On 3/23/2021 10:19 PM, Michael Trew wrote:
> On 3/23/2021 9:37 PM, GM wrote:
>> On Tuesday, March 23, 2021 at 7:08:26 PM UTC-5, wrote:
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> John Kuthe, RN, BSN...
>>
>>
>> The tires are worth more than that piece of crap Leaf...
>>
>> WHOOSH goes what remains of your money...!!!
>>
>
> $1k tires?Â* Ouch... y'all must like expensive stuff.Â* I'm driving a 1989
> Olds Cutlass Ciera that I paid $500 for.Â* Also a 1993 Geo Metro that
> cost $600.Â* Drive 'em until they fall apart, sell, and back to
> craigslist.Â* No leases or car notes for me!Â* I should note that we don't
> have inspections or emissions in my locality.

I used to have a 1992 Metro. It was supposed to get 51MPG highway.
It got better than that. It was powered by a 998cc 3-cyl engine.
We blew out one of the the piston rings on one of the cylinders
going 85+MPH on the Turner Turnpike in Oklahoma, so then it was down
to two cylinders. A mechanic told us that those engines are sealed,
and could only be replaced, not repaired, but that the control module
had sensed that the defective cylinder was ****ed up, and had disabled
the fuel injector to it, so now we were down to two cylinders, and the
displacement? Do the math. I hath understanding enough to count. The
number of cubic centimeters of displacement of that little beast was
"Six hundred threescore and six."

Yes. And you would have thought that it would have been the end times
for that little Geo (Geo does relate to Earth), and that there would be
horsemen, rather than horsepower in its future, but that little car ran
for 2 more years like that, and when we replaced it because it wouldn't
pass emissions testing in that condition, I sold it to a junkyard for
$50, where they intended to use it as an onsite vehicle for ferrying
parts around. When we got rid of it, it was still getting spectacular
mileage, and ran well. It merited an afterlife. All true.

In retrospect, I should have realized that the Geo Metro was a *city
car*, and we shouldn't have pushed it to turnpike speeds. We also
shouldn't have driven it out to the Missouri Ozarks, and driven it down
a poorly maintained county gravel road, because it had inadequate
ground clearance, and try as I did to keep one side of the vehicle on
the crown of the road, I punctured the oil pan, and it took several
quarts of added oil to make it back to St. Louis, where we got the oil
pan replaced, yet the beast of an engine made it another year until its
repurposing as a junkyard ferry.

These days, subcompacts sold in the USA are, TTBOMK, invariably powered
by 1.4 liter engines, and no non-hybrid gets anywhere near the MPG that
the 3-cyl Metros and Suzuki Swifts got in the early 1990s. Fiat even
manufactured a turbo 2-cyl that was available in Europe, but not here.

EVs like the Nissan Leaf have their place as city cars, but only as city
cars. Hybrids are great, and plug in hybrids make the most sense for
compact/subcompact cars, but they didn't sell well because of the price.
The prices were high because they were outfitted with too much battery
storage, instead of being sold with minimal batteries, and empty slots
for adding additional battery modules as needed/preferred by the
consumer. That would have made the transition to EVs far more
practical.

Standardized battery modules make sense, and we have a model for that,
the USB 5 volt that has become ubiquitous. Proprietary, oddball
batteries and charging systems need to go away, as do the extant
variations of USB plugs--one standard for 5V, and one standard for 20V
connectors would save a lot of time and trouble.

For those of you who have read this far, I probably won't be posting
here much for a while. I have a lot of other things toward which I need
to devote my time and attention. I got my first Covid shot yesterday,
and it's time to refocus.

--
--Bryan
For your safety and protection, this sig. has been thoroughly
tested on laboratory animals.