Comments on: New year’s resolution follow-up.

By: Jim E-H

Jim E-H — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:52:38 +0000

Like I said, I wasn’t disagreeing with the decision — we kept our previous car to the end of its life before getting our hybrid. I was just interested in knowing a bit more about the driving pattern you based the decision on.

Now a VCR without a clock — there’s an innovation I could go for! We have so many annoying clocks we don’t bother to set. I posted a rant on my personal blog a while back calling on all manufacturers of video equipment to simplify their products and stop including timed-recording features. Everyone who is capable of figuring out how to do it is using TiVo, because it’s so much simpler.

By: Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:53:55 +0000

Just curious — what are your driving habits that a hybrid won’t benefit from?

In addition to the energy needed to make the car, as Jeff mentioned, it’s the route that I drive. I have a straight shot to town, 50-55mph the whole way. There’s one stop sign, my where road intersects with the main drag, and that’s it. Somewhere between 10-20% of the time I’m stuck behind some fool tourist who goes 35mph the whole way, but that’s about the only potential obstacle. And, in terms of mileage, that accounts for the overwhelming majority of my driving. Which means that I’m missing out on regenerative braking, which is a significant source of the fuel savings in hybrids, but I also do very little idling, which is the other hallmark of traditional urban living. (And suburban-sprawl living, I gather.)

No doubt there are other benefits to a hybrid, but I suspect that they’re just not significant enough over a high-mileage non-hybrid to warrant the additional price (and environmental impact of manufacture), given my driving pattern. Lord knows I’d like one — it’s my kind of toy. :)

So what’s the plan to deal with the blinking 12:00 every time you turn it on?

I have — and I love this — a VCR without a clock. My wife bought it for me, perhaps five years ago. It’s great, in the sense that it has one simple feature (it plays tapes) and lacks the annoying feature (blinking clock).

By: Mark Brooks

Mark Brooks — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:44:11 +0000

Speaking of recycling, we have a cut off barrel (plastic) that we toss all the tin, steel, aluminum and plastics in. Then they get bagged according to what they are, and taken to the recycling center. Glass gets handled separately. Newspapers and other material like cardboard gets piled up where we have room.

One word about our recycling efforts here in Cumberland (as a county): clusterf*%k.

By: Jeff Uphoff

Jeff Uphoff — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:37:04 +0000

I think the biggest element is his equation was the immense amount of energy required to produce an automobile; discarding a serviceable car before its useful life is over in order to gain a mileage boost just doesn’t pass muster in terms of net energy expended (manufacturing) v. saved (efficient driving).

I’m driving a 1995 Subaru. It gets about the same mileage as his old Volvo. I drive fewer than 5000 miles per year, so there’s little big-picture sense to my ditching the Subaru in favor of a car that gets better mileage.

By: MB

MB — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:41:35 +0000

So what’s the plan to deal with the blinking 12:00 every time you turn it on?

By: Jim E-H

Jim E-H — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:05:54 +0000

Just curious — what are your driving habits that a hybrid won’t benefit from? I’m not disagreeing with your conclusion, I’m just wondering — regenerative braking isn’t the only source of increased efficiency in hybrids (the lack of idling is another big one, for example.)