micromux

Driving For Choice

It comes as no surprise that yet another automobile manufacturer is facing financial difficulty and must now rely on significant restructuring to stay afloat. These difficulties are endemic to a sales channel that advertises choice only within the confines of a virtualized monopoly.
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Full Speed Ahead

It’s not looking good for Detroit. Both GM and Ford have been going through a rough patch, and they are both announcing significant losses. But there are some key differences in the kinds of financial troubles these two automobile giants have gotten themselves into.
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Taking It To The Bank

During the early 1980’s the economy was suffering from recession, and GM seized this as an opportunity to modernize vehicle assembly plants using robotics and other computer automation. It was also about this time that GM partnered with Toyota to build an economical vehicle, and over the next decade they churned out over a million of these cheap cars. Soon after, GM partnered with Isuzu and Honda to expand these outsourcing opportunities for other core components of their vehicles.
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When Automobiles Attack

While we have been enjoying our 2005 Malibu, there are some technical idiosyncrasies that have manifested in the first two months of ownership.

The other night we had stopped and my wife was attempting to exit the vehicle. Fortunately, for her safety the passenger door would not unlock until the car was in park. While this might seem self evident, this is the first vehicle that has provided such an obstacle and could be considered a moderately intrusive feature. How does the computer know it is always safe to exit when the car is in park? It might be an interesting experiment to turn off the car while in drive or neutral, it’s entirely possible that egress of the vehicle may not be feasible.

Another technological marvel are the automatic lights, the computer is able to sense ambient lighting conditions and will automatically engage the lights. There is only one minor difficulty, I tend to turn on my lights at dusk by habit and the automatic setting won’t work again after doing this. So automatic is only automatic the first time, if you turn the lights on and then attempt to return them to automatic the lights remain off. This isn’t the behavior one would expect, but I am slowly adjusting to the automatic lights and have virtually stopped turning them on and off.

Of course, our other car doesn’t have the automatic lights and I now have a tendency to forget to turn the lights on when it gets dark. Maybe there is some aftermarket kit that can fix this for me.

Obviously, all of this technology is intended to make our lives easier and for the most part it accomplishes this feat. Just remember that the next time you find yourself unable to get out of your car or are driving down the road with your lights off, it might be easier just to pull over and turn your car off.

Hybrid Alternatives

This past weekend we stopped to fillup with standard octain at $2.19 per gallon. About 3 hours later we passed the same gas station and the price had gone up to $2.20. To make matters worse, the next morning on my way to work that same gas station had fuel at $2.21, so we are averaging about a penny a gallon every few hours.

A few days later, the average price of gas appears to be hovering at $2.29 per gallon, so while we are not really going up a penny every few hours there are definitely some ongoing price hikes.

All of this has prompted a discussion on trading one of our gas guzzlers for a fuel efficient hybrid. A hybrid automobile relies on energy stored in batteries for the primary source of power, and uses the gasoline engine to recharge these battery cells. A typical hybrid can get anywhere from 30 MPG to upwards of 60 MPG depending on the size and weight of the vehicle.

A hybrid really isn’t an environmental decision persay, this is something that could ultimately affect our disposal income in a big way. While sitting in traffic a few days ago, I noticed a Toyota Prius beside me. The driver had lound music blaring out the window, and before launching the vehicle at full tilt after a red light she proceeded to jettison her cigarrette out the window. Clearly, this was not an environmentalist.

Hybrids aren’t all about just saving money on fuel. They have the added expense of a large bank of batteries that must be properly maintained to achieve optimal gas mileage. A new set of batteries can cost $3000-$5000, and most batteries under regular use are good for only a few years. This means the full bank of batteries would likely need to be replaced every 3-5 years.

There are a lot of considerations here, but it seems clear that Americans needs to take these perennial gas shortages a little more seriously. It’s unacceptable to parade around town in an Escalade and burn 15 MPG, alternative technologies can easily double this mileage and this will have a dramatic affect on how long we can continue to rely on fossil fuels.