It always drives me nuts to see a big SUV go rolling down the road occuppied by only its driver. SUVs' abysmal MPG contributes to pollution and higher gas prices for everyone. That's why I am pleased that the new Ford Explorer model coming out Monday reportedly will get 30% better mileage. Not as good as my Prius, but definitely a good thing. To paraphrase Victor Laszlo, as he said to Rick/Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, "Welcome, Ford, back to the fight."
A 30% improvement sounds impressive (if you opt for the "ecoboost" model) but moving from 15mpg to 19mpg is still bad. 12L/100km is an awful lot of gas, no matter how much better it is from the last oversized truck on the road.
When you say "rolling down the road" I default to imagining the car rolling over rather than on its wheels.
I saw in the paper this morning where Ford is announcing that they will be selling all of their hybrid cars at the same price as their non-hybrid versions of the same cars. That is an interesting approach and it will be interesting to see how the other manufacturer's respond.
I'm glad it bothers people about what other people do and drive. My truck happens to generally be 80,000 lbs and about 4 MPG.
I said it bothers me to see SUVs driving around basically empty wasting gas. It doesn't bother me at all to see 80,000 tractor trailers. That's because I like to sneak up behind them and draft. Hope you don't mind. :-D John
