Matt,

I agree with you about the train travel. A couple of years ago on a whim, we decided to hop a train for Chicago and then changed our minds and went through to Milwaukee for a couple of days. We then backtracked to Chicago spent time in some Blues bars for a couple of days, had a great time and took a train back home.

I am all for train travel. Those that can ought to go see the train station in Chicago, what a magnificent building. To think, there were many of these years ago that were jammed with people 24 hours a day. The one in Buffalo is being saved but has not been used for at least 20 years. The present facility in Buffalo is nothing more that a threee (3 e's on purpose) car garage as well as the one in Cleveland if memory serves me correctly.

stevo

And some are predicting $180 a barrel!


http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/WhyOilCouldHit180DollarsABarrel.aspx

EXACTLY my point vis-a-vis "expert" opinions about most any thing in the future......Bob

Dave,

Please provide a link/source for the airline predictions. Here or PM.

Thanks,
JMC

The short answer is no. Ethanol is almost impossible to avoid in many areas, and until you start hearing things like "Don't drive through Minnesota." or some such there's no problem. I ran a factory stock 1960 Ford Falcon on E10 (10% ethanol) for 30,000 miles with not ill effects whatsoever.

I just got through watching Nova's Car of the Future on Prairie Public (PBS - pbs.org or prairiepublic.org). Aside from being generally entertaining, they discussed alternative power sources for cars for the future, including the cellulosic biomass, which Dave has discussed. I really enjoyed it as it exposed a few things we've been talking about here. I really like what the Rocky Mountain Institute has done with their Hypercar.

The Tesla is more interesting, but there is a Canadian company putting out plug-in electric vehicles - ZENN - Zero Emissions No Noise. A comedian, Rick Mercer, visited their plant and had a lot of fun. Of course, moving forward, the plug-in electric vehicles will require relatively clean sources of power.

One idea which wasn't discussed, quite possibly due to cost for a consumer vehicle, was solar cells on the roof of the vehicle. Particularly if we look at trucks and SUVs, which are taller, it wouldn't be a huge appearance issue (many of us can't really see the roof anyway).

As for the niche that Buick will attempt to carve out in the future, I really don't know. So long as there is personal transportation, people will want choice. As Buick is more upscale without being the full-out luxury class, that may simply be the niche to fill. I wish it could be done with more than three models.

As for design, in case anyone is still reading, could we please go back to something a bit wider? My wife and I aren't overly large (although nobody has ever called me slim), but we typically have 3 growing kids in the back seat. In the Rainier, they are starting to run out of sideways space...in the '41 they have lots of space. We should be able to manufacture lighter, generally smaller cars, without truly sacrificing five-passenger space, shouldn't we? If people can't comfortably fit 5 in a car, they won't take 5, making it less efficient overall.

John, it's been 3 years since I looked any of that stuff up, and I don't have any of the links I looked at then any more. If you do a Google search on ["peak oil" airlines] you'll get 120,000 hits. On Yahoo you get 559,000 hits. You can run the gamut sorting through them, from the adamant ostrich approach to the absurdly frightened Chicken Little approach.

The most telling thing to be gleaned from this mess is to look at the authors who insist there's nothing wrong. By far the most quoted statistic they use is the continuing health of Boeing, with heavy orders for new planes coming in. There's rarely any analysis beyond that.

Is replacing older, inefficient planes with newer models an indication of nothing wrong? Especially when those order have to placed 3-4 years in advance (when jet fuel was less than 1/2 today's cost)?

Older jets are at best capable of 40-50 seat-mpg. Newer ones can get 70 seat-mpg. ( National Academy of Engineering, 1992 ) My Prius (5 seats) gets 250 seat-mpg. Today's pathetically neglected Amtrak passenger trains beat airline travel by 20% in energy efficiency already, with no equipment changes in decades. Meanwhile American freight trains have improved 75% in this area since 1980. ( National Assn. of Railroad Passengers, 2007 ). European and Japanese trains are vastly more efficient.

(The citations above are typical, but not definitive. The statistics, however, are definitive. I couldn't find any reference that disagreed with them.)

This site is definitive! The most comprehensive comparison site is Energy Efficiency of different modes of transportation by a James Strickland. I have no idea who he is beyond a Canadian with a Master's Degree (The site is his blog and the name is too common to pin down in a search.), but he's done his homework. There are TONS of facts and comparisons to be gleaned from this work. For instance, the seat-mpg of a "next generation" Boeing 737 is 58.9, and that of the ultra-modern Swedish Railways X2000 is 320.0. (The Queen Mary clocks in a 18.0!) The comparison bar graphs alone are worth the price of admission.

