bBlover

the accord hybrid is performance oriented and the camry hyrbid is MPG oriented. The camry is selling awfully well, I see more of those than I do accord hyrbids (which I barely see of anyways) the camry hybrid's markup is A LOT better than the accord's! I wouldn't buy an xB for that much! Pssh, they trippin!!! I do like that grille though.

VirginiaxB

all of you worried about the environmental impact need to do some research. Cows pollute the enviroment and destroy more ozone than all the cars in the world combined. Catalytic converters were supposed to limit pollution but have made it worse. I'm all for conservation and do my part with a 30mpg vehicle instead of the 8mpg pickup truck my work wants me to drive. We design green kitchens with products like bamboo, recycled countertops, and energy efficient appliances, and i recycle and compost at home. but electric cars are a joke. get back with me when the technology improves enough to let them recharge themselves fully as you drive (I.E. braking creates energy)and the cost is in line with other cars.

trinben

Couldn't agree with you more!!

bronxblaza117

i never really got the usefulllness* of an electric car helping the environment. the electricity supplied to the car is most likely from a coal burning electrical plant. plus their range is limited before it has to take ~4 hours to recharge...

scionofPCFL

I like what Dave Attel has to say about this, "what do you think the electricity comes from magic jelly bean farms?"

brambling

The range is even worse than that. You can't travel outside the range without charging overnight or swapping batteries. In a gasoline car you can just stop at a station and get another 300+ miles from a refill in about 5 minutes.

scionlife

I suggest that you watch 'Who Killed the Electric Car'. It doesn't answer all of these questions, and it is skewed a little by people that are very enthusiastic about these cars, but it is jam-packed full of facts about the industry in general.

Electric cars aren't for everyone... but for those people that have a daily commute in large cities it would make some sense.

As gas prices climb you will see more and more exporation into alternative fuels and electric cars. I think that in the near future someone will release an electric car that makes sense. I don't think a $70,000 Scion is quite that car.

t-ak-box

On the subject of this xB it is a interesting example of what can be done. I agree the price is very steep, and that it would probably have been better to develope a Hybrid system that would have cost less.


New Technology such as qiuck charge and flash charge cut the recharge time to half, even minutes in some cases.

And about the cost of electricity, it would be cents per hour of charge as opposed to Dollars per gallon.

And for those that would argue about the added demamd increasing power plants and increased pollution. New Energy source could be looked at and requirements could and /should be imposed to deliever energy wisely. This would of course lead to a much bigger debate, but a debate that our world needs to have.

Jbad

I'm just a little concerned with them using that type battery. Don't those blow up (Sony laptops anybody)?

That'd be one large fatal explosion.

GROUNDED

hydrogen is the bomb, honda is already making home systems that can seperate hydrogen out of water with an low energy electrolysis process whats prety efficient. plus there pushing for hydrogen stations.

hotbox05

i'm with ya.

noservice2001

w00t

Taugenichts

Just to add my 2 cents..

Bravo virginiaxB,

Overall I think that investing in all-electric cars is a worthy investment, but it is being pushed ahead of schedule. There really is no major use for having all-electric vehicles when around 70% of America's electricity originates from fossil fuels. Until we shift at least a majority of (lets just think about ourselves for right now) our power production to renewable energies there is no point. I can't wait until we start to see fusion breakthroughs (not fission) for use in power plants.
Pros:
+ No meltdown risk
+ No weapons grade byproduct
+ Deuterium (and tritium) for fuel is relatively easy to get (esp. compared to uranium)
Cons:
- Don't know how to make it work, yet...

Once we get power plants to be using mostly renewable energies, then we can talk about converting cars to 100% electric. Even then, it will most likely be a while before American's (just us for now remember?) are willing to leave our trusty compañero, the combustion engine.

And likely, the better investment would be towards fuel cell technology anyways

UBOW

Our hope is to install solar electric on our house this next year. At that point it will begin looking attractive.

Now, if I could convince the insurance company I was really sleepwalking when I shoved that 220v recharger chord into the fuel tank. Then I'd have the money for that eXB (or at least my wife would!)

lavabox

Background Information: Human Causes
Some of the human activities which can cause climate variability and other associated causes to climate change will be discussed here and these include: increased emission of greenhouse gases, development for human settlements, and deforestation.

Perhaps at this stage it is appropriate to introduce one or two introductory remarks about greenhouse gases. It should be noted that greenhouse gases are not completely bad. The major constituents of the atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen, do not act in the same way as the greenhouse package of carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, nitrous oxide, etc. In fact, if it were not for the small existing concentrations of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, life on earth would be very harsh indeed. It is estimated that without the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the average global temperature would be about 34 degrees lower than it is. Much of the earth's surface would be ice covered and the Pacific Islands would not exist. Certain gases in the atmosphere are now the objects of concern because small concentrations are so very effective in raising surface temperatures on the Earth, perhaps even a modest increase in their concentration would have dangerous consequences. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Carbon dioxide plus 30 percent
Methane plus 145 percent
Nitrous oxide plus 15 percent.
This is the basis of concern about global warming.

