| Author | Message | ||
     Davegess |
2012 Focus the first year for the direct injection engine? I think they have been using this in Europe for a while?? | ||
| Sifo |
Thanks Dave. That's what I thought. I didn't know about the use in Europe. Good to know. | ||
| Ridenusa4l |
court which focus do you prefer?? and you still planning on getting the ST? Jake | ||
| Court |
I have 2 dealers trying to get the first ST. Deliveries are now pushed to late 2012, as of most recent announcement at the LA Auto Show. The 2010 and the 2012 are two completely different cars, each marvelous in it's own way. I was going to get rid of the 2010 when it hit 36,000 but it looks like it may stay, at least until next summer. The new E350 Cabriolets (with new motor and transmission) are a long wait now and, frankly, we are both enjoying the Focii.. I confess too wan g interest in the ST, beyond simply the novelty of it. The Focus Ti has enough git up and go for my dail needs and handles like a friction' go- kart. It's a ball on the windy mountain roads near Upper Grandview and in Harriman Park. I find myself going from Staten Island to Tarrytown via Bear Mountain Parkway at least one day a week. I have a couple videos I should post but I've got a feel they'd come back to hau t me. :-) For FUN ....... The 2012 Ti. For a ROAD TRIP ..... It'd be the 2010 SEL. I've put Whelan Avenger strobes in the Ti so it's only a matter of time time I'd arrested again.......thatll be a fun story. :-) | ||
| Court |
Interesting sidebar ......Porsche Cayman comes with 235/50 ZR on 17". The Focus sports 235/40 ZR on 18" ....... Yeah Ford! Downside is that I have to buy a set of winter wheels and Bliizzaks. | ||
| Aesquire |
Just a wee reminder. If you want electric cars, you need to make more powerplants. That said, I do like the new Fords. ( actually tempted to sell back the VW, they keep asking me to, and get a Focus. ) | ||
| Court |
:-) Yeaaaaaaaaaaah ! | ||
| Kenm123t |
We can understand the AGAIN part lol | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Electric cars are largely coal powered. | ||
| Boltrider |
So far, I'm not at all impressed by the Chevy Short. Documented house fires aside, the performance doesn't look good next to a fuel efficient gas sipper. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
The Focus is a really sweet drive, if you want more economy though, & even more fun too, get it with a manual box. We have a Focus C-Max which is basically a mini mpv on a focus platform. It's got the 90 horse 1.6l turbo diesel in it & a 5sp manual. It's mostly used as wifey's car & gets shortish trips a lot of the time but still averages about 40mpg. That said, I've had over 50mpg running cross country in France. If I was buying another, I'd be going for the 2.0l diesel with the 6 cog box for better motorway mileage & more grunt on the hills. The fuel consumption figures are pretty similar. However my next car will almost certainly be Italian, either Alfa or Lancia, with a bullet proof common rail diesel in, most likely the 2.4l 5 pot. I have a long way to go to be convinced about electric or hybrid vehicles. There's so much that's unknown one can't make real comparisons. For instance what are the extra energy costs & CO2 production during manufacture for a hybrid as opposed to a "normal" car. Ditto for the recycling at the end of the cars life. Then there's the overall energy equation. If more & more people go to electric vehicles, can the current electricity supply infrastructure keep up with demand? Given the opposition to nuclear energy post Fukushima where's the increased capacity to come from? I expect Court has a better idea of where we're at than most of us here. Following on from those questions comes the money! When Gov't revenues are falling, because people are buying more economical cars, what do Gov'ts do? well they raise fuel duty of course! But when the public are getting their energy off the grid, instead of the pump, fuel duty hikes become irrelevant as a larger percentage of nothing is still nothing. I've seen all this happen with different fuels within my lifetime, from gas to diesel to lpg. The taxation will follow the market of that you can be certain. Then there's the practical aspect of all electric, Renault/Nissan have addressed the problem neatly with an automated battery swap system. But what happens when you run out of juice? You can't do what Court does & climb through a barn window to filch a battery. Nope, I'll stick with the IC engine. Thanks again Mr Otto wherever you are. | ||
| Blake |
