PurdueGuy

I respect the work, but the car itself doesn't do much for me. No cheers or jeers, just meh.

Hot.

One big thing electric has on its side is the whole "don't become completely dependent on one thing", since it can be produced so many ways. But, for the foreseeable future, pure electric cars will have range & charge time issues, so they're not a universal solution yet. Though it occurs to me, what if an electric essentially had like 5 batteries that were charged separately? You pull in, and an array of 5 (or whatever number) chargers all worked at once...

Those wheels make the brakes look tiiiiny.

Eh, it's not as tall, so it's less cargo space. Overall image is less professional as well. Some market overlap, but I'd guess that at least half the people interested in the HHR would have no interest in this.

I'm not sure any of the following has much bearing on the main topic(s) of conversation, but I just felt like sharing some of my experiences with Amtrak. Wife & I used Amtrak this past fall. We flew from Salt Lake to Chicago, visited family in Indiana & Ohio for a few days (bumming rides), then rode Amtrak from Cincinnati to Washington DC. We then hopped on the Metro, and rode to where our hotel was. If it hadn't been for a locomotive breakdown & medical emergency, it would have been a great option (which was cheaper than flying, fun/different, and fast enough to not be an issue). The delays made for some... adventure... but overall it was good, and I'd do it again anytime. We took Amtrak from Salt Lake to northwest Indiana a few years back. Unfortunately it was more difficult, as SLC is 2.5hrs from us, and the train leaves at something like 4am. There are busses that run from here (SE Idaho) to SLC regularly, but not at that time. We looked at driving down & parking at a long-term parking area, then catching local mass transit (bus, light rail, etc), but nothing is open or running at that time of night. On top of all that, the station is in a bad neighborhood, so you don't want to get there way early. The only way it worked out at all was by having a friend that didn't mind driving 5hrs round trip in the middle of the night to drop us off. That friend has since moved, so I'm not sure it could happen again. We checked pricing of the basic sleeper cars for the trips there & back, and found it was reasonable one way (especially considering it included meals in the dining car), but far more expensive & beyond justifiable for us in price coming back. So, we decided that was for the best anyway, as it let us experience both worlds. The sleeper was ok. The beds are, of course, not super awesome soft cozy things, but are rather hard, and the bottom one folds into two seats during the day. Not terribly comfortable as seats either. Still, you get privacy, and a place to lay down, and one power outlet if I remember right. The dining car meals were decent, probably comparable to an average to slightly below average diner. The route is gorgeous, and enjoying the views is one of the major pluses of taking the train. It's also nice to be able to just get up & wander around. The return trip in coach was a very different experience. The seats are actually more comfortable than the bed-folds-into-chairs setup, though still left a bit to be desired. I enjoyed the coach seating during the day, and found the only thing I was really longing for was power outlets (if & how many power outlets are available on Amtrak cars seems to be a mixed bag). Meals were a disappointment. The dining car is very expensive. You can eat cheaper from another food vendor in the observation car, but it's still expensive for what you get. If I remember right, they had cups of ramen noodles (generally .15-.25 at the grocery store) for $1.50. If you're comparing travel costs, don't forget meals, because depending on the details of the trip, the plane may not cost much more once you factor in meals, especially if you want to be at all choosey about what you eat. Fortunately, security is nothing like airports, and you can bring food with you. Sleeping in coach is the biggest thing that will make me think twice about taking the train long-distance again. The seats tilt back much further than in an airplane, and you have much, much more leg room, but it's far from laying flat. They provide you with a small pillow, which I ended up using under my butt, because all night long I would slide down, scoot myself up, slide down, scoot myself up, and soon my butt was very sore. This ruined the comfort during the day the next day as well. Bringing a nice big cooshy pillow would probably help substantially. -- I support Amtrak, and am very glad they're making efforts to upgrade service & speeds. There will probably always be situations where scheduling & transportation to & from the stations makes it unfeasible for some travelers, but they can keep making it make sense for more & more people. Trains are hugely efficient (at least in a gallons per weight per mile measure), so I would imagine rail travel will continue to make sense in some way for a long, long time, and may even see growth as speeds & logistics improve.