Fossil Fuel Use: Carbon Dioxide
We burn coal, oil, and natural gas to heat our homes, run our cars, light our streets, and power our factories. These fuels are called fossil fuels because they are the remains of plants that lived, died, and decayed millions of years ago. Once used, they will not be replaced. Living plants depend on carbon dioxide in the air around them. In fact, they use energy from sunlight to transform the gas into carbohydrates (their food) and oxygen (a byproduct). Scientists use the following equation to tell this story:

CO2 + 2H20 -- CH402 + 02.

This means, carbon dioxide) and water are changed by the sun's energy to a carbohydrate building block and oxygen. Plants consume the carbohydrates, using them to make new tissue. Animals, including human beings, consume the oxygen; we breathe it. Burning both living and dead plants releases their carbon. Depending on the temperature of the heat source, the carbon is given off either in the form of particles or as a gas. When given off as a gas, the carbon combines with atmospheric oxygen to form carbon dioxide.

Burning of coal generates the electricity to light a 100-watt bulb approximately 24 hours. For every kilogram of coal, approximately 16 grams of carbon dioxide go into the atmosphere. Can you calculate how much carbon dioxide is generated in lighting your home or classroom in a day? A month? A year?

Consider another fossil fuel, gasoline/petrol, which is made from oil and we are using it everyday. Burning one gallon of gasoline/petrol generates approximately 9 kilograms of carbon dioxide. There are 500 million (5 x 101) gasoline-consuming motor vehicles in the world today. If present trends continue, the number of cars on Earth will double in the next thirty years to one billion (1 x 101). This means the potential for increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is very high.

To understand a single family's contribution to this increase, you can calculate how much carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere by operating your family car over one year. For example, if your family uses 10 gallons of gasoline each week (or 520 gallons each year), approximately 5000 kilograms of carbon dioxide are produced in one year from the operation of your car alone. To determine the total amount of carbon dioxide generated by automobiles worldwide, multiply this number by 5 x 10.

We burn fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) to heat our homes, run our cars, light our streets, and power our factories. When fossil fuels are burned, the carbon in them combines with oxygen and forms carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is then released into the air. As mentioned earlier, for each kilogram of coal burned nearly 3 kilograms of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and for each gallon of gasoline burned approximately 9 kilograms of carbon dioxide is released. There are 500 million gasoline/petrol consuming vehicles in the world today. In addition, fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) energize most of the world's factories.

These vehicles and factories release enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels contributes too much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Between the years 1870 and 1996, the average concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide increased from 290 ppm (parts per million) to 395 PPM Carbon dioxide efficiently absorbs and re-emits energy radiated from the atmosphere and Earth's surface. This can lead to a global warming of the atmosphere. The global average temperature has already warmed 0.5 degrees Celsius in the last century and will continue to increase between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius in the next. If we continue to increase carbon dioxide emissions, these numbers could increase even more quickly.

Methane
Methane in the atmosphere traps heat 20 times more effectively than carbon dioxide. This means that each molecule of methane traps as much heat as 20 molecules of carbon dioxide.

Where Does Methane Come From?
Methane is made by bacteria that thrive in wet oil, so it is released from garbage landfills and open dumps. It also leaks out of the ground as coal, oil, and natural gas are mined. Instead of allowing it to escape, we could collect methane and use it as fuel. Methane power plants do exist, one is located near a landfill site in Corvallis, Oregon, USA. Pilot plants are in use elsewhere, e.g., in Australia. And then, there's rice. Rice, the world's most important grain crop, feeds one-third of its people. Over the last 45 years, farmland used for rice has doubled, and most rice grows in flooded fields. It is from this waterlogged soil that much methane is released.

There are some surprises. It often happens, when dealing with natural systems, that we find them to be far more complex and clever than we had expected. The natural world is indeed a wonderful system. Consequently, when we humans interfere and attempt to "improve" matters, our actions prove to be less efficient than expected. We seem simply to shift problems to another area, rather than solve them. For example in the fossil fuel debate, there has been much lobbying for "cleaner"' power generation and much promotion has been made of the "clean" power of hydroelectricity. Recently it has been discovered that in the first 30 or so years of the life of an average hydroelectric installation, the release of methane from the vegetation drowned in the reservoir is possibly as "dirty" as the equivalent use of fossil fuel (to produce the same power output).

