With gas prices looking like they are going to remain comfortably in the $4.00 a gallon range for a while and possibly go higher, people are looking for an alternative. There are probably close to a dozen variations on fuel savings strategies that you can use. Since most of us have probably done everything we can in the driving less area, it might be time to start exploring other options.
The next most obvious choice is to buy a more fuel efficient car. Little city cars like the Scion IQ are becoming much more common in the US these days. At 37 MPG highway, the IQ gets nearly three times more miles per gallon than a Ford F-150.
There is of course Diesel. With the new clean diesels, SUV’s from VW, BMW, AUDI and Mercedes are all achieving 20-30 MPG. A benefit of diesel is that you can run peanut oil from Sam’s club in a pinch. (authors note, we have a Mercedes diesel in the household)
T. Boone Pickens, the famous wildcatting billionaire from Texas thinks we should all convert our cars to natural gas. If you do a lot of driving this could make sense because Compressed Natural Gas or CNG is running about $2.50 a gallon right now. A driver of the Honda Civic GX CNG car tells me that he gets the same 30 MPG he got in his standard Civic and CNG is available at more places than we think.
There is even a little device called the Fuelman where you can hook up and pump the gas straight from your house. The Fuelman compresses the gas so that you get enough into your car to get anywhere. Unfortunately it is like a pure electric car because it takes hours to fill an 8 gallon tank. There is the other problem with CNG cars. The tanks are much larger and hold less fuel than a gasoline tank. Still CNG might make sense for that F-150.
Hybrids have really come a long way in the last five years. If you don’t believe me run over to South Coast Plaza this weekend and drive a Toyota Hybrid. Toyota is showcasing the PriusV and Prius Plug in. The Prius V has 64% more cargo space that a standard Prius and comes with a host of other options. Hoping to avoid an embarrassing launch like the Chevy Volt, Toyota took it’s time to deliver a plug in Prius. In the next three to four months the Prius plug in Hybrid will be available at dealers with a fully loaded model approaching $40,000.
The advantage of course of the Plug in is the fact that for short trips to the store, you don’t need to use gas. Toyota is estimating 10-12 miles of range on battery only for the Prius Plug In Hybrid for normal city driving. I wonder what the genies at Solar Electric Vehicles could do to that car?
I found the Toyota Prius Plug In Hybrid to be a very nice car. It won’t replace any high performance vehicles in my garage, but the idea of using solar panels on my roof to charge the car and getting 10-12 miles every day from the sun sounds pretty cool, especially since my wife and I both work with 14 miles of our house and can do most of our shopping along the way.
Another advantage to the plug in Hybrids is that you can use a standard household outlet and get a full charge in just over 3 hours. If you have a dryer in your garage like many Southern Californians then you probably have 220V available and can charge in just under an hour and a half. That is better than most Neighborhood Electric Vehicles or NEV’s. You know those oversized Go-Karts.
Electric vehicles have also made some big gains in the last year. New battery technology allows the latest models of pure electric cars to have a range of over 100 miles on a full charge. We have it from a good source that Toyota is testing a full electric RAV 4 for the US. BMW is also looking to release the i3 electric vehicle about the size of a Toyota IQ in the near future, along with the i8 electric luxury sedan.
Finally there are fuel cell vehicles being tested. You can see the little e Mercedes fuel cell car at the Classic Mercedes Center in Irvine. As soon as they let us test it we’ll let you know how it goes.
If you get a chance to drive the new plug in Prius Hybrids, let us know what you think!