I'm not against there having been a financial bailout, but the way it was done was beyond patheticly sloppy & irresponsible.

Predictions of gas prices beyond a week or so have been about as accurate as weather predictions beyond a week or so. How many articles can we look up that would say we should be at $5+/gal or more by now?

I think the way the auto industry assistance was handled was fine, the real issues are in how the financial industry assistance was handled.

Considering I was just reading within the last week that it's very questionable if Tesla can get their hands on the money to actually produce the Model S, I have serious doubts we'll see this one.

Don't count on this drawing in people who owned 1st/2nd gen Vues. Those I've talked to weren't terribly interested in the 3rd gen Vue, but preferred the much lighter & simpler earlier versions. Saturn mechanics I've talked to have also indicated that the 3rd gen Vues were more troublesome with the drivetrain & major components. When I was at Saturn (for about 2 weeks), the only issues that I heard of with the 2nd gen was a dash squeek that would sometimes happen with particular weather/temperature. (Though it's best to avoid the first gens with the 3.0L V6 and/or the CVT trans).

How about this?

Honestly, I don't think there is a way to define it - automakers will call them whatever they think will sell better. I would venture to say there are 2 things that make something definitively a wagon though: cargo section longer than it is tall, or a 3rd row seat. Of course, either of those can come into question with "crossovers", but that comparison was thrown out in the first post.

There's 2 approaches here: 1) Company decides what the brands are, and makes the products accordingly. With this approach, it makes sense that GMC would be work trucks, and Chevy would be consumer trucks. 2) Consumer demand decides what the brands are, and the company shapes the products accordingly. For whatever reason(s), over time GMC has gotten an upscale image, and many well to-do consumer buyers would rather be seen in a GMC than a Chevy, and they want lux options. Not every GMC buyer of course, but there are plenty of people who want a loaded Denali, and GM makes good money building & selling them. So, what's the right approach? Maybe that's the wrong question. Perhaps GMC trucks should be everything Chevy trucks are, and more. More commercial options available, *and* more lux options available. Build two product lines within GMC: Denali and a more work-oriented line, like the Dodge Tradesman. The Tradesman-esque line not meaning "stripped down", but rather "aimed at those who use their trucks for serious daily work". No matter the model, have something that sets it apart. Perhaps set some kind of drivetrain and/or durability standards to brag on, like Jeep's "Trail Rated" stuff. Perhaps put a slightly longer warranty on the GMCs (120k/6yr instead of 100k/5yr) to accompany the bragged durability rating, further justifying a bit of a price premium for the GMC over the Chevy.

Very true... except that with the Volt you can drain the battery in 1 hour and then not give a crap, since you're still getting good mileage. Your statement sounds more like a reason to not find the Leaf appealing.

Anyway, let's say that this new design actually improves the effectiveness, and you can actually get an average of 5MW per hour out of a turbine. According to Wikipedia, "Primary energy use in the United States was 25,155 TWh". Since we're talking megawatts here, let's convert that over. 2009 electrical usage was 25,155,000,000,000,000 MWh. Correction 1Tera Watt Hour = 1 Mega Mega Watt Hour. 25,155 TWh = 25,155,000,000 MWh Good call, that's what I get for late night math. The point still stands that we would have to litter HUGE amounts of land (and/or sea) with turbines for them to make any remotely noticeable contribution to our overall energy needs. Yeah, covering the entire plains area with turbines may sound great if you live on the coasts, but there are a lot of people I know who live in the area of the wind farm I linked to above that were sick of them within a year or two. Yeah, it can be interesting, but it gets old, and would even moreso if they were EVERYWHERE. If there was a need for 3 coal plants per square mile, I would certainly agree with you, but comparing one coal plant with littering 116 square miles with turbines, I'd rather have the coal plant (visually). Not that I'd want to live by it, but that's the thing, you can not live by the coal plant, you can't not live by the turbines without leaving the region. On top of that, there is the ecological descruction of mass installation of wind turbines. How many mountains would need to be leveled to build enough wind turbines to provide 1% of the nation's power needs? How many gravel pits to make the concrete? What's the effect on the environment when you leave behind hundreds of huge concrete slabs after the turbines are worn out after 20-30 years? Or are we expecting that the power company will take them out? Or are we assuming the slabs will be reusable with turbine designs in 30 years? I'm not anti-wind. I'm anti-cover-the-entire-plains-region-with-wind-farms, and I want people to realize the costs, and the potential (or lack thereof in many ways). There's gobs of propeganda that pushes wind as if it could save us & solve the energy crisis, but when you crunch the numbers (even with the math fixes above), at best it's a niche player.

