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

To: RetiredNow who wrote (247458)	8/25/2005 11:07:46 AM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1572556

Mindmeld, To reduce our oil consumption from 20 million barrels per day to 10 million bpd, all it would take is increasing average mpg on our cars from 25 mpg to 35 mpg. To reduce it by 75%, all we'd need to do is increase average mpg to 40. I'll ignore the math errors and tell you that it will take more than just hybrids. Besides, hybrid technology doesn't exactly come for free. Honda Accord Hybrid, for instance, gets rid of the spare tire well for the battery, and yet, it only consumes like 10% less fuel. Ford Escape Hybrid might do better (it's a full hybrid instead of a partial like Honda), but even then, I don't think we'll get the 50% reduction with hybrids alone. Other things that are necessary: - Smaller, more lightweight cars - More mass transportation - More carpooling Only after that will we get closer to the 50% goal you desire. Can that be done in 5-10 years? Perhaps, but the way this "I got mine" culture works, it would take another energy crisis before people are willing to make these sorts of sacrifices. In addition, we won't be funding our enemies. Not only that, but I can guarantee you that if the U.S., the world's largest consumer of oil manages to ween itself off of oil dependency, then China, India and the rest of the world will pull out all the stops to do the same. See, this is where I disagree. China and India don't consume much oil simply because a much smaller percentage of their population owns cars. There's no reason for them to make the same sacrifices that America might make simply because they don't have much to sacrifice in the first place. Of course things will change as more Chinese and Indians buy cars of their own (and you can bet this will happen as we continue to outsource). But then once that happens, gas demand will spike up once again, and we'll once again end up paying $3/gallon at the pump. I support conservation because like you said, it will help the environment, and the terrorists will get less money overall. But I have no illusions over what hybrids can do and what is possible with today's technology. Hence my argument that we need new technology. Tenchusatsu