Its time to fight back against osama and big oil at the same time (a pox on both their houses). I test drove a Toyota Prius hybrid car - gets 50 miles a gallon. Very futuristic. And almost silent! Nice ride. Roomy interior.

My transportation; $237. An enpensive Mongoose bike. No gas needed. Completely silent. Roomiest interior ever.

For everyday tasks, like stuff only a mile away, why use a car? Save gas, less pollution, and get some good excersize at the same time.

You need a car to haul equipment, right?

Talk about your Mongoose when it rains, Thasp. I had an old red Mongoose about 15 years ago. heh. Some dirtbag stole it on me.

It's nearly December, if memory serves, the old Geese are really suckass in 6 inches of snow

I want a car that runs on compressed air. Check it out at http://www.theaircar.com. Altho they'll have to make it a bit bigger and safer for U.S. roads... OH! And ofcourse with a built in MP3 player I can hook up to a wireless Gnutella network!

For short trips, you can use a Segway

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00007EPJ6/ref=segway_tn_left/002-0566919-0710424

However, these don't work well in snow either.

Sounds very cool, we need more car like that one, less depending on the drug called oil.
Pete Seeger changed his pickup truck to Ele. Riding with him in the woods is sooo nice.You can hear the birds.
Still Pickin'
Bill Hudson

I enjoy the rain. My older, lighter, cheaper bike, was the one I used for bets. I had to be in a skid at a slight angle with the brakes on in a rainy road a bit downhill for half the road without falling for $50. Man did I cash in on that c

ITs about time someone got electric cars working. Those have been "nearly ready" for about 20 years now.

Car power ideas:
Petrol: Cheap and dirty. Dont crash this.

Wankel(sp?) engines: Dirtyer than normal engines, but more reliable.

Electric:Cleaner, but the batteries weigh more than the rest of the car put together and it doesn't go far.

Hydrogen: For burning or fuel cell. You really must not crash this one.

Compressed air: Short range, inefficient, but very clean and crash-friendly.

Liquid nitrogen: Think of it as a steam engine in reverse. What happens if you crash this? Doubles as improved air conditioning system.

he hehe..... I like the dmusic car.... good for the environment and ok for you!!!!!

I've heard the Honda Civic Hybrid is much better. ...but I do like the logo.

heh...

i like the GM fuel cell car much better. It makes the purest water on earth as a byproduct

I agree 100 percent. The key is supporting technology like this to encourage growth in the field. It may be more expensive right now but look at it as an investment in your future (unlike a 401k). The more people buy, the more the economy of scale comes into play, the cheaper and better this tech gets. Oil is the biggest plague on our planet. It funds terrorism (BushCo and Osama), it is the biggest single cause of turmoil in the Middle East, it destroys the environment hundreds of ways between drilling and oil tanker disasters (poor Spain, it makes me cry), it is destroying our atmosphere, it is toxic to life and it is an addiction that we need to break our governments and businesses of. Fight back BushCo style and declare a WAR ON OIL! It's time to take responsibility for our energy consumption. All current fossil fuel energy consumption exacts a negative toll on OUR planet. Think about it....do something, do everything.

I've seen people come up with ways to power their cars with household chemicals (runs cleaner and more efficiently and extremely cost efficient). Oil is certainly bad when it's used as feul, but oil also makes our plastics... We still need oil, just not for the use of vehicles.

Moller's alot better!!! http://www.moller.com/

MOLLER ROOOOCKS!!

It's all very nice... But I need a truck to be a whole person.

i think the hybrid concept is totally brilliant, I hear that most car compnies are working on it now.
There's also the VW turbo diesels that get similar mileage, I just wish I could afford a new car right now, I'd go get one.

This technology really isn't anything new, it's just that the car companies choose to no release it because of the potential loss of jobs and profits in the oil industry. If they really wanted to, they could make cars that get 100 miles to the gallon.

I just wish they would make these electric cars better looking. It's like you have to settle for an ugly car for great gas mileage and all that other stuff that comes with getting an electric car.

It actually looks kind of cool up close.

I've always thought that the oil company conspiriacy thing was a load of bullocks.
car companies have been trying to make the electric car work for decades, but they can't.

No one wants a car that you have to charge up every eight hours, is unreliable in winter, is slow and under powered.
Besides, the batteries are highly toxic and the electricity used to charge those pieces of shit is usually generated by coal so the environmental benefit is negligable.

The R & D costs of designing fuel efficient cars is enormous.
If a car company is going to spend that kind of money, they need to make sure that people will buy the product.

The 100 mile per gallon carburetor fantasy is just that.
Until recently, there hasn't been a market for light weight, high efficiency cars(in North America anyway), now that people want them, we'll start to see them.

The free market is the sole reason behind gas guzzling vehicles, not a room full of mustache twirling oil execs lighting their cigars with hundred dollar bills.
Just ask Cryxan up there, people don't want dinky little commuter cars they want big powerful ones.

As for me, I get along fine in my 4-cyl. volvo but there is no way i'd buy a two seater Honda Insight.
The Prius looks roomy enough though, I wonder how it does in 40 below celsius

Fantasy? Not really. They make them already, and have for some years now. My friends dad's car had a carberator that gave him 75 miles or so to the gallon. I can't remember what, but something went wrong with the car and he took it into the shop. When he got it back, they replaced the carberator with one that only gave him 20 or so miles to the gallon.

You can't tell me that people have never wanted cars that gave better mileage, especially now with the way gas prices are.

who makes them?
Yes, people have always wanted good gas mileage but not at the expense of other things like power, reliability, size, sex appeal.
Fuel efficiency has only recently become a high priority among consumers and hence, the manufacturers are responding.

The logistics of carrying out this conspriacy are staggering.

first off, all car companies have to be in on it, even european ones, are you telling me that volkswagen and volvo have been on the take from oil companies too?