Energy is the major cost of transportation for any system. With efficiency differences like that it only stands to reason that as oil dwindles in availability and skyrockets in price an advantage like this will not be something that can be overcome.

I do recall one of the papers I read 3 years ago predicted that regular scheduled major commercial airline traffic would effectively end around 2020, a point in time at which fuel was expected to break through the $10.00/gal level. (Fuel was anticipated by that author to plateau at $5-$6/gal for most of the next decade, then rise again.) I guess at that point anybody whose time is that valuable will be flying Al Gore style anyway.

I just watched it too, and had the web site saved in a window to post here as soon as I finished my reply to John. Don't miss it if you haven't seen it! Most PBS shows have multiple runnings in most markets, and it should be repeated where you are. If not, starting tomorrow you can watch it online (for free) here.

I think Buick's niche had better change BIG and SOON. "Traditional American Luxury Cars" (which used to be a formal description by GM if it isn't still) is beginning to sound like "Traditional Tube Televisions" to a lot of people.

Exactly none of the latest innovations in car design are in the works for Buick (as much as I've been able to hear). If they want to compete with Lexus they're going to have to be a lot more modern in product. When Hyundai is beating you in the introduction of hybrid drivetrains and you're trying to sell yourself as a high-end company, something is wrong!

Whether you believe there is a "recession" can depend upon which part of our society you might be a part of. If you might be a "victim" of downsizing/consolidations/off-shore/outsource orientations of many business entities, then the recession is real and the cost of oil and fuel is a big part of your lessened available discretionary income. On the other hand, if you are part of our younger expanding population with a two-income household (which can also afford a new $250K house, recent new vehicles to haul the family around), then things are probably doing well for you. Oil/fuel prices are affecting everybody evenly, but some are obviously being affected more than others.

Mass transit is fine if it goes where you are going and when, but it really doesn't fit "the masses" as well as some might like for it to--especially in the parts of the country where it was not designed-in many years ago.

I have recently read a few articles on bio-fuels and corn-based ethanol. We know that corn-related food products have increased in price since the E85 and E10 fuels came online, but the affect on corn exports has been serious on other countries. Seems these countries are now clearing forests and other lands to plant crops to keep them alive. Hence, more adverse affects upon the atmosphere from these farming operations and less oxygen-generating rain forests in existence. As they claim, the carbon footprint expands rather than shrinking--just the opposite of what the whole "green" orientation advocates.

Recycling restaurant oil to make bio-diesel is a great form of recycling and keeping these waste oils out of where ever they might have otherwise ended up.

Where Buick and other similar upper-middle-class vehicle brands might end up in the future is highly debateable. Many of the younger operatives don't understand WHY General Motors needs to cover all market demographic bases, even if the selling prices are similar for some brands/models. As they don't understand it, or why it needs to be that way, they just want "less" rather than "more" rather than try to understand WHY it worked so well 100 years ago, even 50 years ago. Or that when the USA brands decrease their model offerings, the consumers move to other brands which fill the vacated niche the USA brands just vacated. No Camaro? Check out a Mitsu Eclipse! No Regal coupe? Check out the Toyota Solara! Nor have they watched as Toyota, Kia, and Hyundai have expanded their model lines (under the same "vehicle for every purse" orientation that GM used to have AND the same orientation they claim GM needs to abandon!)!

As the middle class demographics continues to shrink, Buick will have to move upscale in price and stature to stay in the game. Or they can offer exceptional value in luxury vehicles as they have for many decades--but moving downmarket in several lines (as Mercedes has tried to do) might be done cautiously. Many new consumers don't seem to understand the allure of the Buick brand which made the compact Buicks of the '60s such desired vehicles back then (economy in a more luxurious and upscale package than what Chevy or Pontiac offered--AND uniquely Buick).

To me, the biggest problem in Michigan is the "We can't do things like we used to, we have to cut back on model offerings and variations to decrease production costs AND make money." This might make perfect "group think", but it make NO sense in the marketplace . . . a marketplace that is expanding in numbers AND available products. I suspect that one reason that truck chassis vehicles are so popular (at least in TX) is that you can get more variations in them than in similar vehicles (options, colors, interior trim, ENGINES). One reason that USA brands did so well was that you could buy them in many variations of equipment and such rather than the "buy what we build" orientation of the imports back then. Of course, these many build variations did cause some problems . . . but also consider that what we see of oriental brand vehicles in the USA is not representative of what is build in their homeland (same with many European brands!). I remember reading that one model of Nissan had something like 40 different steering wheels, several years ago.

