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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (229316)	4/15/2005 12:13:49 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1585085

Ted, I would agree except there is an unknown variable.......how much oil is left in the world. In the past ten years, estimates of reserves have been lowered. If prices shoot up because the oil reserves dry up all of a sudden, we'll just have a much faster shift to hybrids. It's the equivalent of melting the ice with a blowtorch. That will depend how fast Toyota and Honda can ramp up. When I read about hybrids back in 2004, the ramp up projections were for a fairly slow pace. That may all have changed with the increase in oil prices. ted

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (229316)	4/15/2005 7:57:57 AM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1585085

re: If prices shoot up because the oil reserves dry up all of a sudden, we'll just have a much faster shift to hybrids. It's not that simple. There are probably about 150,000,000 cars on the road in this country. About 16,500,000 cars will be sold this year. Figure somewhere less than 10% hybrids (probably less than 5%), a drop in the <oil> bucket. You need incremental change across the board, not just hybrids, to effect a real change in the supply / demand situation. If you put a $10K tax credit on the purchase of a Ford Focus (EPA estimate 35 MPG Highway) that costs ~16K, you are going to replace a lot of vehicles. Take the $10K from a tax on an Escalade (EPA estimate 17 MPG Highway) that costs ~$55K. The Focus gets a price decrease of 62.5%, the Escalade an increase of 18%. (Don't hold me to the precise tax/credit amounts... this is just an example). The auto companies would certainly take notice... and improve their fleet mileage. The change in consumption would happen very quickly, because of the low price of the high mileage cars. No need to wait for hybrids to become a significant part of auto production. John