[geeks] electric cars

[Michael Parson]

On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 07:18:42PM -0600, Dan Duncan wrote:

<snip>

> Diesels are hard to find in the US, and even manual trannies are getting
> as rare as hen's teeth.  The vehicles that offer 4wd (or AWD) and a
> manual tranny rarely offer them TOGETHER.  I ended up paying quite
> a bit more to get the combo.

GM almost killed the diesel market for cars back in the late 70s/early
80s by putting out a crap engine which was basically a gas engine
converted to run on diesel.  It is only now that the generation that got
burned on that is not the target market any more.  This, plus the new
lower-sulfur fuel that was just released, means we're probably going to
start seeing more and more diesels on the road here in the US.

I love mine, a 2005 VW Passat GL TDI.  Not the zippiest car on the road,
but it does great on the pump.  I got it new in April of last year, just
rolled past 30k miles earlier this month.  Lifetime average of 29.69
MPG.  I've done as well as 42 MPG on one road trip.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org