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Tobias, NE Car Consumer Discussions

Various methods of greening diesels

by larsb on Mon Apr 09 07:50:55 PDT 2007

link title Jonathan Goodwin has built a car that can run on ethanol, hydrogen, biodiesel or natural gas--all fairly clean fuels. It gets the equivalent of 40 miles a gallon. And it's a Hummer. Goodwin, a biodiesel conversion specialist and founder of alternative energy start-up SAE Energy, is an emerging name in an unlikely niche in the clean tech market: making muscle cars green. He's already converted about 60 H2 Hummers from gas to diesel and about 100 H1 hummers, including a Hummer that can burn the whole menu of clean fuels. On Earth Day (April 22nd), MTV Networks' show Pimp My Ride will feature a 1965 Impala he converted from gas to biodiesel. And since nothing says Earth Day like a drag race, the converted Impala went up against a Lamborghini in a quarter-mile test. The Impala won. "You don't have to sacrifice the fun aspects of a car. All you have to do is change your fuel," said Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables, a biodiesel refiner that developed the Pimp My Ride biodiesel experiment with MTV. "It completely blew away the Lamborghini. It was only two-thirds down the track when the Impala crossed the finish line." The same dynamics underpin the growth in the clean car market. Manufacturers are offering consumers clean cars--a big selling point--but not cutting back on performance.

Ethanol questions

by seniorjose on Thu Jun 15 16:13:59 PDT 2006

By Reuters Published: June 15, 2006, 8:08 AM PDT "Ethanol" Alternative-energy buzz drove ethanol maker VeraSun Energy to a dazzling market debut on Wednesday, but investment strategists are skeptical about the chances to turn a fast buck in an energy form that remains largely a mystery to many Americans. Speaking at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit in New York, strategists said that if crude oil prices were to slump, the wild bets that investors have put on ethanol's future could breed the kind of pain that stung Wall Street when the Internet bubble burst in 2000. "There's a substantial amount of risk there," said Ed Keon, chief investment strategist at Prudential Equity Group. "There was a time when all kinds of alternative-energy sources looked like the great next thing, and then oil prices came down. It's very hard to say what the investment potential in some of those things will be," he told the summit. Made primarily from corn and sugar cane, ethanol is blended with gasoline, helping to reduce emissions and petroleum usage. Since President George Bush's call for the United States to end its "addiction" to foreign oil in his State of the Union address earlier this year, ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, has become the talk of the market as investors look for new areas to put their cash. Soaring crude oil prices have also helped fuel the buzz, which has sent even smaller ethanol stocks into a frenzy. Year-to-date, shares of California's Pacific Ethanol, which counts Bill Gates, the world's richest man and chairman of Microsoft, among its investors, have more than doubled. Meanwhile shares of Archer Daniels Midland, the largest U.S. ethanol producer ahead of VeraSun, are up 57 percent, compared with a 2.9 percent gain in the shares of Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company. VeraSun's market debut on Wednesday marked one the year's best-performing initial public offerings, according to analysts. But just as the stocks tied to ethanol have soared sky-high, so would expectations for the companies to deliver real returns. Strategists said ethanol was largely an untried energy form which could spell some disappointment if crude oil prices were to fall back sharply from their current level of about $70 a barrel. And with global commodity prices swinging wildly amid fears about a potential slowdown in economic growth, the risks could prove even greater. "According to some studies, ethanol is very inefficient to produce. It costs you more to produce than you actually get," said Tobias Levkovich, Citigroup's chief U.S. equity strategist. "(Ethanol) gets sexy again when you have higher energy prices. These are hot stories at any point in time. They (become a) fetish, and if I see lots and lots of stories written about it, it scares the heck out of me." Story Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Re: fintail [rockylee]

by gagrice on Sat Apr 01 11:06:02 PST 2006

Ronald Regans "trickel down theory" has had it's effects. It makes the rich "richer" I think you have mistaken which economic policy made the rich richer, while not increasing the wage of the worker. In 1980, according to Andrew Tobias, the typical CEO made 42 times as much as his average worker. In 1990 it had doubled to 85 times as much as the average worker. During the next ten years up to 2000, that amount went to 531 times as much as the average worker. Tell me which economic plan works best for the rich? If you look at the tax plans of the left party. They do not take aim at the real wealthy with their cash in foreign banks & bonds. They target the middle class to upper middle class. It is elitism that we should be fighting not free market economy.

