Tuesday, February 13, 2007

GM To Build Hybrids In Canada

GM, reeling from losses in market share, will begin building hybrid versions of its Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks at its Oshawa plant as early as next year. By 2010 they will start building hybrid SUVs at the same facility.

About time. Its much harder to make people (especially the people who buy trucks and SUVs) switch to smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles than it is to make the vehicles they prefer more fuel efficient.

And Hybrids are the most likely route to environmental salvation, as far as I'm concerned. The new Chevy Volt gets, potentially, hundreds of MPG. If you don't ever need to drive more than 40 miles at a time you could conceivably never buy gasoline again (it plugs into a wall socket). They're even starting to build some pretty sweet looking hybrid sports cars.


Better than driving one of these sawed-off bugs around and looking hopelessly nerdy.






Smart But Nerdy

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

so i wonder how many coal fired electrical plants Ontario will need to be built, rather than close, to provide all the electricity for those electric cars ??

No free lunch.

But better than the fuel cell car - spewing out megatonnes of GhG polluting water vapour.

Terrible, just terrible . . water vapour pollution.

Anonymous said...

The problem is the entire rural population; driving miles all over the country to get anywhere, usually in a 4x4, when they should all be forced to move into the city where they can either walk, bike, use a hybrid or take public transportation to wherever they have to go. They're using a disproportionate amount of energy compared to an urban population. It's about time we simply put our foot down and forced it; everybody is moving into the cities anyway, let's just speed up the inevitable. Then those hicks can get an education and join the rest of progressive society.

Anonymous said...

We interrupt this drivel to bring you something important: Liberals propose new income trust policy

"After hearing from numerous witnesses at the Standing Committee on Finance, the Liberal Opposition has a plan. It is proposing that the government repeal its planned 31.5 per cent tax regime and replace it with a modest 10 per cent tax, to be paid by the companies, that would be refundable to Canadian residents. The tax would be imposed immediately with the revenue shared equitably with provincial governments."-LPC

This is the first smart move Dion has made and will score the Libs hundreds of thousands of votes, INCLUDING THIS CON.

Anonymous said...

Go to this site.

http://www.nrsp.com/news.html

Look for this entry

May 16, 2006: Dr. Tim Ball's presentation "Climate Change in an age of Misinformation" delivered to the public at the Westin Hotel, Ottawa.

. . .

Right click the video presentation and download . . . use the “Save page as” option to download the file

it’s a big one so it will take a bit of time depending on your connection.


Right click the PowerPoint presentation and download . . . use the “Save page as” option to download the file


If you don’t have the PowerPoint App, go here


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=428D5727-43AB-4F24-90B7-A94784AF71A4&displaylang=en


and download Microsoft’s free PowerPoint viewer.

Play the video of the presentation, start up the PowerPoint and watch the slides as Dr. Ball’s explains each one.

Certainly not a slick willy/al gore presentation, but unlike Gore’s film, this presentation is factually correct, free of the scaremongering hyperbole and should be given fair consideration.

Ti-Guy said...

Quiet, children.

I like the SmartCar. Looks high tech. You seem to like those big, phallic-looking monsters. BCL -- BCSD?

bigcitylib said...

Not at all, ti-guy. I'm a total bottom-of-the-line tin box kind of guy. But if you can make a hybrid to cater to SUV drivers, go ahead and do it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and don't forget to thank the fossil fuel industry because people no longer had to cut down those beautiful forests for firewood. Who wants a bumper sticker that says "Save a tree, drill a gas well."?