PowerSwitch

Just one thing I want to mention...I always heard talk of how many SUVs were in America but it wasn't until I got there and was going to New York from JFK that I saw that two out of every five cars was an SUV!

I know, it's astonishing isn't it?

European cars look so tiny when you come back.

I spent some time in San Francisco last year, staying a few miles out in the suburbs. Unlike almost anyone else I actually walked around what seemed like a ghost town, no one else on the pavements (when there even were pavements). Lots of SUVs and lots of V6 and V8 engines, the cars and light trucks just sound different. Very few diesels, mostly large capacity V engines.

On the positive side, large detuned engines do last a long time add that to less restrictive rules of emissions and rust etc. Average age of cars in the US is greater than Europe and given how much energy it takes to make a car compared to how much it uses in it's life time it's not all bad news.

If you want to see real waste of oil, I'd suggest going to Dubai. I was there a couple of weeks ago and was just shocked. It's very very oil-rich and being built at an incredible rate. Only saw the foundations of the Burl Dubai (900m tall building), but managed to get a glimpse of the Palm (artificial luxury island). I went to the sales office of the corporation developing these islands, and saw the World. Check that out on the web if you can, it's insane! The people of Dubai are just throwing their money away, building for a future that won't come.

Apparently, Dubai is set to run dry of oil in the next five years so they've been busy trying to brand themselves as some sort of tourist destination.

A bit of a seedy tourist destination at that! It looks like an even more vulgar version of Las Vegas or Blackpool.

They'd better start making solar panels fast, or the snow will melt in their ski resort!

PowerSwitchJames wrote:I saw that two out of every five cars was an SUV!

What I find scary is that we seem to be doing our best to reach that figure as well. The number of SUVs on the roads here are shooting up. In our company's car park we used to have one fancy Land Rover, we now have a BMW X5, a Merc, A Volvo, a Daihatsu and another Landrover. That change has happened in the last year and a half and I've been with this company for about 8 years.

John Mathews of Universal Toyota in San Antonio has witnessed the day that auto industry executives in Detroit said would never come.

"We are seeing people who are driving $40,000 Suburbans trading them in on $15,000 Corollas," said Mathews, who manages a dealership in a state where big trucks and sport-utility vehicles rule the roads. "The last 30 days have been unlike anything I've ever seen in the automotive industry."

Washington Post