Re: the same [nippononly]

by corvette on Thu Feb 09 14:06:41 PST 2006

Those titles remind me of things Tobias would say on Arrested Development (don't know if anyone else here watches the show).

Test drove a Jetta GLI - fun engine/tranny, not so great anywhere else

by blueguydotcom on Mon Aug 22 23:25:40 PDT 2005

Approaching the new candy-apple red Jetta GLI, I wondered if maybe someone had gotten really drunk and greenlit a car that can only be termed a styling abortion. Surely this tall, roly-poly bug shaped vehicle wasn’t a replacement for the Mark IV Jetta. The front has weird upward slanted eyes instead of lights and the honeycomb grill makes me think maybe someone spent too much time watching Emeril and felt a blackened sifter would look cool on a car. It doesn’t. The lack of fend flairs or and hard, edge makes the car comes across like everybody’s worst nightmare of the future after Ford dumped the Jelly Belly-shaped Taurus on us. The Jetta GLI’s got the same presence. Only taller. Really tall. Standing next to the car I wondered if this was VW’s new off-roader cousin to the Touareg. The slab sides of the vehicle are only broken by simple, plane and very small door handles. Otherwise the side of the car could be mistaken for a poster – it’s that flat and shapeless. The spoked, flat, banal seventeen inch wheels don’t help matters. Lacking any depth or shift in angles, the least flattering view of the car comes from the side. Out back the c-pillar rushes down to a stupid-looking spoiler and some of the worst taillights since Toyota’s Altezza/Lexus wannabe IS300. The trunks got verve only because so many incongruous ideas congregate on the woeful vehicle’s hindquarters. The Jetta couldn’t look any less Germanic in origin – nothing clean, tight, purposeful, sturdy or striking about the car’s appearance. Popping the door, and sliding into the leather-lined buckets I felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. The interior’s merely an update of the last generation Jetta. That’s a mixed bag. Strong, super thick A-pillars still block sightlines. The expansive dash actually forms to some kind of giant basin near the windshield as if one of those huge NASA satellite dishes served as a design inspiration. They took the bad dash of the Jetta Mrk IV and made it worse. The center console’s not totally different – stacked with stereo on top and AC down low. I’ll never warm to that kind of design. The stereo belongs lower, as it’s so rarely touched and its readout it totally unnecessary. I listened to it for about 5 seconds…I couldn’t care less about the radio. Dual zone climate controls continue to decorate the lower portion of the center stack. The AC seemed just as loud and worthless as the Mrk IV’s. Stealing a cue from Audi, the Jetta’s now got those weird plastic braces running from the lower stack to the center console. What purpose does it serve beyond adding more plastic for me to bang my knee into? The center console possesses two hardened, unforgiving mini cupholders (cupholders stink anyway). The last generation’s worthless, flimsy arm rest has disappeared, replaced by a large, more Byzantine and preposterous design. It bends, it twists, it slides, it converts into a Ginsu knife…the damned thing does everything but strongly support an elbow. I leaned on it and hard a loud pop…quickly, I pushed it into the standing guard position so as to hide my vandalism from VW’s employees. Oops. Doors close with the same reassuring heft as all VWs. The bodies on these cars always feel so tight! Nobody else produces that vault-sensation quite like VW/Audi. Those doors, mind you, seem lifted directly from the last generation. The materials seem to cover the doors, the handle’s the same, the window controls are mounted the same way (and as I always say, in the wrong place) and even the trunk/gas release buttons are the same as the old Jetta. Did they even bother engineering anything new?! Ah but get your hands on the steering wheel and you feel something right. It’s small, leather and thick – sort of like Dr. Tobias Funke. Slide a hand under the column and there it is…tilt and slide. Yeah everybody else is doing it but VW’s still does it best. Their steering columns can be arranged infinitely. Very nice. And those gauges, while Spartan in number, look great. I leaned back in the leathery seats and felt something great. Oh these suckers grip you. Very nice. I’m not a towering, corpulent American – sort of the antithesis of Joe Average – so the seats made me feel like Goldilocks: just right. A lumbar control made the seats squeeze me tight as if getting a hug from a female Russian weightlifter I knew…long story. Nice padding on the underside too. Overall they felt wonderful. But they were cursed with VW’s ergonomic blight: their version of manual seats. Manual seats are fine…simple levers normally allow forward, back, tilt of seat and maybe raising and lowering. Not the VW design. They’re so good at interiors that for some reason they go all Corky the moment it comes to seats. Want to raise the seat? Pump a handle like a milk maid at the well! Want to recline a bit, hope those wrists are built up as you’re gonna have to twist a 15 inch diameter know 1 entire rotation to move the seatback a degree. It’s arduous work. Only the front lever to move the seat fore and aft works as a human would expect. For 28k I expect normal seats or power memory seats. I depressed the shiny aluminum brake pedal and turned the key. The little 2.0 turbo burbled to life. It’s not aggressive sounding but it does sound tougher than the old 1.8T. I reached down and moved the shifter into D. Or tried. The button for controlling the DSG is odd and doesn’t move easily. Eventually I forced the shift lever – which is mounted in the center console – into D. I believe D stands for dorky as the car’s shift habits in D mode are delightfully silly. I pulled out of the parking lot and by 45 mph the car had me in 6th gear. Screw that, I slapped the shifter over to +/-. The shifting was in my hands. And a computer’s control. No matter as I slammed my foot down and felt the heft Jetta surge forward with authority. The little engine rocketed up and moved through the gears with video game precision. Holy crap this sucker flies. The DSG proved intoxicating. Shifts snapped by so fast there wasn’t time to consider they had occurred. Boom – next gear – boom – next gear. I was in fourth doing 80 and the car wasn’t trying. In fact the little grumble from the engine gave no concept we were doing anything that might be illegal. Not everything was rosy in the world of DSG/2.0 marriages. As stops the car enters a weird glide phase. I’ve felt it on other DSG/2.0 combos, so I know it’s not my imagination. The car goes to neutral and it feels totally uncontrollable and disturbing at first. Additionally, the paddle shifters mounted on the wheel are a tad small. These buggers actually control a clutch, so I don’t find them as jokey as the semi-auto toys on most cars, but their super Smurfy size make them a tad useless. I’d rather something bigger and make ‘em shiny too. I like shiny stuff. (continued)...

