RE: Fuel Efficient Cars (was Oil Economics)

From: Russell Blackford (rblackford@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Feb 06 2003 - 00:24:43 MST

  • Next message: nanowave: "hold onto your hats ;-)"

    Hello Lee: It's been ages, buddy!

    Yeah we do tend to favour smaller cars here, but nothing like in the way
    you'd experience in a city like Rome. Even around the inner suburbs of a
    city like Melbourne a lot of people feel the need to buy large four-wheel
    drives, which are traffic hazards in their effect on visibility...leaving
    aside issues of fuel efficiency.

    >From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
    >Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
    >To: <extropians@extropy.org>
    >Subject: RE: Fuel Efficient Cars (was Oil Economics)
    >Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 22:45:32 -0800
    >
    >Russell Blackford writes
    >
    > > Yeah, the Civic is a reasonably sized and reasonably powerful car for
    >most
    > > purposes these days. It may well be what I *will* buy next if I can ever
    > > afford to go and get a new car. Honda makes cars that are really sweet
    >to
    > > drive. So exactly why are cars like this so unpopular in the US? Is it
    >the
    > > felt need to chauffeur around a stack of kids in something that feels
    > > "protective"?
    >
    >Hi Russell! Yes, welcome back! Here are my two cents: America was taken
    >over by automobiles quite a few years sooner than most other countries,
    >and the large size of American cars could be a relic of that era. If
    >you build streets and highways to accommodate large cars, it could have
    >a lingering effect.
    >
    >There have to be a number of countries, like Mexico and Canada that
    >always got most of their cars from the U.S., so it would be interesting
    >to know if tastes in those countries more nearly resemble U.S. tastes,
    >or European tastes. From what you write, it would sound like Oz favors
    >European-sized cars.
    >
    >Lee

    _________________________________________________________________
    MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
    http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Feb 06 2003 - 00:27:28 MST