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Solution to Save Gas

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vrbryant;868072; said:
Amuses me when people dismiss it out of hand.
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I'm absolutely guilty of doing this to COTA, so I went and did my research out of curiosity.

There is a local stop perhaps a half mile from my house. I don't usually carry much, so a bit of a walk is no problem. There's also a local stop near my workplace, and I don't even have to transfer. So far, so good.

My commute is roughly 3 miles each way, and I can average (conservatively) 45 MPG to and from work. 20 days per month = 120 miles of commute per month, which means I use 3 gallons per month (rounded up) commuting to and from work.

A monthly COTA pass costs $45. So, as soon as gas hits $15/gallon, I'll get right out and buy one. :)

In more serious terms, it costs $2.25 per day (assuming 20 commuting days per month) for a pass. At current costs ($2.80ish/gallon), you need to be burning 0.8 gallons/day to make a COTA pass financially worthwhile. This, of course, discounts any cost of inconvenience due to scheduling, transit to and from stops, etc.
 
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sandgk;868224; said:
Small reality check.

What are the two biggest reasons for falling market share among US automakers?

A - Quality or Reliability.
B - Poor Highway Mileage.

Now handling the first problem would require some major effort. However, if any of the erstwhile Big Three actually had in hand technology for a super-efficient and sufficiently high-powered engine, addressing problem (B) wouldn't say, the last decade have been the time that it came to market?
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Well...

Lets say "A" is perceived Quality...

And...

"B" is a more recent thing.

Reality is... people until Gas started getting out of control... or... at the very least unstable in pricing did not want fuel efficient cars...

Anyway... I've been through this before... but... Hybrids only ever got to the marketplace because of legislation... they still don't sell well... and... in subcompact form... they aren't making the best use of the technology... and... besides that... from time to time... many low power 40mpg plus cars have been in and out of the market and didn't do well...

If mileage had been a priority all this time... there would have been continued development of diesel since the very bad ones of the 80's-- see Europe-- and you still get plenty of power.... and could get more if you wanted (check out the 24 hrs of Le Mans thread)

At any rate... people wanted SUV... have SUV's and suck down gas like its going out of style... its going to self correct at some point.
 
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fourteenandoh;868222; said:
If he sold this patent for 50-100 million dollars he is a fucking retard! Just as a hypothetical, say Exxon (or some other oil company) owns this patent. Wouldn't it show up on thier balance sheet? Oil was worth about 18 bucks a barrel in the mid 90's. This would make the technology in question worth much more today than it was then. An asset like that doesn't just disappear.
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He may not have had a patent yet. Besides, $50 million or whatever figure we're guessing back in '95 is over double that now...and, you don't have to worry about making sure companies pay you patent rights if and when you do get the patent. Tell you what, had I been the one who invented that engine back then and big oil or whomever came up with a $50 mil check, I say, "Where do I endorse this?"

As for oil being cheaper back then and thus the asset (engine) being worth more, keep in mind that the very thing that the asset decreases the consumption of is the very thing that makes oil companies trillion-dollar behemoths--fuel. Being able to sell billions of gallons more gas makes them more money than the right to an engine that decrease their sales of that very same gas.
 
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MililaniBuckeye;869252; said:
He may not have had a patent yet. Besides, $50 million or whatever figure we're guessing back in '95 is over double that now...and, you don't have to worry about making sure companies pay you patent rights if and when you do get the patent. Tell you what, had I been the one who invented that engine back then and big oil or whomever came up with a $50 mil check, I say, "Where do I endorse this?"

As for oil being cheaper back then and thus the asset (engine) being worth more, keep in mind that the very thing that the asset decreases the consumption of is the very thing that makes oil companies trillion-dollar behemoths--fuel. Being able to sell billions of gallons more gas makes them more money than the right to an engine that decrease their sales of that very same gas.
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It is very true that if something were to come along that would knock demand in half for fuel that fuel costs would plummet. However, the engine would be valued as the present value of the amount of dollars saved on cheaper fuel. Maybe to promote sales they would discount it slightly. In essence, the more it saves the world on fuel, the more it is worth (by "it", i mean the technology as a whole not one specific engine). That's why I said someone would be retarted to sell it for 50 million if it really is as revolutionary as you say.
 
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Interesting in that as I read most of this discussion very little of it centers on how we live, where we live, and how WE could do something... it's mostly about some kind of magic pill that will take our having to live differently away... and I count myself as part of the 'we'... it will take a new way of thinking and we're not there yet.
 
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star_trek_transporter.jpg
 
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cincibuck;869434; said:
Interesting in that as I read most of this discussion very little of it centers on how we live, where we live, and how WE could do something... it's mostly about some kind of magic pill that will take our having to live differently away... and I count myself as part of the 'we'... it will take a new way of thinking and we're not there yet.
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I wholeheartedly agree it's going to take a unified mindset change more than anything else to curb our demand for fuel. Still, say this revolutionary engine never went into oblivion and all cars now were getting 2-3 times the gas milage as current vehicles...we could still live our current lifestyle while being less reliant on petroleum and polluting our planet far, far less.

There are lot of technological answers out there that could be of great help, but they always seem to never come to fruition "for some reason or another"...*cough cough*
 
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