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Technology Stocks : The Electric Car, or MPG "what me worry?" -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tadsamillionaire who wrote (148)	7/16/2007 3:01:57 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17551

They say that the cars made in the 70's did not get the mileage they claimed. Probably true for the most part. Sometimes true today as well, although with the new adjustments to the mileage figures, not as much. Car companies can make cars that get much better mileage. But they have to sell those cars. Most people don't care enough about mileage to pay more, or to give up the size and features, and power that they want. You might have gotten 51MPG in your old Plymouth, but I doubt many people did. If you driver a car very sedately and steadily you can get surprisingly good mileage out of it. Its hard to find anything about Plymouth Misers on the web. Google finds mainly sun shades that happen to have the car on the list of vehicles they work with. Looking for information about fuel efficient old Plymouths I found "The 1976 Feather Duster was an engineering (if not marketing) success, featuring many lightweight parts including some aluminum body panels.It had a slant-six with gas-miser tuning and a special exhaust that could achieve over 30mpg. It was, by far, the most fuel-efficient car in its size class (along with a similar Dodge model, the Dart Lite)." en.wikipedia.org Looking at Chrysler platforms en.wikipedia.org I can't find the Miser. The older platforms where rather low powered compared to today's models (and they where also less stable, had smaller tires, and less safety and convenience items installed) "Despite looking almost identical, the Omni and Horizon had few interchangeable parts with their European siblings. Aside from the heavier-looking American body panels and bumpers, the OHV Simca engines were replaced with a 1.7 L OHC engine sourced from Volkswagen, while MacPherson strut front suspension took the place of the torsion bar arrangement found in the European Horizon. The small Volkswagen engine used an enlarged Chrysler-designed cylinder head and intake manifold and produced 75 hp (56 kW) and 90 ft·lbf (122 N·m)." en.wikipedia.org "The EEKs offered a large variety of engines depending on year and model. Four cylinder engines started with carburetors and moved to a single throttle body injector or, for turbocharged models, four injectors, and ranged from 86 hp when introduced" en.wikipedia.org 75HP or 86 HP isn't going to sell in today's market. Even compact hybrids have more HP than that. And other small cars also have more. A Nissan Versa has 122. A Toyota Yaris has 106 (and gets reviews with comments about how its sluggish). A Honda Fit has 109. A Prius has 110 as does a Kia Rio, and the lowest powered new Hyundai I could find. These are the lowest powered cars I can find, most small cars have more power. About the only new car with less power than those old Chysler products is this edmunds.com The idea of a conspiracy between "big oil" and care manufacturers is just silly. The car business is very competitive. The oil business is doing well now, but doesn't always do well, and all the companies would have to all work together because none of them would want to spend all the money and take all the risk to bribe the car companies themselves. Its just an impractical idea, sort of like the conspiracy theories about oil sitting off the cost in tankers for months in the 70s to keep it off the market.