OMG!!! Hybrid cars are a government conspiracy!!!

Rush Limbaugh talking stupid again...

Yup, that is it... companies have been spending millions and millions of dollars over the last several years in the hopes that Obama would be elected president.

Hmmm... Obama was president when gas hit $4 a gallon. Oh wait! It was G.W. Bush - Mr. "Let's give Big Oil anything they want!"

So, yeah... the Obama administration is going to force speculators in a shitty market to drive the price of gas back up, and is totally responsible for years of mismanagement of GM and Chrysler.

I love how he keeps mentioning Toyota and Ford's hybrids, while failing to mention Chevy's Volt. Oh wait, they didn't take any bailout money. What a douche.

While I know perfectly well that Limbaugh is an idiot, this is really a WTF moment, even for him.

Design and development of cost-effective hybrid tech took 20+ years and the auto market runs in far shorter cycles.

What is the sound of the world auto industry collectively rolling their eyes?

The can't believe this racist is still on the air anyway.

I liked that part of his argument, because it made me laugh. I thought the entire reason nobody was buying these new cars was because, under the same over-estimate, nobody's buying cars! And nobody's buying cars, especially the ones we REALLY want, because the entire economy tanked!

Of course, I forget that the economy tanked entirely due to a set of policies set nearly a decade ago, and has nothing to do with the last 8 years!

Actually, i have been waiting for hybrids for a long, long time. I want the technology to take off so that when i do decide to buy new to me, that i will actually have a choice in what hybrid car/truck i get. I'd love to see a Hybrid F-150, i'd be all over that.

TRUCKNUTZ do nut approve.

Once i do buy my hybrid, i will probably be stripped of my trucknutz, it will be a sad day.

Hybrids are awesome, but what I really want to see is ultra-light cars using advanced carbon-fiber materials. While these materials are more expensive per unit of weight, Amory Lovins points that they can actually cost less per car because fewer parts are required and they're easier to assemble.

If only a President were really as powerful as Limbaugh seems to believe they are. That's what always has amused me about these right-wing blowhards---they assign so much credit to the so-called liberal politicians or liberal media or liberal this or that, and it's borderline delusional to espouse such a thing. We live in a very complex, interconnected world, and no one part of it is massive enough to dictate policy to the rest.

carstration is no laughing matter.

Will they be light enough to be flying cars?


I'm still waiting for my hovercraft.

Ultra light cars are a double-edged sword. They are generally more fuel efficient, but are often a tad dangerous. I used to own a '91 Civic that was very light. Everytime I'd hit a shallow puddle, it would hydroplane. I've hydroplaned so badly that I've shifted lanes on the highway and almost slammed into other cars.

That and i have been in windstorms in Ohio that blow my heavy-ass tank of a truck around. I am not sure how ultra-light cars would fair in those types of conditions.

WTF - any president capable of forcing automakers to design and manufacture specific models BEFORE actually becoming president should be able to also convince millions of Americans to change the fucking station on their radio.

CF-component cars do exist, and they are incredibly fucking expensive. Amory Lovins (whoever he/she is) needs a reality check. Larger load-bearing CF components are difficult to build consistently on a production-line and even harder to repair after being damaged.

Any savings on total parts inventory and an hour of robot assembly time is totally blown out of the water by CF running anywhere from 10X to 50X more expensive than conventional materials like sheet metal, glass reinforced plastic, or conventional molded metal alloy or plastic.

A lot of that expense has to do with how new it is on the market as well as a lack of integrative design. Here's Amory Lovins(the world's most respected name in alternative energy and energy efficiency) giving a reality check:

I got in about 5 minutes, and he didn't mention carbon fiber, just whale oil. So i gave up.

Carbon fiber has been around since the late 50's early 60's. It's not a "new" technology. There are already cars with Carbon Fiber body components, like trunk lids, hoods, etc.

There are many types of carbon fiber. There is psuedo-carbon fiber which only aesthetically looks like carbon fiber but does not have anywhere near the strength or longevity of true carbon fiber. Many people fall victim to the advertising. People buy cheaper carbon fiber parts that are made from the wrong resin and the wrong fabric, and they're only looking for the "look" of carbon fiber.

The mold time for true carbon fiber is extremely long. Each car would pretty much take two to three times, if not more the time of producing a car from other alternatives. The long mold time, the proper components that go into true carbon fiber and the molds for the carbon fiber create quite an expensive cost for carbon fiber.

The costs at this point are still entirely too high to market and successfully sell an all carbon fiber car. The only one i know that isn't even on the market is a 3-seater called the Axon, that is due for release in 2010. It was supposed to cost around $21,000 USD with no luxuries, now they're talking prices of $40,000 with no luxuries, but Axon has yet to release a price. It still requires up to two weeks to make one component for their car. To top it all off, it still uses combustion technology, plug-in hybrid technology is an option, it's also advertised as a city car. They still haven't done any collision tests on it.

Silversoul7-

That's great and all, but he's talking about technology and processes that have not hit the factory floor and have not passed crash/durability testing. The cars he mentions are nondriveable show cars or outright non-existent vaporware with the exception of the mcLaren mercedes that costs a mere $507,500.

Remember what I said about

?

He talks a great game but leaves out the details, and the details make or break new technology in the auto manufacturing world.


Plus, he talks about the reduction in oil use in the 1970s, which was accomplished in the car world by average auto weight by 1,000lbs (1975-1991). This was much easier to do at that time, when safety and emissions standards were laughably lax by today's standards. The low-hanging fruit of eliminating body-on-frame cars and iron blocks and heads, making unit bodies thinner and lighter, and radically increasing the use of plastics has already been done.

Taking the next thousand pounds out isn't nearly so easy or cheap, especially now that you must have dual airbags, side impact, offset frontal crash protection, higher roof crush standards, mandatory tire pressure warning systems, mandatory stability control, OBD2 engine control systems, etc etc - none of which was required in 1991, let alone 1975.

The cheapest "car" using CF structuralsI am aware of is the KTM X-bow, which is $67,400 and totally illegal for US road use because it lacks everything I mentioned above.

Will the prices come down? Sure. Will people be making affordable CF-structured, US road legal cars in 10 years? I doubt it very much.

So yeah, Mr Lovins needs a reality check. Bowls and tubes are not core supports and quarter sectional crumple zones.

Well, I'll try and summarize the most important points in that video pertaining to this discussion:

• These carbon-fiber cars can be assembled with just 14 parts(instead of hundreds) that just snap together, thus eliminating the need for adhesives.


• You can reduce engine size and power train requirements.


• CF parts can be designed on computers and thermo-formed into desired shapes at dramatically lower capital cost than forming similar steel parts.


• 2-year payback when gas savings are taken into account.

BTW, the carbon fiber part comes in about 10 minutes in. If you don't feel like watching the video, you can look at a pdf file on it. As for carbon fiber being 50 years old, that may be. But that doesn't take into account advances in its production.

Yeah, I did watch the whole thing, and he's really big with the "can", without backing it up at all.

Less hot air, more results, please.

I'm calling bullshit. List those parts for me. There are only 14, it can't be that hard.

I should have specified that I referring to 14 major structural parts. If you click on the pdf file I linked to, you can see them laid out on a diagram on page 31.

Patience. I'd give it 10 years or less until we see these things on the road.

For all the reasons I said above, I seriously doubt it.

If you're really concerned about the details, you can watch his hour-and-a-half lecture at Stanford on this subject.