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I don't think it's illogical to think that GM can make money selling SUVs. Despite what we leftist weenies would like, many, many Americans prefer to drive gigantic vehicles. Bigger is better. Fuel is cheap. Why not?

The trick at GM is to find a profitable niche, and it might be SUVs and pickup trucks. Or it might be small cars, but that would require lots and lots of engineering work which will be difficult with GM having made much of their engineering staff redundant...

by asdf on Sat Jul 11th, 2009 at 10:15:15 AM EST
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But adding to that: If you can push the technology, you can eventually make it affordable and change the game.  Maybe somebody beats them to it (who knows?), but if you can eventually engineer even an SUV that uses no gas or very little gas, then the problem of the SUV goes away.  People could drive what they want without wrecking the environment.

And without funding the thugs in Saudi Arabia.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Sat Jul 11th, 2009 at 10:21:00 AM EST
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I had a ride in a SUV for my first time (or rather a so called crossover, the Citroën C-Crosser) a few weeks ago, and wow, I loved it. So airy, so much space. It was not a tool for transportation but actually something which it was fun to travel in.

And as it was a diesel I guess it didn't require more fuel than your average Volvo.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Sat Jul 11th, 2009 at 12:38:03 PM EST
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Just don't look at the rollover statistics...
by asdf on Sat Jul 11th, 2009 at 01:40:51 PM EST
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They're probably not too bad on a crossover like that.  It's the ones that are basically small pickups with SUV bodies tossed on top that have the ugly rollover stats, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm more just guessing, though.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Sat Jul 11th, 2009 at 05:11:23 PM EST
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That's a fairly aerodynamic one, so even on a gasoline engine, you'd probably get alright mileage.  Some friends of ours have a Mazda CX-7.  How it qualifies as an SUV, I don't know, because the inside felt like a Honda Civic.

Which, due to expectations on an SUV, meant it felt really, really cramped with four people.  My knees were jammed up against the front passenger seat, and I'm not exactly big.

I'm not big on the crossovers.  I like cars and trucks.  Blending the two feels weird icky.  My father drives a Toyota Tundra, and he drove a Chevy Suburban for years (which I learned to drive in).  Those were both much, much too big for me.  Anything with a V8 is like driving a shopping mall.

But I don't like having the car-like near-horizontal windshield that crossovers tend to have.  I like it nearly vertical, because I feel like I can see a lot better.

We traded in our Honda for an FJ Cruiser a few months ago.  (Before y'all start throwing things at me, I want you to know it was not my choice, since I take the train and drive maybe 20 times per year.)  The mileage blows, although I can usually push it up quite a bit vs the EPA estimates due to the fact that I drive in a way that would make an old lady look like a Nascar driver.

I'm trying to convince her to let my friend and I convert it sometime in the next year or two to either biomass, electricity or hydrogen (all of which you can get in DC).  She's convinced we'll destroy it.

Still, it drives really nicely.  I like it.  If they'd make an electric one, I'd trade this one in and buy it in a heartbeat.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Sat Jul 11th, 2009 at 05:27:40 PM EST
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The funny thing is that we loaned the C-Crosser from a guy who works for Citroën (or "the French", as he calls them). It's seems everyone at Citroën have been getting C-Crossers as their job cars as they've become unsaleable. Heh.

And as I said previously, this cars is fun, it's not a tool for commuting. Commuting is supposed to be done by rail, and if people did it that way there'd certainly be enough fuel around for the Sunday trip in a little bigger car.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Sun Jul 12th, 2009 at 12:52:23 AM EST
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Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Sun Jul 12th, 2009 at 12:54:51 AM EST
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