WC Archive

I'm in a wheelchair and will hopefully be getting a car within a year. (I'd have to be able to drive with my legs -- strange but true.) I'd love to see a hybrid or biodiesel minivan with ramp!

I'd suspect at this point you're most likely to find a full-size diesel van able to run on biodiesel. Hybrid minivans don't seem to be on anyone's drawing board, and I don't think there are any diesel minivans available in the US. Unless, of course, you want to live in Europe -- you should have no problem finding a diesel minivan there.

They should be hitting minivans fairly soon but prolly not soon enough for you.

The main problem with many hybrids and especialy full hybrids is replacment of the battery pack. Its SPENDY. Thats why all these american companies are going slowly into it they are realy waiting on a better longer lasting battery and only realy doing work on the control and mechanics of hybrids while they work on getting that better battery.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that replacement of the battery pack is "spendy," or that the cost is even an issue. Batteries are covered under the extended warranty (for the HCH, at least, and I presume for the Prius and Escape, as well), and the estimated lifespan of the batteries is much longer than the length of time any of the hybrids have been on the road. By the time the batteries need replacing, I would expect to see the costs be fairly reasonable, given the advances in battery tech we've seen recently.

The reason that American car companies haven't moved aggressively into the hybrid space (or, for most US automakers, even cautiously into it) is that they've been fixated on the high demand and amazingly high profits for sport utility vehicles. Low gas prices in the US (and, even now, American gas is still cheap in historical and global-comparison terms) meant not a lot of mainstream demand for high mileage vehicles in the US, and the American car companies often decided to spend money on fighting government attempts to require higher mileage than on investigating how it could be done.

JC's comments above dead-on target. For those who remember the original wave of high efficiency Asian cars following the last oil/gas crisis, this pattern of US makers holding back has been a constant for decades. Innovation around long range, high impact issues like gas pricing and climate change is dominated by the creeping incrementalism of MBA's, "marketing" experts, and attorneys, all feeding the Wall Street beast. How Honda and Toyota manage to overcome the Street is a question that deserves rigorous comparative study.

The thing people forget about suvs is they replaced full sized vans and get far better gas milage then what they replaced. It wasnt uncommon for full sized vans of the 70s and 80s to get 5-6 mpg.

As for the battery they still have to make sure the battery actauly DOES get cheaper before too many of them need replacement.

And on the milage front the main trouble was and still is that the very people who like small cars and high milage cars are also the very ones who prefer imports. The very blunt fact is amoung shoppers who look for a 50 mpg car most wont look at a ford EVEN if a ford had 60 mpg. And it didnt take much market testing to discover that blazingly obvious fact.

You cant make high milage cars no one will buy from you. Now you CAN make high milage cars someone ELSE can sell to someone who wont buy from you... but that takes trickery and obfustication of just who made what vs who is selling what. And in the end it doesnt help your average fuel milage numbers anyway.

Oh to give you an idea what the suv replaced we had a full sized van of the early late 70s model and it got at MOST 8 miles per gallon and at worst 4.. it had 2 huge 42 gallon gas tanks... Do you know of any suvs with 2 gas tanks now adays?

The thing people forget about suvs is they replaced full sized vans

They also replaced station wagons.

Very good point, Mars.

Actually, wintermane, I'm pretty sure that the Hummer has two gas tanks, and it's probably not the only one. And, for whatever it's worth, the full size vans of the present day get better mileage than the old Econolines (etc.) of the 1970s (we had one when I was a kid).

As for the assertion that young buyers will only buy imports, that's simply not true. The Chevy Cavalier, the Geo/Chevy Metro, Saturns, etc., all sold very well in the 1990s and early 2000s, in large part because they were inexpensive (especially compared to the Japanese imports, which were hammered by exchange rates). The problem is, Ford, Chevy, and GM seemed to get stuck in the notion that a high-mileage, smaller vehicle was inherently a *cheap* vehicle. The reason why Hondas and Toyotas continue to sell so well is that they've figured out that just because a person wants a high mileage car doesn't mean that the person wants a plastic piece of crap.

And this cuts across generations -- my father-in-law, a retired schoolteacher, set aside his once adamant American Car-Only policy when he couldn't find an American vehicle that had the combination of high mileage and comfort that he could get with a Honda.

Actauly the suv came after the wagon had died down. The minivan replaced small wagons and the suv replaced the huge battlewagon style station wagons. And ya I did know the hummer had 2 tanks but then it is a hummer after all. Those arnt exactly SPORT utility vehicles realy they are uvs. The hummer 2 tho is a suv.

And ya fuel econ on large trucks has improved alot in 30 years much more so then the mid and small car fuel econ... odd that.

As for the small car thing they tested the water by selling the exact same car as an import made same place same parts... it went BADLY. So they retreated and waited. It takes a long time to change peoples minds and I dont know if even now they are ready to try again. They realy had to just wait a generation er a human generation not car generation ands wait for new buyers who might go for it. Tho frankly when I think small car I think toyota or mitsubawhatever NOT ford.