gang
I am a mortgage broker who owns his own company. To think we should be SURPRISED at what big time players report?

From my own line of work, all we as consumers hear is what we are being TOLD to believe by different high powered factions with conflicts of interest. Told different statistics any way they want to report it that supports whatever they want to promote. Joseph Gobbels would be proud of american journalism these days -all the way from hell where he now resides i suppose.

The car industry is no different. There is no way i believe that they cannot start making hybrids with optional plug ins that now skyrocket our gas mileage to over 100mpg easy. It all comes down to soaking us down for as much as they can for the sake of their enterprise. It all comes down to asking themselves -do we really want everyone driving around with cheap mostly electric cars? The oil companies would start pinching several loafs in rage , now wouldnt they?

Dont forget there are SEVERAL factions tugging at automakers behind the scenes that we are purposely not told about. Big oil. Administration needs. Consumer demands. Costs per vehicle. The administration itself starts spouting hot air about gas prices-but then does very very little about it, not in the short term anyway.

Its such a joke that Cal Cars and other consumer groups are going to take the market right out from under them for plug in options. Like automakers never thought of it first.
And in SPITE of all this , they STILL are cautiously snubbing their noses at a very basic common sense idea. Until of course Cal Cars and others start offering the conversion kits for a reasonable 4k or so. One of the auto makers will cave, start producing the cars with the option, and steal the market.

For now though, MPG from regular hybrids is the fad, so they of course will tell us whatever they think we can swallow. However, they already know that for every one of us who calls 'bs' on their marketing, there are 100 other consumers who take it at face value.

I am gratefull we have real world mileage charts, which of course ALL automakers know about, but dont put that into their advertising now do they? In fact, even if their hands are tied to the EPA testing -they dont even point us to 'optional' statistics such as real world drivers. Why? Because to tell you the truth, the REAL WORLD numbers do NOT make up for the trumped up cost of the hybrid vehicle. Not yet anway. Luckily, the trumped up value will also be trumped up RESALE value so u get it back when trading anyway.

just my .02

 

Articles like this have been written for 5 years and it's nonsense. A monkey could drive a HCH around town and do better than 26 mpg just by accident. To get that kind of mileage, you'd have to do it intentionally. They are either intentionally falsifying data in an attempt to sabotage the reputation of the car or they are so grossly incompetent everyone ought to cancel their subscriptions on the spot.

 

Tim

This is exactly my point. On the other hand, people can come on a blog and sabotoge the mileage just for spite or whatever they feel like it too. Just another word to the wize about journalism and propoganda in general.

I would suspect suggesting that a car get HALF its EPA is some ***** trying to mess with our heads. Even though many folks are getting or EXCEEDING the EPA ,which is encouraging , i tend to look for 80% of advertised EPA as real world.

Car companies should do the same.