Even the mechanics have to be in on it, if your dad's buddy is telling the truth, my god, oil companies are wealthy but nobody has enough money to bribe that many people.
Car companies are in the business of selling cars, they don't give a fuck about oil companies.

If the best minds at Toyota and Honda can only make a small, lightweight car get 50 miles per gallon,(and that's with an electric motor assisting it), than these mythical 100 mpg carburetors must be pretty bloody fantastic to make some ol' chevy nova run twice that efficiently, in fact, they may even defy the laws of physics.
I think you watch too many X-files reruns

but if anyone can invent magical carburetors Americans can, hey, they played golf on the moon right?
Just show me some proof, until then, logic dictates that your dad's friend was exaggerating, or maybe inhaling too many gas fumes.

Oh please, we can send people to the moon, and clone things, yet we can't make carburators like that? Please. That's the biggest load of bullshit I've ever seen.

Gas isn't always a thing here.

My parents had an old LTD, really old, some time ago. On the highway, my mom got into a big accident. Her bumper got really scratched up. The other car was mashed in really bad, from the side. It was undriveable, no one got hurt thank God. Truck or no truck, it's still made with today's sh*t material to conserve gas. While the old cars that back then that didn't care about gas were made to be something that would keep you ok on the road.

I wish we still had that car.

it's been awhile since I took auto shop, but memory tells me that carburetors are primitive, simple devices, that's why they stopped using them in favor of fuel injection.

If some guy in America invented one that could make a big, primitive 60's era American car run twice as efficiently as the Prius up there, which is half the size, weight and represents the best that Japanese auto engineering has to offer, than that guy must have been some kind of genius.
I wonder where the inventor went, did the oil companies bump him off? Or are they holding him in some secret underground prison facility?

i know you're probably aching to find more reasons to hate big oil companies but where is your common sense?

As we speak, fuel efficiency is one of the biggest R & D goals of all car companies, they are all persuing technologies like hybrid motors and fuel cells as well as other directions.
If your conspiriacy ever did exist, it seems to be over.

The first car company to make a useful car that goes 100mpg will make millions, if one of them is sitting on the patent for your magical carburetor, now would be the time to use it.

Your theory is inspiring though, I'm going to go try and invent a spaceship that goes to mars and back running on a handful of banana peels, if you don't hear from me than i must've been kidnapped by NASA, please call Art Bell.

my chevy 4x4 get 6 miles to the gallon=D

By the way, Kneo, a quick internet search yielded this webpage which may interest you, it looks like the oil companies have bribed Cecil Adams too. http://www.phact.org/e/dennis27.htm

And, as a people around here have been demonstrating, consumer demand has provided the car companies(especially in the U.S.) with more than enough reason to make fuel efficiency a low priority, there's no reason to blame oil companies for the problem.

Hopefully that is changing, now let's all go out and buy a Prius and put a big "dmusic" logo on the side!

It's funny, this dude thinks we can't build carburators like that yet, we can build space stations. Hmm, funny isn't it? We can't build things which are obviously less advanced in technology.

Nice logic you have there.

In the early 70's there was a motor cycle carb built that was simlicity itself. 3 metal plates about 1/4 inch in thichness. The middle one slid up and down spring loaded, to close when thottle was released. It had a flow adjustment and a idle adjustment as I recall. compared to the standard carb it was faster responding, it was almost an injector. It gave much quicker response, more horespower, and saved about 20% on gas. And it cost half the price of a standard carb. I had one on a dirtbike I used to race. The thing was amazing. the fuel line attached to the outside plate, the flow screw was there, when you turned the throttle the middle plate moved up against the sping, making the amount of air and gas that could come through larger. It conneced directly to the gas tank, used no float or resevoir. It had one disadvantage in that since it had no resevoir if you got on really rough terrain with a less than 1/2 full tank, you might experience some sputtering. I know several people who installed mini fuel pumps to keep it feed and it was amazing...because it had no bowl, you could practically put it in any position and have it operate.
plus whne you fell down (dirtbikers do that a lot) it didn't leak your fuel out of th ebowl since there wasn't any. I wish I could remember the brand...

what do I know from snow? I ride a motorcycle, rain or shine. Great gas mileage, lots of room, automatic air conditioning in the summer. Best 500 bux I ever spent 20K miles ago.

Did we send a man to the moon? Was it Hilary Rosen?

I wish I still had a motor bike, but Canadian weather makes it impractical.

Kneo, no one said that we can't make more efficient cars, just more efficient carburetors.

Modern cars with fuel injection burn fuel with an efficiency rate of about 97%, even if you could build a carb that was more efficient than that, that most you could get out of it is a 3% improvement.

Your friend's dad probably had one of those vapor carbs that they used to sell in the back pages of magazines.
they did allegedly improve fuel economy slightly but they also backfired and had to be replaced often.
that peeza shit carburetor is probably why he took it into the mechanics in the first place, when they saw it, they threw it in the garbage heap where it belonged.

Automobile fuel efficiency is totally controlled by consumer demand which, in turn, is controlled by the cost of fuel.

As far as the space station analogy goes,according to YOUR logic, i should be able to invent a pogo stick that gets me to the moon in one bounce before I build a space ship.
Carburetors are primitive and ineffecient, the next step in their evoloution is fuel injection, not better carburetors.

And when the billions of dollars being spent on improving fuel efficiency by car companies start to pay off, we may yet see a 100mpg car, the true test will be if they are good enough for people to buy.

And yes, thank you, my logic is quite nice,(at least on this topic)

Touche` Shosh. I was wrong.

Leflaw wrote: Did we send a man to the moon? Was it Hilary Rosen?

Answer: Nah she just jumped over it.....