Heh well of course houses are only required to be built to the code that was in place when they were buit. 50 year old houses will have 50 year old construction teqniques :) And 50 years ago noone had even thought about double paned nitrogen gapped windows, or they would have cost as much as the house itself...
Well Solar is going pretty big in So. California at least. Which is why some of the real grid problems are now being studied.
LOL, They would probably earmark me as a revolutionary. It is very hard to make people change their ways - especially if the change has to be fast and dramatic. But that's what the country needs.Maybe you should be advising our Energy Department, Wolfgang
Noob,
We have an Energy Department that loves to burn our hard earned dollars.
They stay warm because of the feeding frenzy they are on! Feeding on our MONEY!
Ok, besides not having public transportation(cities and towns are not closely knit like a lot of other places), and the gas prices being so high....all I ever see is everyone saying "get rid of the suv or the gas hog". Fine, but what no one seems to be realizing is that it doesn't matter much when everything else is going up in price at the same time. Food, milk, typical groceries.
And, about the "gas guzzling" suv's.....not all of them are gas guzzlers. The majority of people I know that have one now had it well before all of this BS started to get out of control a few years back. I was the same way. I got my truck because I couldn't stand being stranded in the winter and not able to get anywhere. About 2 years later, everything started to skyrocket, and a lot of us were "stuck" with what we had. Trading in something that you owe $15,000 on is not an easy task, and in the long run, you end up paying even more since you will never get back what you owe.
Here's the hard part....getting financing is NOT as easy as it used to be. I jumped through hoops just to get financed last week.
I got rid of my truck, and got a small crossover. It gets 31mpg. Ok, some say that's not great, but compared to the 17mpg my truck got, it's a big difference. But here's the catch......I will find out if I made a mistake when winter comes around at the end of this year. Saving money on gas doesn't do a lot of good if it means you can't get to work half the time. I get so sick of everyone that assumes there is no need for a truck or suv. Secondly, it's not our fault there isn't anything offered that has the room/convenience AND good gas mileage.
Early adopters of the electric crap...good luck. "Oh boy, it's electric, I don't need to rely on gas all the time anymore"......yeah, once you pay over $40,000 for it, and has limited range. Might as well kiss traveling, tourism, entertainment and anything along them lines away.
The government doesn't help at all. If the price were to get jacked up on purpose now, this country would come to a complete halt. The majority of people would not be making $ per day to cover the cost of gas for that day. Something has to crack before anyone will acknowledge there's a problem.
That is definitely a problem. They are trying to sell you their lack of innovation. This is my car in Europe. Plenty of room, AC, cruise control and the usual amenities. A trunk bigger than my Mercury in the US and 1300 LBS payload - and 40MpG on a gas engine. Yes it has only a 1.2 litre engine and 60HP. But it runs at 95MPH and what more would you need.Secondly, it's not our fault there isn't anything offered that has the room/convenience AND good gas mileage.
Your Renault would never sell here in the US.....people here are too obsessed with styling, they would turn their noses up at it and call it ugly. It looks quite sensible to me....then again, I'm about the only person here I know that wouldn't object to one of the Smart cars. I see only a few of them here, but for most of the year, one of them would suit my needs just fine. I'm not interested in racing anybody, or going really fast.....I'd get a motorcycle if I wanted to do that. I could see winter driving possibly being an issue in a Smart car though.
But most people I know just despise them, call them toys or worse.
Smart Cars - Good idea...but not practical for a lot of people's uses. I imagine it would depend on where you live and how much you have to drive.
I don't like them simply because, compared to most of what's on the road, the thought of an accident scares me. My little crossover makes that thing look really brittle.
Plus with the amount of snow we get here, I can't see it going through drifts or any real amount of snow.
I used to have this little Subaru Justy with 4 wheel drive. That thing went thru any snow and ice. Another 40MpG+ car.Plus with the amount of snow we get here, I can't see it going through drifts or any real amount of snow.
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