Re: Not so great gas milage on Accord Hybrid [backy]

by viet on Sun May 29 18:57:46 PDT 2005

Hi NewHAHOwner: Honda Inc. wins loyal customers by its sophisticated, advanced and "accurate" engineering. I have been driving Honda bikes and autos for over 40 years and still love Honda. I am currently having 4 Accords at home including a 2005 HAH. I do get 29 - 37 MPG, sometimes more, on my HAH. One of my Accord LX 92 that I gave to my relative still runs now at over 260K miles. This LX 92 was made in Japan like the HAH. The MPG depends on your driving style and several other factors. If you often drive over 70, 80 MPH or more you will have to sacrifice your MPG a little bit for your "power pleasure" with great torque and terrific speed. My young son's MPG on my HAH is always much less than my MPG because he is only 16 years old but he has a "61 tons" (transposed) right foot on the gas pedal. Sometimes, I let him drive it. I calculate the MPG on every single gas tank when I fill it up. For all my Honda in the last 20 years I always have achieved a few miles more than the EPA ratings icluding the Accord 95 at 200K miles when I replaced the engine and the transmission. Its MPG was so accurate. It was equal or more than the EPA ratings until its last day when the engine was retired and buried with sorrow and my great appreciating and admiring farewell because it was so smooth until the last second of its life. No complaints whatsoever unless I did understand that it had to go soon to shake hand with the Director of Tobia Funeral Services when it was almost 11 years old and it burned 1 quart of oil for every 600 miles. The old engine was replaced by a newer engine and a newer transmission. Now it runs again, so smooothly. It obviously saves me some big bucks. Its exterior paint is fading outside like a Texan cowboy in his uniform but inside its tires, brakes, shocks...are new to trick the car thieves. I let my wife drives that "little oldest turkey" as a disciplinary action to a person who is not knowledgeable about cars but so lazy to learn it and does not appreciate the Accord power. One of the 2 original brake lamps was just burned out after 11 years. Muffler, starter are still original and working great. In a year or so when my second son enters college I will have to give up my current HAH to him as promised and I will buy another HAH without hesitation unless Honda invents a better sedan model. Honda has never betrayed me. Trust me, NewHAHOwner. I work with numbers every day. I love to "numerically calculate" every nano-second so Honda cannot fool me if they tries to "blow a big trumpet with its bogus MPG on the HAH". To sum it up: I love everything be quantified. The real life MPG on my HAH matches with the EPA numbers. Of course, I usually get a little more with my little wiser "driving tricks".