Livestock are another source of methane. Every time cattle, sheep, and goats burp, methane is released. Bacteria in these animals' intestines break down the food they eat, converting some of it to methane gas. This is also true of cud-chewing animals such as camels, buffalo, and deer. A cow, for instance, can belch or otherwise release methane from its stomach or bowels amounting to one-tenth of a kilogram each day, and that represents a lot of gas. Multiply this figure by 1.3 billion, since there are so many cattle now in existence, each burping several times per minute (believe it or not), and you will begin to have some idea of the scale of the problem.

Consider now the population growth which has occurred since the mid-eighteen hundreds. In the late 1990s, the world's population of about 6 billion was growing at a rate of more than 3.1 percent each year, faster than it has ever done. Although, predictions see a plateau level being achieved by the year 2200. Statistical forecasts show that the expected level of this plateau will be at 11 billion, so that the present population of the world is expected to almost double in this time scale.

Even the increased demand for meat and dairy products to feed the world's rapidly growing population has led to a doubling of the number of cattle in the last 10 years. Similar increases will doubtless have been experienced in other domesticated animals. Although advances have been made through the years in the efficiency of agriculture and other means of providing food for the world's population, reference to the enormous rate of its growth must mean serious damage to the environment is occurring in one way or another. Some damage may be permanent while other cases may recover after a long period. For example, methane is reputed to have a residence time of 10 years, which means that it stays suspended in the atmosphere for such a period before it changes form.

Aerosols
In addition to gases, there are many particles in the atmosphere. These particles are called aerosols, and they can be solid or liquid. There are many sources of atmospheric aerosols. Wind picks up dust from the surface and carries it into the atmosphere. Small saltwater drops thrown into the air from ocean waves eventually evaporate and leave behind microscopic salt particles suspended in the air. Smoke from fires is a common source of atmospheric aerosol. Volcanoes may erupt tons of fine ash particles into the atmosphere. Gases such as sulfur dioxide may combine with water in the atmosphere to form tiny droplets of sulfuric acid. It is good that there are some aerosols in the atmosphere because they can act as surfaces on which water vapor condenses to form clouds and eventually produce rain. However, many aerosols, particularly most human-made ones, are pollutants. That is, they are a hazard to life forms.


Anthropogenic aerosols tend to produce negative radiative forcing. Significant progress has been made in recent years regarding the climatic impact of the tropospheric aerosols (such as microscopic airborne sulfate particles) resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels, biomass burning, and other sources. Anthropogenic aerosols have led to a negative direct forcing of about 0.5 watts (watts per square meter: a unit for amount of radiation received by a unit area of surface) as a global average, and possibly also to a negative indirect forcing of a similar magnitude.

We may consider that locally, the aerosol forcing can be large enough to more than offset the positive forcing due to greenhouse gases though anthropogenic aerosols are very short-lived in the atmosphere, hence their radiative forcing adjusts rapidly to increases or decreases in emissions. They do, however, represent one of the few agents which serve to counteract the effect of greenhouse gases. Sphere can also affect climate because they can reflect, and aerosols (small particles) in the atmosphere absorb radiation. The most important natural perturbations result from explosive volcanic eruptions which affect concentrations in the lower stratosphere.

Ozone
The ozone story is a little more complicated than that of most of the other greenhouse gases since it plays a multiple role depending upon its location in the atmospheric system and in its distribution in latitude.

At the earth's surface, ozone is known to be toxic to living matter, including human beings, plants, and in particular forests. In the stratosphere however, it has a double role, operating as a greenhouse gas, just like carbon dioxide or the ChloroFluoroCarbons (CFCs) on the one hand but as a filter of ultraviolet radiation on the other. It is perhaps in this latter role that there has been much focus in recent years. Despite its classification as a greenhouse gas, ozone is not happy in the company of many of its class mates. In certain regions, it has been ascertained that a significant decrease in ozone has occurred due to the destruction of ozone by CFCs and other gases such as halons, raising concern that many aspects of life on our planet may begin to suffer from insufficient filtering of the incoming ultraviolet radiation. This leads to yet another level of concern since, if this danger materializes, then there is a severe risk to marine life in the upper layers of the ocean, which in turn, will re

Since the late 1970s when the ozone hole of the Antarctic was discovered, the ozone saga has been vigorously pursued although long data series were seriously lacking. The evidence suggested that in the tropics no significant change was found over time. Mid-latitudes showed a small mean decrease in ozone concentration of 0.25 percent per year over the total century, but large changes were found in the troposphere, say the lower 10 to 15 kilometers of the atmosphere. It is thought that ozone concentrations in the troposphere in the Northern Hemisphere have increased since pre-industrial times due to human activity and over a 20-year period from the late 1970s, in the mid latitudes of that hemisphere, they seem to have increased by about 10 percent. However by the mid-1990s, the message coming from the international scientific community was that this upward trend now seems to have at least slowed, if not disappeared altogether.

