On Friday, December 3, 2004, at 06:35 AM, David Brauer wrote:
Well, great! But if you can get 150 friends to share six cars (hOurCar's
start-up) then you've got an analogy.
Problem is, those 150 folks are going to need more than 6 cars, and they should pay for them instead of expecting the taxpayers to give them a new Prius.
Come on; you have to start somewhere. By that measure, we should tell people
who doorknock in political campaigns not to do it because "one or two blocks
isn't going to change anything." It's a start and one effort among many.
Poor analogy- if you want to give more poor folks transportation giving them 40+ 3 year old Tauruses from the GSA fleet that can run on renewables and replace said poor folks 10-20 year old high polluting clunkers probably accomplishes more.
Could it possibly be there are other start-up costs besides just acquiring
the Priuses? Of course.
Like administrative overhead- perhaps they'll be hiring one administrator for each Prius?
Ah, the Taxpayer League argument against transit. And who's going to pay for
the repair costs of the sedans, fuel costs and insurance? Buying a car is
only one reason the poor don't have cars; operating costs are far bigger
over time. And my guess is the cost of operation for those poor folks will
be higher than the use-based fees of hOurCar which cover fuel and insurance.
Again, poor analogy and HourCar isn't transit. In low mileage operation like this gas use isn't much of a factor. As far as repairs, a 3 year old ex-fleet car with less than 50,000 miles on it won't need major repairs for years. In fact, these cars from government fleets are probably the best deal you can get in a car because the market is so glutted with them.
There's another reason this argument is fallacious: why can't we do both (or
all three)? Certainly, there are bigger wastes of money (if you believe
hOurCar is that) to fund your biodiesel.
Biodiesel is an alternative fuel while the hybrid is a very expensive bandaid to cover the inefficencies of the spark ignition engine. Theoreticly you could build a diesel cycle hybrid car running on biodiesel fuel- but the diesel engine is so stingy with fuel at idle that it's not worth the bother except for maybe switching locomotives. Biodiesel is a much more cost efficent technology because you don't need to buy a new car to take advantage of it. Thusly biodiesel needs little or no public subsidy in comparison to buying Prius at $30,000 apiece.
You could start organizing to get such a program — but beware of being ridiculed if you start too small!
Hundreds of Minneapolis city trucks are already running on biodiesel blends at virtually no additional cost to the taxpayers. Same for Metro Transit buses and Hennepin County's trucks. In fact, even at only 2% blends Biodiesel pays for itself by better lubricating the expensive injection pumps and injectors on modern diesels. My VW TDI has over a thousand dollars worth of fuel injection hardware under the hood, so a couple cents a gallon extra is a small price to pay to protect that expensive hardware.
A number of fallacious assumptions. First, folks won't rent hOurCars for a
day (otherwise, they'd be called dAyCars). They will rent them for an hour
or two or three to make trips not covered by public transit, or routes that
would be godawful expensive by taxi (wonder what their day rates are?).
It costs me about $50 a month to license and insure my 7 year old Ranger pickup. Even if HourCar were available in my 'hood it would cost me more if I used it only 2 hours a week. Again, HourCar is not a cost effective way to clean the air or provide mobility.
Also, by putting the hubs in densely populated Uptown and Loring, the assumption is people will be able to walk to the hub from their homes/apartments, pick up the car, use it, drop it off, walk home.
And I suspect Hawthorne isn't even on the bottom of the list of neighborhoods to receive HourCars.
No, but renewables are not all that much better for the environment (see:
ethanol;
You seem to be confusing renewables- the process for making biodiesel is totally different than that for making ethanol. And if ethanol is so bad for the environment, why is the Lung Association promoting it.
the argument there is keeping the cash in the US,
Given our precarious economy, not a bad idea.
This is still a good thing. And if 150 people can share six cars (instead of
collectively buying lots more cars they use occasionally), you save all the
environmental costs of building/maintaining those extra cars.
The automobile is an infectious as well as disruptive technology. Historicly if you made it easier for people to get behind the wheel people will buy cars and drive more. So in fact HourCar may turn non car owners into drivers that go on to buy more cars.
What's interesting is that car-sharing is a collective action - sort of like
unionizing or political organizing.
Except real organising comes from the grassroots rather than the offices of nonprofits and government agencies. I have yet to see masses of carless people protesting in the streets demanding the keys to new Prius.
It's easy to be cynical about all three,
and our society seems pretty hardened about the "s" word (sharing). There
are lots of reasons car-sharing might not work, but this isn't an expensive
trial effort. Let the baby idea try to walk instead of strangling it
(metaphor, people!) in the crib.
Actually HourCar is a concept with some potential that has been perverted into a scheme to sell and promote the Toyota Prius- note that the organisers make no mention of the competing hybrids from Ford and Honda. With the cost structure of a $30,000 car with $5,000 computer and battery pack HourCar will never be able to lower it's rates to where it can attract more than a few very PC customers.
from Hawthorne, the "hood where we know better than to buy hybrids,
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