Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jurgis Bekepuris who wrote (29303)	12/18/2007 2:28:53 PM
From: Madharry	Respond to of 78753

we have a prius. my wife wanted it and is the sole driver of it. she has never complained so much about a car. shes says looking out the rear view mirror takes some getting used and it sure takes awhile for the car to heat up. Unless you want the cachet of having a "green" car, I dont think its so great. Now to rant and rave- I watched about 2 hours of cnbc last night. kudlow seems to be leaving in some government statistics world. he sounds like he really believes that inflation is at 2+ %. He seems demented to me. Then on fast money they had a little old lady technician who showed the financials falling off a cliff and said that it did not bode well for the future. Somehow I feel like after being run over by a truck someone is warning me to be careful crossing the street. At least the panel of traders on fast money arent senile or demented, unfortunately I lack that kind of mentality to make 3 day decisions or buy the hot stock of the day. I guess I should have owned apple bidu google and intel and forget about the rest. Now I am grappling with first marblehead trying to understand how they come up with the balance sheet they do and how they ever sold for as much as they did. what were people smoking?

To: Jurgis Bekepuris who wrote (29303)	12/18/2007 4:43:27 PM
From: SI Bob	Respond to of 78753

OT (somewhat): I worked as a mechanic in an Import repair shop in the mid to late 80's and once refused to work on a particular car that came in because it was American, a particularly bad example of an American car, and my toolchest was metric-only. I called the car "junk". I'll never forget what my boss said to me. "They're all junk, Bob. Foreign and domestic. That's why you and I have jobs." His point being that no matter how good a car is, it's an imperfect machine. To someone like me who really has intimate knowledge of how an internal combustion engine works, it's a minor miracle that they work at all, and mind-boggling that so many of them work so reliably. Regarding whether or not I think the American manufacturers have narrowed the quality gap since the 80's, most definitely! There's still a gap, but it's more of a crack where it used to be an abyss. Unfortunately, some (but only a very small part) of this narrowing is because so many "foreign" cars are made in the US now. To cite an example from personal experience, I used to own a 2003 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle and it nearly became two unicycles because of defective frame welds. It spent 4 months in the shop during prime riding season because it had to not only go back to the factory to be re-assembled on a new frame, but make its way through a morass of paperwork and coordination that likely wouldn't have happened in Japan. Regarding hybrids, I own a pair of them (Honda Civic and Toyota Camry) mostly because I'm so fascinated with the technology. I'm somewhat of a tree-hugger, but that's not why I bought these cars. I just think they're really cool. And it's like a video game trying to get the best MPG out of them each time I drive them. Setting a new "high score". Best I've done so far is 55 mpg in 40 miles in the Camry. There are a host of reasons to avoid them, though, a few of which are: 1. The technology itself only yields marginal improvements in economy. You have to drive them very differently from gas-only cars to get the best efficiency out of them. 2. None are plug-in yet. The cost of charging the electric motor's batteries would be MUCH lower from the grid than it is using the gas engine and regen braking (which is just another way of using the gas engine -- recapturing some of the energy the fuel created). 3. It's nothing short of insanity, IMO, that these things use gasoline engines rather than turbo-diesels. Some turbo-diesels are so good (nearly anything from VW, for example) that they achieve better economy than hybrids yet have tons more torque when you need it. The Prius would be similar to the Civic except that I consider the Prius' technology superior. The gas and electric powerplants are two distinct units that can operate independently. The Civic always uses both at the same time because the electric motor is simply sandwiched between the gas engine and the transaxle. Power-wise, they're comparable. The Camry Hybrid ("TCH"), on the other hand, is far from simply being the Prius' big sibling. The technology is the same, but both the gas engine and electric motor are much more powerful. If memory serves, it makes a whopping 340 ftlbs of torque at low speeds. In other words, neck-snapping acceleration from 0 to about 44, where the hugely-torquey (199 ftlbs) electric motor starts being taken out of the loop. Its peak torque exceeds what my Subaru WRX STi makes, and it's considered a VERY fast car. Turn off the traction control and it can do a massive burn-out. Yet still get excellent fuel economy when driven properly. Still, without plug-in ability and diesel engines, hybrids currently give only a fraction of the benefit they could. If you're considering a Toyota Prius, you should just as strongly consider a VW Jetta TDI unless most of your driving is stop-and-go city. On the highway in the real world, Jetta's are smoking Prius's in terms of economy, plus they're quite comfortable and solidly-built.