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Anybody own a hybrid?

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Asher

    That's about my only real complaint about the car, that the one day of the year where it's hot enough to notice the weak A/C.
    You haven't been living in TO long enough. Weak A/C during a normal summer (last year was crap) would be painful.
    "The French caused the war [Persian Gulf war, 1991]" - Ned
    "you people who bash Bush have no appreciation for one of the great presidents in our history." - Ned
    "I wish I had gay sex in the boy scouts" - Dissident

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    • #17
      Originally posted by Kontiki
      You haven't been living in TO long enough. Weak A/C during a normal summer (last year was crap) would be painful.
      It's not that weak though, and I lived in TO all last summer.

      I've lived in California, Toronto doesn't get too hot (compared to California). It also doesn't get too cold (compared to Calgary).

      It's only the days it's 36C+ that I think the A/C wasn't adequate, and it was about 25C in the car.

      The one time last summer I felt it was too warm with the A/C, I turned off the A/C, rolled down all four windows, opened the sunroof, and cranked the stereo while zipping down the 407 at about 120km/h in rushhour.
      "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
      Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

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      • #18
        The one thing I've always wondered about the plug-in type of hybrids is how much power do they suck up? If it's a huge drain, all your doing is switching fuel in your car for fuel in a power plant. I really have no idea though - for all I know, it may not draw much power at all.

        And how are other alternative fuel arrangements, like hydrogen, coming along?
        "The French caused the war [Persian Gulf war, 1991]" - Ned
        "you people who bash Bush have no appreciation for one of the great presidents in our history." - Ned
        "I wish I had gay sex in the boy scouts" - Dissident

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        • #19
          Yeah, the plug ins are somewhat of a mistery to me. Are those simple batteries charged? or fuel-cells?

          suddenly the air-car option sounds very feasible.
          urgh.NSFW

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          • #20
            Originally posted by Asher

            It's not that weak though, and I lived in TO all last summer.

            I've lived in California, Toronto doesn't get too hot (compared to California). It also doesn't get too cold (compared to Calgary).

            It's only the days it's 36C+ that I think the A/C wasn't adequate, and it was about 25C in the car.

            The one time last summer I felt it was too warm with the A/C, I turned off the A/C, rolled down all four windows, opened the sunroof, and cranked the stereo while zipping down the 407 at about 120km/h in rushhour.
            Did you have your Mazda when you lived in California?

            It also gets way more humid here than California, which makes a big difference. As I said, last summer was really cool here - the previous years saw lots of days where the humidex pushed comfortably over 40 degrees. I remember at the time we had a Honda Accord and the A/C cut out altogether. Until we got it fixed, it was excrutiating driving in the city.
            "The French caused the war [Persian Gulf war, 1991]" - Ned
            "you people who bash Bush have no appreciation for one of the great presidents in our history." - Ned
            "I wish I had gay sex in the boy scouts" - Dissident

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            • #21
              The one thing I've always wondered about the plug-in type of hybrids is how much power do they suck up? If it's a huge drain, all your doing is switching fuel in your car for fuel in a power plant.
              From an economic perspective, it's about a wash, although I note that the price for grid electricity is normally much more stable than the price for gasoline. YMMV, depending on your location.

              From a local environmental perspective, you are further ahead with plug-in hybrid. The environmental problems are not caused locally, but rather are caused someplace else. This in itself is pretty huge, considering that you can move much of the environmental impact to a place for which the impact would be no big deal.

              From a global environmental perspective, you might be worse off with plug-in hybrid, since electricity is generated with coal in many places.

              For my own part, I look at the substitution of power plant electricity for gasoline as having a large geopolitical impact. It's a matter of diversification of energy sources.
              I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

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              • #22
                I can second what Kontiki's saying - normal TO summer's are drippy hot and humid - quite a pain without good A/C.

                You have to find the perfect amount of cooling though - too much and you chill the drops of moisture and sweat on you and you can get shivers.

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                • #23
                  I disagree with that DanS.


                  The internal combustion engine is far less efficient than the turbine in the power plant. the plugged up fuel-cell/battery engine will be better than the internal combustion one.

                  plus, particle pollution, the problem with coal, is a local problem, generally. So there is no "global pollution" element with that.


                  Coal power plants
                  urgh.NSFW

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                  • #24
                    I think coal power plants are pretty damn cool too. However, I don't have any numbers to back up the relative efficiency of power plant versus gasoline.

                    But my point really was that there are a lot of variables to consider in this equation. It might make sense to use plug-in hybrids on geopolitical grounds but not on global environmental grounds, for instance.
                    I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

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                    • #25
                      120km/h in rushhour.
                      120s not bad. we never do less than 130 down here in socal. we spend all our time between 130 and 145 usually.

                      EDIT: or zero and 20 hehehe.
                      Last edited by Lawrence of Arabia; February 24, 2005, 17:05.
                      "Everything for the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State" - Benito Mussolini

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                      • #26
                        I agree with Asher, people who buy these type of vehicles without really needing them (ie. 95% of owners) should be shot!

                        It all smacks people over compensating for a sexual inferiority complex.

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                        • #27
                          Anyone in the UK who doesn't live in the deepest Welsh valley or the furthert Scottish highland and owns a SUV should be tried for crimes of social irresponsibility. Especially if they use them on the school run in a city.

                          Americans, unfortunately, seem to be blinded by their big cars.
                          Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
                          -Richard Dawkins

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                          • #28
                            Nobody cares what you lot think.
                            I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

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                            • #29

                              But my point really was that there are a lot of variables to consider in this equation. It might make sense to use plug-in hybrids on geopolitical grounds but not on global environmental grounds, for instance.


                              Nonononono. hybrids, and later on, fuel cell driven cars ( pure electricity charged, hydrogen ones, not methanol ones ) are very important, since they will separate the car from the internal combustion engine: you see, the source of electric energy may vary - but you have to burn hydrocarbons to drive a car.
                              urgh.NSFW

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                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Starchild
                                Anyone in the UK who doesn't live in the deepest Welsh valley or the furthert Scottish highland and owns a SUV should be tried for crimes of social irresponsibility. Especially if they use them on the school run in a city.
                                My firend and his fiancee wanted one, they have no kids, he works in an Aircraft factory 3 miles from his house and she works in a local shop.

                                They couldn't understand my disgust.

                                On a brighter note, they split up and didn't get the SUV, so things turned out OK in the end.

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