Car Review of the Honda Insight

[Azhrei]

I spoke of my spreadsheet above. In it is miles driven per week so that's going to be different for each person. At the time both of my cars were paid off but I had a big honkin' SUV. So I wanted to see if it made sense to trade in the SUV on a new hybrid and, if it didn't make sense to by a hybrid then at what price would gas need to be for it to make sense.

It's a complex calculation. Did you factor in the tax credit you get for buying a hybrid? Did you take into consideration the (projected) resale value in 3 years? 5 years? What about the replacement of the batteries themselves (they won't last forever)? What is the difference in insurance cost between vehicles? What are repair costs like? And on and on...

[RPTroll]

I spoke of my spreadsheet above. In it is miles driven per week so that's going to be different for each person. At the time both of my cars were paid off but I had a big honkin' SUV. So I wanted to see if it made sense to trade in the SUV on a new hybrid and, if it didn't make sense to by a hybrid then at what price would gas need to be for it to make sense.

It's a complex calculation. Did you factor in the tax credit you get for buying a hybrid? Did you take into consideration the (projected) resale value in 3 years? 5 years? What about the replacement of the batteries themselves (they won't last forever)? What is the difference in insurance cost between vehicles? What are repair costs like? And on and on...

Insurance, yes
Resale, no since its a fluid thing based on all sorts of market factors
battery replacement yes (based on today's cost not future cost)
reduced maintenance for the electric yes (fudged the number based on a magazine article assumption)
repair costs - yes for the SUV but not for the hybrid. I assumed none on the hybrid and factored bumper-to-bumper into the equations
tax credit - no the existing tax credit was almost gone when I was doing the calculation and I'm not sure if they've replaced it with another.

Best guestimate (for that's what it was) was gas had to be $25 a gallon for me to ditch the paid-for SUV for a hybrid. Once again, that was a bit unfair to the hybrid since a gasoline car would have had a similar (yet lower) figure. The biggest hit was that you had to make up the car payment ($0 for the SUV) vs the cost of the hybrids at the time of calculation.

Note, I really wanted to buy a hybrid but they didn't make sense for my situation at the time.

[IraCarson]

I think the way to go is is upping R&D for finally nixing coal(clean coal? rofl) bio-corn, etc in favor of better solar, more nuclear fission and finally stabilizing nuclear fusion. Then we can work on electric cars because our source of electricity is no longer dirty... Then we need to worry about the Chinese and Indian pollution farms

I first want to say that I do NOT now, nor EVER want an electric car until and unless they can get up to the 1000+ (about 13 driving hours in a day, granted, I would want more!) miles on a single 6 or so hour charge. I am NOT going to go on a cross country trip and stop every 100 miles and wait 4 hours to charge the battery... For me, this is a line in the sand, no matter what other factors come into play.

I have no problem at all getting rid of coal if we can get cost vs price in line via nuclear. Solar just is not viable in the short term(nuclear IS AND HAS BEEN for 30+ years) since it only gives back around 400% energy return on investment(and as late as the early 90's you put more energy into production of a solar cell than the cell produced in it's 20-30 year lifetime.) Granted, I also don't have a problem with solar research or even deployment in some cases where it makes sense), but let's go with the proven technology in the short term (nuclear) while we work on increasing solar viability more. I

I am totally against removing corn as a grain crop used for food and diverting it to use for a bio fuel. This drives up the cost of the limited supply of corn, which while it is a renewable resource(which is good), is horribly dependent upon the weather and other environmental conditions that can ruin great swaths of crops during a year. Now, if we were to reduce crop planting of other plants to replace the supply increase, that's not quite as bad, but remember than crops really need to be rotated to maintain proper soil conditions, so you can't grow corn in the same fields 100 years in a row and expect the yield to remain steady.

For me, fields of solar panels in and around a city are not worth the energy gain vs land use at the current moment and wind is even worse (with the noise as well as size of the farms). For me, solar can only be an effective choice for communities where the citizens want it and dedicate land for it (I am thinking in terms of a housing development) or better yet, solar shingles which generally produce around 80+% of many household's yearly energy needs. This will suck in places where it is overcast most of the time(Seattle???) and won't work very well parts of the year in the extreme northerly or southerly locations.

It is complicated to use solar and other renewable sources.. We need better structures which consumes less area and generate more power.