No one is disagreeing with it.
Well I do disagree with his peremptory initial statement that "cars are inefficient" period, things being actually, factually more complex, as you later pointed out Thunderhawk.
Of course if Qatz, in his flawed method of discussion and I mean that on an academic level even, only considers one factor to a means of transportation, ie emissions of greenhouse effects, then he can only point out that his bike fits the criteria of 'efficiency' for it brings one person around with zero emissions. While the car as it emits emissions, apparently he doesn't care to know how much or in what conditions, gets a red light.
But this is a flawed reasonning. If you only allow black or white judgements then nothing, nothing gets the green light of this dreamed total and absolute efficiency. This is only a stretch, but if you go this way even living beings are unefficient since they consume a lot and produce waste. I'm really disagreeing with his method here, even before disagreeing with his data or stance.
A means of transportation has to have lots of other factors, from cost, to availability, to the flexibility of the places it allows you to reach, the range, the number of passengers and/or freight, to security, etc. and of course emissions of greenhouse gases as well as fuel efficiency. Once you throw all these factors in to find an answer to the need I've been trying to outline in my posts, and indeed look at every *available* means of transportation, you realise that the car does reach what would be "efficiency", ie the best possible mix of all these factors.
Now, one can defend that the car isn't efficient enough. To which I answered that things are changing, at last some might say, but still, here in Europe and yes there in America too, fuel efficiency, smaller cars, etc. are on the menu.
Again, the personnal vehicle answers a need that is today unanswered by other means of transportation (except for freight but we didn't really discuss that), and won't be tomorrow, not because we don't want to change things because of some conspiracy led by car lovers, but because the situation as it is today is a systemic consequence of the very nature of the way our economies work and the lack of public and community spending inherent to capitalism. My point there being, blame the way things work, not what people have to do to get through.
So if we had to go back to the very first question "is there an efficient car" I would say yes, and it's either the small European city-car, or the midsize hybrid, and generally in every class of cars (since people may need a specific class to do their job, or get their families around) it is either the hybrid or the particule filter-equiped diesel engines.
I think only Chrysler has made a commitment to that but there will be a hybrid version of the Ram pickup in 2010/11 I believe, then a better one in 2013. Then the Ram will probably qualify for the most efficient of the pickup trucks, given that in that class answering some specific needs, it'll be the one to do so with an advantage in fuel economy.
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