2008 Chevy Tahoe Two-Mode Hybrid Preview

actually general motors had planned to say hybrids were impractical to manufacture, that announcement was gonna be made after they had a hybrid prototype showing in May 2000...but to their HUGE dismay... the Prius was already on it way to the US by then after having proved itself in Japan.

 

Of course, GM will do the "smart" thing by pulling a quick Chapter 11 to screw the unionized workers and pensioners in America. The General will then concentrate on the Chinese market with products we'll probably never see here:

http://www.autointell-news.com/News-2004/O...ct-13-04-p3.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2004-0...-gm-china_x.htm

http://www.gmchina.com/chinese/index.htm

 

Don't get your hand too close to the troll, he bites and you don't know where that mouth has been

 

Ya know, I personally don't appreciate much of anything any troll has to say since I percieve such posts as there only to disrupt and agitate, but now it seems as if you guys are purposely trolling for trolls!

 

2004 model year basically. That "recall" was blown out of proportion anyhow. A good number of vehicles were recalled, but few actually exhibited the problem.

The reported number of actual issues was very low. Among the 33 or so official cases, several of them were cases where the driver simply ran out of gas.

NEVER run out of gas in a hybrid. You could do serious damage that way.

 

You're the first that i've seen actually report that number. All of the press releases indicated a hand wavy improvement of about 25% over the 20 MPG of the conventional vehicle... meaning about 25 MPG.

WHere do you get 31MPG? I doubt official EPA numbers are out for a 2008 model.

 

I got that number from a GM meeting yesterday infact. By the way I got 152 mpg of gasoline in my e85 tahoe with six adults in it!

 

There will be no quick chapter 11. So why don't you stick to subjects you know something about.

 

Wow, 152 MPG. Did you put it in neutral and have a wrecker tow it at highway speeds??

 

Good advice. You should too.

 

Don't worry, my booster shots are all up to date. My co-workers get a real giggle out of him too, especially my Asian co-workers.

 

Only 15 percent of the 'fuel' I burnt was petroleum, the rest was modified moonshine with very low emissions. GM is planning a huge rollout of E85 at the Chicago auto show in Feb. GM and Ford may build 1,000,000 e85 vehicles this year alone.

 

I'll bet. :lol: Having him on ignore is even better.

 

Actually, there were at least 600 confirmed cases according to the NHTSA.

And I assure you, I didn't run out of gas when my Prius took a snooze.

 

That's because the state of Illinois is planning to offer a $500 state sales tax rebate to anyone that buys certain vehicles capable of using E85 fuel... EVEN IF THEY NEVER ACTUALLY USE ANY!!!

FFV technology has been around for a decade now. And I see quite a few of them every single day, living in the land of ethanol. Yet, to this day, I have only ever seen 2 people at an E85 pump. That's sad. The reason for the sales of those vehicles has been for the automaker to collect emission credits. They couldn't care less if any ethanol is actually used. That's pathetic.

 

Regardless, for the purposes of discussions of strict mileage, it's really misleading to "adjust" your mileage number by the amount of "non petrol" that you put in your tank...

A few problems: most FFVs run less efficiently when using E85. Mileage drops quite a bit when using the ethanol mix. Secondly, it's misleading to think that the 85% ethanol is "free" and doesn't cost anything in terms of energy.

It's the same as saying that someone can get 200+ MPG from a plug-in hybrid. Yeah... but that doesn't tell you how much energy you've used really, or where the real costs are.

Moreover, this "adjusted" mileage number you use doesn't tell you anything about the effective range of the vehicle. In fact, a vehicle using E85 would have reduced range compared to the same vehicle using regular gasoline... which is an issue, considering the E85 infrastructure in parts of this country... meaning eventually you'll run out of E85 (quicker than regular gasoline) and have no choice but to fill up with regular, polluting, and dependent on foreign oil gasoline...

 

My ST was a flex fuel design too. But even in a large city area like SD county sources for these "alternate" fuels are few and far between making these vehicle useless in the long run as most people will be like I was and just fill them up with plain old gasoline.

Once again "American" car companies doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

 

You beat me to it.

Anyhoo if you peruse the www.fueleconomy.gov site, here are data for the Tahoe 2WD E85:

On gasoline: 15 city and 19 highway. Range 398 miles

On E85: 11 city and 15 highway. Range 304 miles.

According to the EPA classification, the FFV Tahoe ranks near the bottom of the BIN 10 tier for emissions.

The ethanol isn't "free" by any stretch. For example, all the petrochemicals used as fertilizer and herbicides, the diesel needed to run the tractors, etc. If we had to re-purpose the entire fuel distillation and distribution infrastructure to provide E85 instead of E10, would we even have enough airable land to grow the corn needed?

 

That's a key point, and it's the one I mentioned before as well.

It's not good enough for GM and Ford build a million E85 vehicles if there is not enough refueling infrastructure in place... people are just going to put regular gas in it.

Put regular gas in it and it's the same gas guzzler, only with teflon coated tubes...

And convincing people to put E85 in those vehicles is going to be a tough sell as well... E85 costs about the same or more than regular gasoline, but results in a decrease in mileage... so if your purpose is to save gas money every month, E85 won't help you there... it'll only cost you MORE because you'll get fewer miles to the gallon, and each gallon might be more than regular gas.

E85 is a good idea, but it doesn't solve all the problems... and transitioning to it on a national level will be a challenge.