Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Lightning Struck and I was re-Trained

Lockergnome (


This is for Ed who wants an American Muscle Car and does not (yet) realize that electric drive is exactly that.  The day is soon upon us when the power plant in our most muscular cars (from any country) will be comprised of steel (magnetized) and copper (wound).

This is also for Jay, but Jay's reason for dissing hybrids is that he has a 300 mile trip. (I say hybrid still fills the bill, but I back off because there is still a surcharge.)

This post is about my epiphany.

I'm a wire monkey. I've been kicking electrons down the line since I was five. Literally. (Scared the crap out of my parents.) Yet when it came to locomotion, I considered electric drive to be a revolting idea. After living through the 70s oil crises and hearing of the impending arrival of hybrid cars, I ASSumed they were glorified golf carts.

Then lightning struck.

What do YOU think of when you think of hybrids or electric cars? 
Think raw power.  Think the unstoppable torque of a diesel locomotive.
But imagine that kind of power combined with nimbleness, the responsiveness of a touch screen, the instant obedience of a light switch. Time to stop thinking wimpy, wimpy, wimpy and think hefty, hefty, hefty. Diesel locomotives are electric. They are what's called "series hybrid".

True, a train engine isn't for the oval (not as sporty as your beamer), but no one can argue that it's serious horsepower. (More accurately, torque.) What if you had that kind of science in a street legal package?























But for



Summary:

Electric drive is muscle.

If all you're fueled by is gas, you're just fartin around.

-- R; <><

1 comment:

  1. I gave the RX400h (the Lexus version of the Highlander Hybrid) a serious look in 2007. The economics just weren't there. The price differential was too high and the return too low. I bought an RX350.

    I've driven a Prius for a couple of weeks as a rental. It wasn't bad to drive at all; the CVT was the weirdest part of it. The problem for me was that the baggage area barely held two carryon-sized suitcases. That's far, far too small. Even so, I drove it in and around Sacramento, and not in my normal routine.

    My Detroit trip is coming up in a couple of weekends. My Subaru will do the job just fine. A Prius wouldn't, and an RX400H (or a Highlander Hybrid) would, but it wouldn't save me any money on the trip.

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