculations depress the hell out of me. Before Hurricane Katrina, $600-$700 was close to my gas budget for the whole year. :cry:

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