I get it, I do. I used to work a parts counter. I still have memorized the part number for an SBC starter motor among a few other things. But it can be SO difficult to tear their eyes and thought process away from the computer to look at YOU, the customer, and realize that I am seriously looking for them to think…

The worst. As a former parts-counterperson I apologize for the bias against you. I always cringed when the jerks come in throwing around the blonde jokes about the 710 cap... grow up guys! (part of why I’m a former- and not current- parts guy)

That sounds like my complaint about ordering coffee.

The worst part is that a high percentage of these stories relate to a bad counterperson, not so much the store itself. Unfortunately that reflects strongly upon the stores.

These things are true. But still 33 seems low for a car of that size. I wonder how the top gear cruising RPMs compare.

what’s your 18 year old Buick? Best I could muster from my old ‘98 Supercharged Riviera was 24 but my brother pulled off 26 once. The cam go-fast mods didn’t help my case though...

Yup, I agree. That’s why plug-ins will eventually start to take a mainstream chunk of smaller and larger vehicles. That around town puttering becomes nearly as efficient as all other types of driving.

There are still few choices when it comes to moving 6-7 people efficiently. It costs less gas for us to use two cars than some of the options out there. We are looking at getting a minivan only for the convenience of it, their MPG mostly sucks bad compared to our cars. The only exception out there right now is the…

My “efficient” car uses $20/month in gas and $25/month in electricity. Compared to my old 3/4 ton Yukon which used about $300/mo in gas... there’s a pretty significant difference available. Completely different use cases, but the difference in cost of daily driving them is vast. Now if only I could have gotten that…

Wow, I’m quite disappointed in the highway MPG rating for the little VW. I thought they did better than that. Our ‘08 Passat Wagon is rated for 29 hwy and is 1/3 bigger. 8 years later they aren’t doing better than 33 hwy?

Although they may be rated for “low-to-mid-twenties MPG”, the reality is most of them do so much around-town stop and go driving their IRL MPG is famously worse than that. Same goes for most large people movers. Plug-in hybrid versions of these will be the future. As long as gas is cheap most people don’t care though.

Interesting point. I get it. Here’s something else to think about along the same lines. If/when EVs start to become a significant percentage of vehicles on the road the gas/oil they are NOT using from the pump is now going to be available (backing up the supply/refining chain a bit) to use for producing electricity.…

Isn’t that what curtains are for?

What bothers me the most when car shopping is the salesfolk’s endless tirade of what monthly payment I need to be at. I’ve already figured out what the monthly payment will be for $30,000 over 60 months depending on the interest rate. So stop telling my how you can do $xxx/mo if we do this other thing instead - I…

Neutral: I’ve been driving my Volt for 5 years, just about to hit 70,000 miles and have been very happy to drive it every day. The EV market is real and here to stay, the vehicle was expensive to build and that’s why the $7500 credit _for the first 200K EVs from each manufacturer_ is such a good idea. It’s due to this…

The gov’t is recognizing that our oil/gas consumption is too high and there are better ways to power individual transportation. That’s pretty much what this tax credit is about.

All I can say in response is that there is a good reason my electric company replaced my meter with one that does billing by time of day and encouraged me to charge at night. Rates are lower at night because massive electricity production just doesn’t ramp up and down that quickly, and there is generally an excess in…

There is plenty of grid capacity. Most EVs charge overnight when grid capacity is not a concern. As home charging increases over time, capacity will increase to match. Nobody is flipping the “overcapacity” switch - this is going to bring grid improvements over time.

Totally agree here, but driving electric is awesome. That’s why I drive a Volt, if ai need to keep going I just gas up and go. If I’m staying localish I drive full electric. It’s the best of both worlds. Until high speed charging or fast battery swaps become widely available EREV is the way to go! Not boring and used…

I mean, really! It’s a good thing I’m still driving my ‘73 Buick with the fuel fill behind the license plate, otherwise I would never know which pump to pull up on, the left or right pump? Hey, it doesn’t matter!