Diesel vs Hybrid

With the rising gas prices, I decided to check out some of the new hybrids and diesels that have been coming out recently from some of the automakers. I have to say that these puppies are expensive. I looked at Honda, VW, Mercedes Benz, and Toyota and all the hybrids and diesels they were selling were almost $10,000 more than my gas powered Altima. I guess I'll list out some things I liked and some things that I didn't like about the hybrids and the diesels.

Lets start with diesel power! When I think of diesel power, I normally think of those huge ass trucks on the highway going way to fast and tailgating me on my way to some city in FL. I equate diesel with power but when I went on the VW site and looked up the TDI's that they were selling, the power on those cars were pathetic. It stated that they use 4 cylinder 100hp diesel engines. No wonder those things get such great gas milage, they hardly guzzle anything and maybe have the horse power of Lance Armstrong on a tricycle. I thought maybe Mercedes Benz would be better and I thought maybe I could find a small car tha was relatively cheap. HA! Talk about expensive, they were starting their cars over $30,000 and by the time I was finished fine tuning mine it was over $40,000 so that took care of that idea pretty quick. On the plus side though, the cars can litteraly last forever since they don't require tune ups and if you modify it a certain way, you can use old vegetable cooking oil as fuel.

On to the Hybrid's! YAY! The new wave of cars (but enviromentally sound??) of the future so we can conserve gasoline. I looked at the Toyota Prius and the Ford Escape to do some comparison shopping. This is just my opinion but the Prius is just ugly as sin and its not even cheap! Nicely equiped it would cost over $30,000 bucks for this little hunk of tin foil. The gas mileage is pretty good but the electric engine is only used when you're doing under 25. Thats fine if you live in NYC or something but out here in Tampa, I'm hitting at least 60mph on my way home most of the time so the gas savings go right out of the window. I also took a look at the Ford Escape. This thing looks just like the gas version but its supposed to get better gas mileage hm......... after looking at its specs it maybe gets 2-3 miles per gallon more than the gas version of the car. How is that supposed to save you money? I was also thinking long term and I wondered, in about 6 years I'm going to have to replace all the batteries for my hybrid. The batteries will cost around eighty bucks a pop and there's a whole battery pack stuffed somewhere in the car which increases its overall weight. Not to mention the battery acid is highly toxic, where are we gonna be dumping this stuff? Almost seems more prudent to chug diesel in my car than throw out batteries.

Well thats my rant on hybrids and diesels :P I'm sticking to my gas efficient Altima until someone comes up with a car with plenty of power and cheap fuel for it. Why can't we have a Mr. Fusion like in the end of the movie Back to the Future? Imaging running your car on your trash, that would be AWESOME!