Mindy and I took a road trip this weekend to Wheaton. We drove about 1040 miles on about 26 gallons of gas (and we managed to find some of it at just $2.55 a gallon!). Basically we ran close to 39mpg average. Now as far as your normal gas powered car goes, that’s pretty darn good. But, maybe it’s not good enough.
When we where looking for a car last fall (our good ol’ Mitsubishi bit the dust), I was definitely interested in a hybrid. They supported my ethical belief that our dependence on oil is bad. They also cost a lot and I couldn’t find a used one in the entire state of Tennessee. Yet, I figured someday Hybrids would become cheaper, or at least there’d be more used ones available.
Today I ran across this guy’s post about his Toyota RAV4 EV (electric Vehicle). It runs on a big fat battery, no gas needed. All in all it’s pretty impressive in light of current gas prices. At the same time people have criticized EV cause their huge battery and energy intake is just as bad on the environment as gas.
Finally, there’s the cool hippyish idea of running your car on vegetable oil and grease. biodiesel very much interest me. I almost bought a tiny dodge rabbit (was that the model?) that had been converted to biodiesel off ebay in North Carolina. Yet, I also heard that rising demands for biodiesel is causing it to be manufactured, rather then just converted from byproducts, which is just as harmful for the environment.
All that to say, I’m not sure where I stand on the whole what vehicle to drive thing. I’m all for raising the gas prices a lot, that’ll force people to choose alternatives (but I’ll still search for the cheapest stuff). All in all, I’m a fan of biking (like I’m going to do right now from work, cause it finally stopped raining.
Hey there! Thanks for the link.
Check out the comments in the Digg post, and in the actual post as well. Some great conversations there as to how it’s a common misunderstanding that EV’s would create more pollution, etc.
Ariah, since you know a lot about bycicles would you mind writing an educational post about bikes. Kendall and I are both looking into getting bikes, but we have been putting it off because we don’t have the time to do the research on what bikes are good and what you should look for and if it is better to get a used bike and how much to expect to spend. We want to get quality bikes because we won’t buy bikes for ourselves again for a long time (the bike I have now is from when I was in 6th grade).