Re: Does anyone think that car companies should offer small engines in their luxury c
Car and Driver magazine has pointed out that gas mileage of today's cars could easily be lots higher than it is, but for one thing: the auto makers' customers keep demanding [i.e, buying,] cars that are heavier and have bigger, more powerful engines than they did ten or twenty years ago.
when cars get heavier and engines get bigger, several laws of physics corner you into lower gas mileage, whether or not the car is ICE, hybrid or Back To The Future powered.
until or unless more buyers settle for smaller, lighter, slower-accelerating cars, this trend can not be reversed without doing it by government edict, and there are a lot of us who don't like that approach.
my '04 Prius is big enough, fast enough, smooth enough and roomy enough (and tows a big enough trailer) for me and it's been giving me about 47 mpg in recent months of suburban hilly Raleigh, NC driving.
yet i'm surrounded by suvs and pick-em-ups with big engines which were bought by people who, for their own reasons, chose those vehicles.
yesterday a salesman proudly described his Isuzu as "letting him haul all kinds of stuff around, and still gets 17 mpg!"
17 mpg was satisfactory for him. 35 mpg when pulling our trailer is about the lowest i want to go. but that's me and that's him.
$3-4/gallon gasoline seems to be the only way this will change, and it's going to hurt lots of people financially when they have to buy a new vehicle and find out their old tank is now a drug on the market.
i bought my Prius in april of '04 and sold my california house around september of '05. i prefer to be ahead of the curve.
not everybody can, and obviously, not everybody wants to.
ps. my first car was a 12-mpg Corvette. it got better gas mileage than a
friend's Thunderbird (8mpg), but at 29.9 for Getty hi-test, a 20-gallon tank went from empty to full for under $6.00. but that was also 1969-1971. i operate on some skill and lots of luck.
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