The main ozone problem still concentrates on the Polar regions and the Antarctic in particular. While in the 20-year survey, the northern polar region showed a decrease in ozone of less than half a percentage point per year, the Antarctic gave a figure of 2 percent per year. Evidence suggests that the products of human activity are ultimately responsible for the Antarctic ozone hole in that chlorine and bromine compounds from such a source promote chemical reactions in the very cold (below minus 80 degrees Celsius) polar stratospheric clouds of the southern polar region. It is considered that in the northern polar region, while the interactions also occur, they occur only infrequently because the extreme cold required for the process is usually lacking. Both land-based and satellite remote sensing are currently carefully monitoring ozone conditions worldwide, with a special focus on the Antarctic and the effectiveness of relevant international policy. The multifaceted nature of the ozone role in the atmo

ChloroFluoroCarbons (CFCs)
Unlike some other greenhouse gases (nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide), CFCs do not occur in nature. They are humanly-created molecules used in industry for air conditioning, refrigeration, electronics, packaging, and foams. When these molecules leak into the air, they are very effective at trapping heat. When they drift up through the atmosphere, they also destroy molecules in part of the upper atmosphere (the ozone layer).

Because CFCs are now known to break down the ozone layer, many countries have agreed to phase out their production. That is the good news. Unfortunately, some of the new substitutes for CFCs still trap heat. Furthermore, they have long lifetimes in the atmosphere. So even though they do not destroy ozone, they still contribute to global warming. That is the bad news. Fortunately, environmentally-safe alternatives to CFCs do exist. Although they are not yet used by many manufacturers; water- and helium-based technologies might some day replace CFCs.

Yet another surprise is in store! Because of the growing concern over the ozone layer and the role played by CFCs, manufacturers of refrigerators, and air-conditioners, in recent years have been persuaded to switch to the use of the more ozone-friendly HCFC-22, a hydrofluorocarbon. Ironically, only in the early weeks of 1998, following a re-analysis of the archived air samples collected at Cape Grim on the north west coast of Tasmania, was it discovered that the atmosphere probably contains 135,000 tons of fluoroform, a previously unnoticed greenhouse gas with a global warming potential some 10,000 times greater than that of carbon dioxide, although of course it is present in much smaller quantities. Nevertheless, scientists in the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom calculate that the current volume of fluoroform in the atmosphere has a global warming potential of 1.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, or three times the annual emissions of carbon dioxide in Britain. Fluoroform is said to be in

Danger of Increased Greenhouse Gases
As far back as Greek and Roman times, people built structures which created an indoor environment suited to growing plants throughout the year. This enabled the gardener to establish a measure of control over growing conditions and more particularly extend the growth period into the colder seasons of the year. In this manner, the gardener was better able to provide fresh fruits and vegetables when needed. Today these structures are usually made of glass or plastic, but still allow us to maintain year-round greenery and so are called greenhouses as described earlier. There are similarities between the greenhouse and the Earth's atmosphere in the manner in which they operate.

CatalepsicFox

I love green friendly car!

Cyyclopse

How much for the "Solar Cell Roof Rack" option?

ra24man

HAHA!! Yea.. I watched 'The Inconvenient Truth' and 'Who killed the electric car?' back to back last week...I'm feeling your pain Darren! Glad to see someone out there hasn't been bought out by petrol lobbiests .. yet!

Mark

JUMBO

Let's get them working on an xB that is propelled solely by cow farts.

Problem solved. Someone owes me a dollar for that one.

dskinner

I saw "Who Killed..." and enjoyed much of it. However it was VERY bias toward EVs. No matter how the world turns, we are simply screwed. I like how Jason Lee put it in "My Name Is Earl." He said, "I realized that no matter what I did, everyone around me counteracted what I was doing to save the earth." (Or something to that effect). If you think air is bad here, think of the old-school technology that rules markets such as India and China (which is expected to become the largest auto market sometime between 2009-2015).

What we should do is in our own way help out here and there. So some will buy a Prius, some should recycle their empty Pepsi. A little here and there will add up quickly, and though its a slow fix, it will delay the inevitable. When that day comes, when the poop hits the fan, I just hope that my family and I are long gone (sorry for those who have to be here to see that day, maybe even me).

Personally, I am addicted to oil, as are 99.99% of all Americans, whether they realize it or not. It will not change until we run out! No ifs ands or buts. Even if gas goes to $10 a gallon, people will still buy new vehicles by the hundreds of thousands (albeit vehicles that tend to be smaller and with better mileage).

As far as the EVs. I think it will take a lot for companies to sell them because they require such little maintenence. Keep in mind that the service dept. is typically the largest money-maker for the dealership. Car companies would lose quite a bit of money (in thoery) with EVs.

Hope my rambling will be read by someone...