So, in the name of "We can't do that any more . . ." we now have TWO interior colors, cloth or leather, dedicated equipment groups, FEW engine choices (with the larger engines only in the higher trim level vehicles--so much for "economy hot rods!). I guess that VVT is more important than snazzy interior configurations or flashy exterior colors?

IN the short term, you might consider buying ANY Buick or GM vehicle with the 3800 V-6 . . . new or used. Good power, great reliability, great fuel economy (better than the engines which will replace it, by my own observation), and low cost of ownership. IF things get as bad as some predict in the next couple of years, THOSE attributes will come in very handy! All in the comfort, luxury, and larger size of a Buick rather than a smaller econo-box vehicle.

There are lots of side issues in the current economic situation--oil prices are just ONE aspect of the whole deal. No easy or universal answers.

Plug-in hybrids can make sense to more people than many suspect, but GM's choice in putting hybrids in the city transit bus fleets is saving MUCH more fuel than the bulk of passenger vehicle hybrids on the road today. I suspect the Chevy Volt, when it finally hits, will be very popular for many consumers. Whether we end up with gas/electric or diesel/electric hybrid cars can be debateable . . . but each will probably have their place in our vehicular future . . . just as our vintage Buicks do. Perhaps . . . a Buick version of the Volt can be an upscale "Electra 220"??

Enjoy!
NTX5467

Might I add NTX, that there was never a waste in the restaurant oil business. Their byproducts were bought up by renderers who in turn cleaned it and resold everything to the feed industry. Now, with the "Go Green" group getting interest, all of our edible food stuffs are costing us more at the grocery store. It's a vicious cycle. Nothing is free anymore.

Wayne

When I get gas in any of my old cars, if I see that it has 10% ethanol I drive away and go somewhere else. I have heard it can damage seals and other rubber parts in the carb and fuel pump. It is also a solvent that may break loose deposits in the fuel syster and cause problems. It is better to be safe than sorry.

Buick has alrady lost the competition with Lexus, at least in California. For the price of a Enclave, you can purchase an RX350, a far finer machine. The 350 will retain much more of it's value and you get Lexus SERVICE instead of GM garage. If any of you doubt where the sale is made, just visit a Lexus showroom and more importantly the customer lounge area and compare with ANY domestic dealership. In SoCal, Lexus has crushed Buick, passed Cadillac, and is after Mercedes.

JMC

OK, I've read 7 pages of this, and I'll add some fuel to the fire....

It's good for me to have the price of gas rise to a point where I can't afford to fill my tank.... BS. Yea, go buy another more fuel efficient car, move closer to work. Uh, those are two of the most expensive things people can spend money on, and I'm just supposed to treat them as disposable items and make a switch. I don't think so. I did live close to work. Then work moved...now my commute is twice what it was. Should I move again? Go back into another 30 year mortgage? NO! Why not? Well, the lease in the building I work in is up next year, and there's no guarantee I'll still be in this building at that time. If work moves again, I'll have to move again. Too expensive to do.

About that more fuel efficient car....can't afford to keep dumping cars like that. See, if I'm selling my car because it wastes too much gas, what will make somebody else want my hog? Nothing. So I'll get nothing near what the car is worth and I'm into another payment for the new car. Guess what, the new car payment will be more than filling the tank of the car I already paid for. I better not sell this one because I may need the money to move closer to work as work moves farther away from me.

Speaking of cars, it took 6 pages till the Tesla was mentioned? That's kinda sad. Somebody is putting huge dollars into the development of the Tesla, and I actually like it. Priced one out for fun...kinda pricey...and that included an $8,000 surcharge to service the vehicle. See, again, I don't live in the right place. I live too far away from the Tesla service area, so I would have to pay an additional $8,000 to buy the service contract for the car. This didn't look to be optional either, and I can't imagine trying to work on it myself...too complex. Oh well, it's an idea, and it was in development BEFORE gas prices went through the roof. Hrmm, somebody thought about building a better car BEFORE they were forced to do so by high gas prices. Now that's a novel concept.

Oh, Detroit....unions....figurative guns held to management's head to sign a contract or we stop building cars. On how many levels is this wrong? The other day they said autoworkers were on strike, and one striker was asked why they were on strike. The answer, "I don't know. We were told to walk off the job, so we did." WHAT?!? Now we've got a bunch of lemmings building our cars. What ever happened to doing a job, and doing it well, and getting paid accordingly? I agree, unions did much for the working man in this country, but they've stepped over a line and it makes all our lives change due to their actions. Now, it it were cheaper to buy a car, would the automakers follow in the footsteps of investigating electric vehicles like the Tesla? I don't know. But if you build a better mousetrap..... I really hope the Tesla takes off.

