Oil Peak and overhype
This is funny: three posts in a row dealing with oil. Not intended, I swear.
Okay, today I'm looking around for things related to my VW Golf TDI. I come across a couple of sites specifically called something like "Peak Oil Awareness Group." More information here. According to a post in one, you should sell your SUV because in a couple of years or months, you won't be able to give it away. No kidding! Someone actually believes that.
One of them (maybe the same poster) referred readers to this, the Oil Endgame. I've read about this book before, maybe even tried to tackle this online version. 330 pages on the computer monitor isn't my idea of fun, though. Although it seems relatively even tempered (the foreward is by George Schultz, not exactly the Marxist-in-environmentalist's-clothing of-the-week), there are a few breathless moments:
The other misdirection to that statement has to do with the amount of time they sit on the lot. Toyota is not only a lean manufacturer, they are the lean manufacturer. I think it takes Toyota less than 2 weeks to build a car to order, and they don't build until they are ordered. The whole point is to minimize the amount of time a car sits on the lot. As soon as someone buys that one, the dealer orders another, and it shows up 2 weeks later. This is as opposed to, say, Ford or GM, where they order dozens at a time just to get into the chain. They all show up at once and then sit on the lot for months.
As an aside, I have been charting my performance. I noticed that the cost per mile for fuel finally tipped up from $0.03, where it has been for several years, to $0.04. Upon further investigation, I found that it had tipped from $0.033 up to $0.035, which Excel rounded up. The reason? More aggressive driving, perhaps? No. Starting in Fall '04, the price of fuel started going up and stayed up long enough to have an effect on my long-term costs. If I was driving an SUV, my mileage would be about 1/3 of what it is, but gasoline hasn't stayed up as high as diesel, either. Still, it would cost you about $0.10 per mile to run an SUV, meaning you spend about $10k in fuel for every 100k miles you drive, while I only spend about $3k. You buy another car, I buy a good computer.
Okay, today I'm looking around for things related to my VW Golf TDI. I come across a couple of sites specifically called something like "Peak Oil Awareness Group." More information here. According to a post in one, you should sell your SUV because in a couple of years or months, you won't be able to give it away. No kidding! Someone actually believes that.
One of them (maybe the same poster) referred readers to this, the Oil Endgame. I've read about this book before, maybe even tried to tackle this online version. 330 pages on the computer monitor isn't my idea of fun, though. Although it seems relatively even tempered (the foreward is by George Schultz, not exactly the Marxist-in-environmentalist's-clothing of-the-week), there are a few breathless moments:
The Prius is a 5-passenger, near-zero-emission, 55-mpg, ~$20,000 midsize sedanNear zero emission? Um, no, it burns gasoline and gets about the same mileage (50) as my car. In any case, there is another bit of misdirection in that same section:
Unpopular? Ever since it went on sale in October 2003, the Wall Street Journal has listed it as the fastest-selling automobile in the United States, flying off dealers’ lots in 5–6 days ....Well, not really. When it first went on sale, I easily test drove it and found it to be a complete dog. The dealer even smirked when I asked to take it out on a test drive. The original model had no cruise control (the Prius, unlike the Insight, was built more for urban than for highway travel). It was only in the next model year that they started "flying" off of dealers lots.
The other misdirection to that statement has to do with the amount of time they sit on the lot. Toyota is not only a lean manufacturer, they are the lean manufacturer. I think it takes Toyota less than 2 weeks to build a car to order, and they don't build until they are ordered. The whole point is to minimize the amount of time a car sits on the lot. As soon as someone buys that one, the dealer orders another, and it shows up 2 weeks later. This is as opposed to, say, Ford or GM, where they order dozens at a time just to get into the chain. They all show up at once and then sit on the lot for months.
As an aside, I have been charting my performance. I noticed that the cost per mile for fuel finally tipped up from $0.03, where it has been for several years, to $0.04. Upon further investigation, I found that it had tipped from $0.033 up to $0.035, which Excel rounded up. The reason? More aggressive driving, perhaps? No. Starting in Fall '04, the price of fuel started going up and stayed up long enough to have an effect on my long-term costs. If I was driving an SUV, my mileage would be about 1/3 of what it is, but gasoline hasn't stayed up as high as diesel, either. Still, it would cost you about $0.10 per mile to run an SUV, meaning you spend about $10k in fuel for every 100k miles you drive, while I only spend about $3k. You buy another car, I buy a good computer.
Labels: energy
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