This. Chasing #1 takes your eye off of everything that would give a legitimate reason to be #1.

*BUZZ* I'm so sorry, but that is incorrect. A wind turbine rated at 5MW has a peak output of 5MW, so the "simple math" is deceptive and wrong. The output has to be averaged out, because if the wind is too slow or too fast, the turbine doesn't produce at peak. Average output is generally more like 25-30% of the rating, so you're going to need more like 350 wind turbines to replace that 500MW coal plant. You can get 2, maybe 3 turbines per square mile, so if we're generous and go with 3, that's 117 square miles of wind farm to replace one crappy coal plant. To add to the crappiness, the majority of these tons of turbines our tax money has been paying to put up aren't cutting edge 7MW, or 5MW turbines. No, they're 1-2MW units. Anyway, let's say that this new design actually improves the effectiveness, and you can actually get an average of 5MW per hour out of a turbine. According to Wikipedia, "Primary energy use in the United States was 25,155 TWh". Since we're talking megawatts here, let's convert that over. 2009 electrical usage was 25,155,000,000,000,000 MWh. So with an average output of 5MW per hour per turbine (that's being generous - on top of the assumptions of the effects of this shroud, that would also be in at least a semi-ideal location for the turbine), we'd need 57,431,506,850 turbines to meet our energy needs. Which means 19,143,835,617 square miles of wind farm. Too bad the US is only 3,794,083 square miles. So if we covered every square mile of the US with wind farm, and we could assume that it would all run at ideal conditions, we could almost provide 2% of our nations power needs from wind power. I'm all for continued research, and would love to see the day that these turbines put out ten time so more the amount of power they do so they can be relevant, I just do the math so that people will realize that wind is not, in the near future, going to save us from any energy crisis. It's also a waste that so much of our taxpayer money subsidizes wind turbines that aren't going toward research to make them actually meaningful, but to simply pad the pockets of big energy companies, who wouldn't touch wind with a 10ft pole if it weren't for subsidies. Also, where I grew up is now in the middle of a huge wind farm. It has a certain interest to it, but I find that even as I just visit a week or two at a time, the interest wears off quickly. Especially at night, when all around you are dozens and dozens of syncronized blinking red lights.

I still look at a well maintained, reasonable mileage 2002 vehicle as a pretty good vehicle, and would have no issue driving one.

95% eh? So if the average person makes 3 trips a day, the average person would have to bum a ride or rent a car once a week. Yeah... I ain't doing that.

I'm not sold on hybrids either, but as a devil's advocate attempt... Any chance the earthquake in japan affected hybrid availability and thus reduced sales over what they might've been?

Proof that Toyota what?

I like the way the DRL strip in the headlights lines up with the fogs. I could see that being very distinctive & cool looking at night.

I had to go look up an Equinox interior pic to see what you meant. I see resemblance, but it's not a true "parts bin" job. I can agree they maybe should have realized the resemblance & differentiated it better. For reference:

Sounds great! As long as there aren't reliability/longevity issues, this should be a great product!