The electric car has very interesting possibilities, being able to recharge during off-peak hours and in some cases possibly even augment the grid during peak hours if needed. I don't know how much power demand fluctuates over the course of a day, week/weekend, or the seasons, but I know that large commercial buildings go to a lot of trouble to store up massive amounts of chilled cooling water at night for use during work hours the next day. The more we can balance the load on the power-plants, the more efficient our power generation can become. I tend to agree with the over the road professional here, Sir Grumpy. I sure don't scoff at wind or solar. At this point the Dutch are getting well over 50% of their power grid from wind. Surely a simple means of frightening birds away is achievable to address that issue, though I'm not even sure how significant it is. If I had it to do over again, I would have focused my professional career on energy generation; it's very interesting to me now. I just didn't care for thermodynamics at the time I was in school. Now it seems really cool, a hot field of study.  I still hold out high hopes for solar. It's come a long ways in the past few decades. The big joke is that as we are turning to sustainable means of transportation and energy generation, we are bound to find that nothing beats the horse, the clipper ship and growing food on farms nearer population centers. The most efficient solar energy conversion is by photosynthesis, and horses can run on it for a lifetime and in return produce wonderful fertilizer for growing more. The irony is delicious. Can it be that difficult to train a horse to not poo in the street or to figure an efficient means of dealing with it? Capturing and storing some of the energy released by lightning bolts doesn't seem an impossible endeavor. The alarmist "no more nuke plants allowed" response to Fukushima is ignorant. It's just not that difficult to make new much more robust and safe nuclear powered generating plants. The failure was simply a lack of imagination. The true environmental and human impact is yet to be understood. As with the recent oil well blowout offshore Louisiana, I'm hoping that the dire alarmist predictions for Fukushima will be found much exaggerated. I sure hope so. I think people using Fukushima to grind their anti-nuke plant axe are not being genuine in their efforts. When they shun electric power in their home, then they might gain some credibility. | ||
| Blake |
I envision that some day we'll be mining hydrocarbons from the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The adventure of working "offshore" will turn into one of working "offworld." | ||
| Chauly |
"I sure don't scoff at wind or solar. At this point the Dutch are getting well over 50% of their power grid from wind. Surely a simple means of frightening birds away is achievable to address that issue, though I'm not even sure how significant it is. " As long as the market is not distorted by Government: http://tinyurl.com/6ayhxfm Strange things happen... | ||
| Reepicheep |
It is really cool to think that the energy I require to commute back and forth to work on an electric motorcycle might be able to be provided primarily by solar power generated at my house and work. It feels *really* close now, and it would make me feel good to know I am getting back and forth to work without burning up resources that took millions of years to accumulate, and that my kids kids will very much need someday. And bring on the nuclear! Be really fussy about getting it right as possible and do it really carefully, but do it. Mining other planets makes a lot of sense as well. Most of them are already toxic waste dumps. Though maybe it makes more sense to just have solar but nearer the sun... it's not like there is a shortage of energy, it's just in the wrong place. | ||
| Court |
Our children are going to see a paradigm shift that will make the Wright brothers to Space Shuttle advancements pale in comparison. Wind and solar ARE energy . . . and there is an efficient way to convert them into the form we need them and to get them in the right place. We haven't found it yet but . . . we are busy developing the minds that will. Could be a We've an amazing history of germinating great minds and great thinkers. If you don't believe me and you are ever in NYC . . give me 2 days notice and I'll show you a secret. The doors welded shut . . but, to the driven, curious and inquisitive, it's transparent and more Nobel Prize winners have walked through it than any other building in the world. We are living in amazing times. | ||
| Blake |
>>> We've an amazing history of germinating great minds and great thinkers. You try to put germs into my mind and you'll be sorry. | ||
| Buellkowski |
The adventure of working "offshore" will turn into one of working "offworld." I can't resist the movie reference.    | ||
| Kenm123t |
