Yes they are! But you need to bash the crap out of your car to see the 0.15% efficiency gain.

Ummm, guys? Torch already reviewed this van?

The bad news is that in not too many years, somebody’s going to be saying that about our ECU reprogramming, overboosted turbos, and

That’s only with circuit boards. They won’t ship the batteries back because they don’t want the ships to catch on fire!

Yes, you can use AWD to pull you through a corner, and that’s great. For the experienced attentive driver AWD can save your ass in a corner, or allow you to push things to a higher limit. But people who drive in snow country get AWD because they think it will save them on ice and snow and this is where they are wrong.…

Ok, that makes sense. And if we could lower peak demand or at least prevent it from rising for a while, wouldn’t that make our resources last longer?

My 1973 Buick LeSabre can outrun a 2005 Buick LeSabre, they both have seat belts for 6 people but there is more room in the ‘73's bench seats. The ‘73 can tow more, has a better highway ride and the front seat middle passenger has a much easier time getting cozy with the driver ;)

There are definitely losses in power transmission, there’s no question about that. But the production of gasoline uses quite a bit of energy in itself, then physically moving it from place to place uses even more. Then there are the losses in the combustion engine itself, which granted are lower than ever today, but…

I guess it’s hard for me to consider my self ‘conservative’. More like financially conservative, socially liberal. There is no political party for people like me, at least not today.

I see what you are saying. Infrastructure will always need to improve, there’s no question about that. My point was more that we should be encouraging people to conserve, not because we don’t want to improve our infrastructure, but because the energy sources we have will last longer for everyone. It’s more of a PSA…

I’m not saying we shouldn’t use electricity. But do we need to waste so much for no purpose? I mean, just wasting it? My argument here is that efficiencies in production are a good thing and will affect everybody. What’s wrong with doing that? Is it bad to suggest we could cut back on our energy consumption massively…

Well said. Regarding using less vs being more efficient, I think if people were made more aware of the total savings we could acheive, more people would lower their thermostats a bit in winter and raise the AC setpint a little in summer. We all got by for thousands of years without a huge 78 degree house in winter,…

Well, the power grid would need to improve a bit, but not at the alarming rate many seem to think. Many people are charging their cars during off-peak hours, overnight, if that trend continues and power companies encourage people to use ToU rates, the grid is not going to horribly suffer and disintegrate in a month.…

Not sure what you mean by under the roof - please elaborate?

This is great news! Once you get north of Flint there is pretty much nothing on I-75 until you get to Mackinac. I’m headed up there this summer and it will be nice to not get run over for going near the speed limit!

Because oil’s death spiral won’t be caused by the world running out of it. It’ll be because we don’t want it.

I feel like I saw this video clip a few years ago. This isn’t new is it?

First thing I do with every car I have ever owned that came with an owners manual. I bought my first new car in 2012 - I’ve had a lot of used cars before and one new car for my wife, but this was my first new car. First thing I did when I brought it home was to bring the owners manual inside and read it front to back…

Good news for electric road trippers and people still Tesla owners suffering from range anxiety:

Of course. So at that point the ships need to consider themselves known targets and have their defenses on high alert anyway.