Blake the Dutch are dumping the wind farms very fast the Gov Subsidies have been cut. The Green Boom is over The real cost for keeping the off shore wind farms is exceeding the projected costs by several orders of magnatude. If the Dutch have any other choice for power they are gone. Spain is also discovering that the real costs are much higher. I receive Gear magazine a late summer Issue was on wind farm gear boxes and rebuilding them. It is a major growth area similar to oil field services. Heat treating and surface finishing load faces still seems to have a learning curve based on how gears are made | ||
| Aesquire |
Solar is best done in space. The cost of the 2009 "stimulus", if invested in private orbital, would already have a kilometers long solar sat beaming power back. With the structure in place to build more, and more, until the Earth had a ring in geosync orbit, and oil takes it proper place. Feedstock for plastics, and the hydrocarbon content in amfo used for mining. Or, we could convert to thorium nuclear. Safe, clean cheap power. It's not hard at all to design a reactor to be fail safe. A thorium salt reactor ( US ) is properly designed with a salt plug on the bottom that is actively cooled. The power goes out... it melts, the fuel runs through pipes into safe size containers until you are ready to start up again. Or a uranium pebble bed design ( swiss/south africa ) can have the water ( or helium ) feed cut and just sit there, until you get the plumbing fixed. The antinuke forces have long been sponsored by a major oil producer. Russia. ( the old USSR ) | ||
| Kenm123t |
1+ on the pebble bed cracking Hydrogen for liquid fuels as a side line WHOO HOO | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2011/12/chevrol et-volt-battery-issues-growing-safety-findings-may -have-been-suppressed.html Just so I understand. The Government suppressed safety information about it's "own" product? Isn't that a violation of some law? Am I correct in assuming that there is a serious structural corruption problem when politicians engage in criminal acts can/will not be arrested and tried like any normal citizen? Untouchable aristocracies are not the American Dream. Oh, well at least no one has died a screaming fiery death because of Volt batteries. Yet. But keep in mind that Bic lighters have killed a few people too. high density energy storage has it's dangers. On a related note.... http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3980024/ School-turns-heating-off-to-save-planet.html | ||
| Hootowl |
Interesting... http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_VOLT_BAT TERY_FIRE?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Onstar tells them when one gets wrecked, and they send a team to drain the batteries. The gubment didn't drain the batteries after they crash tested the car. | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-global-war ming-may-be-irreversible-by-2006,26808/ | ||
| Sifo |
Onstar tells them when one gets wrecked, and they send a team to drain the batteries. And what happens when you don't keep your Onstar subscription? | ||
| Aesquire |
Temporary local Global Warming. | ||
| Rainman |
60 mpg in the city. 70 mpg @ 65 mph on the freeway through mountainous terrain. You can't get more green than a 2003 Buell Blast. 2004 Toyota Corolla for really sucky days. Fossil hog at 24 mpg city and 42 mpg @ 65 on freeway. Best of all, both are PAID for. And neither is accused of catching fire. | ||
| Hootowl |
"And what happens when you don't keep your Onstar subscription?" And what happens when the number of electric cars that need this kind of post crash care and feeding exceed GM's ability to respond in a timely fashion? You'd think they'd develop a system that automatically discharges the batteries and purges the cooling fluid. Crash detected? Apply big ass resistor to battery terminals and discharge over a 24 hour period. | ||
| Aesquire |
Really just a matter of time and learning. Gasoline is evil stuff. ( wish I hadn't used that handy fluid for cleaning as much stuff as I have ) It requires special handling and care in post crash safety. In a few years handling a car crash with mondo batteries onboard will be pretty routine. Most good Fire & Rescue teams already have had training, and the training will get better and more common with time. Heck the Prius owners manual has instructions on how to shut the battery off in case of need. ( accident, maintenance, etc. ) It's tempting to knock the Volt because of the politics and the fact that I ( and you ) are paying for a big chunk of each and every car.....the subsidies...... which can be annoying if you are not part of the "right thinking" herd beasts who are onboard with the Fundamental Transformation of our former superpower status..... But we really shouldn't go overboard. Complain about the real things. Like possible alleged coverups of the safety testing. (Message edited by aesquire on December 09, 2011) | ||
| Aesquire |
Best car ad I've seen in a long time. |