Al Gore...what a maroon. I saw a show about the natural disasters in movies and the feasability of them happening in real life. They were talking about the Hollywood types using CGI to make these fantasticly realistic images of very unrealistic events. Like a 300 foot wall of water hitting New York. Nice images. Oh, I really liked the one showing glacial ice melting and huge chunks breaking off and falling into the ocean. It was really neat looking. They showed it twice. Once from the movie it was made for, then a second time from where Al Gore described this global warming thing. Then they played the two clips side by side in a split screen. Odd, Al's clip of the effects of global warmming was identical to the CGI movie clip. Hrmm.....makes one think.

Oh, I've rambled on enough here. No, make that ranted. If this offers food for thought, good. If you feel I wasted your time, I apologize. Opinions are like you-know-what's, everyone has one and most of them stink. I'm just glad to have the opportunity to voice an opinion in public.

Thanks, Dave. Flying will continute to be time-value driven. It's just that more folks will discover their time isn't worth as much as it was. In my business, we've already replaced a lot of face-to-face meetings with teleconferernce and VTC. The $20K investment for VTC has an immediate and enormous ROI. For $500-1000 in service costs, I can have a VTC with five or six folks for eight hours and go home at six. The old way was a day each way in transit a day at the meeting, a day to recover/catch up. Not so efficent.

We'll continue to have mass air travel, albeit more expensive, and I think regular commercial passenger service will not end at 2020. What will change enormously will be aircraft design. Flying wing form factor is far more effiecent than todays fuselage/wing/empenage form factor, which has a very high parasitic drag penalty. Flying wings haven't made it because of public perception. Peception will change when the price is right. Passenger loading will also increase to be 800-1200 routinely. Ground transportation will have to grow to support short (<200-250 miles) journeys.

JMC

Replacement of ageing aircraft isn't a symptom of something wrong, not to say that there isn't something wrong, it's just the wrong symptom.

Many factors influence aircraft replacement. The most important are:

1. Useful design life exenditure (and subsequent cost of refurbishment/overhaul/service life extension). Replacment is often more cost effective.

2. Impact of governmental regulation (EPA noise levels and emissions for example.) Engine replacement/mod is expensive, but may suffice in specific applications. FedEx operated Boeing 727s for years with hush kit updates long after they were no longer economical for passenger use. They even had a nickname: "Jurassic Jets" owing to the age.

3. Operator desire to fly newer equipment. Unseen to the majority, aircraft, like ships, have a faily predictable ownership life cycle. Generally, major airlines operate new, pass used to secondary carriers, who in turn pass to charters, who in turn, fly to retirement. From retirement, the aircraft are scrapped, modified for other use (private aircraft, specialty operations, cargo... it was said at one time FedEx had a small staff who did nothing but track the location of every DC-10 in service worldwide for purchase/conversion to freight)

4. Wholesale technology upgrades and operating effiecency (regardless of fuel cost.) The B 777 was the first fully CAD aircraft and was computer assembled before any 'metal bending'. It was also manufactured using CNC parts production. The resulting precision allowed wing/fuselage mating tolerances of only several thousandths as opposed to the .25-.50 inch tolerance on the B 747. Sleeker aircraft have lower drag, so are cheaper to operate, are quieter, easier to produce, and easier to maintain.

So, fuel cost is a factor, but not a lead driver.

What you will see with rising fuel cost is that older, less efficent aircraft will be sidelined/mothballed/sold/scrapped and the flight frequency reduced to raise capacity levels. You might also see limitations on baggage, termination of marginal operations (routes and operators), and mergers. Deja vu all over, eh?

Cheers,
JMC

Dan, I took a $3000 bath on my Nissan to buy the Prius. (I owed that much more than the trade-in.) I calculated that, with gas @ $2.50/gal, I'd break even in about 3 1/2 years.

I broke even in less than 2. This happened in part because gas went up faster than anyone expected and becuase my wife's 28 mpg Elantra became the family gas hog (necessitating a switch to the Prius for most duties). The Prius now gets about twice the mileage (13-14K/yr.) that the Nissan used to. The Elantra is lucky if it sees 5K/yr.

Best bath I ever took.

==========================

BTW, Al Gore was/is right no matter his journalistic skills. (Which are pretty darn good, BTW. They don't give Nobel Prizes [or Academy Awards {generally}, or Humanitus Prizes, or National Board of Review Prizes, or about 20 film critics prizes, or.....] to "maroons".) Are you really suggesting he had the time/means/motive to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to cgi a fake glacier collapse for a college lecture tour?

He has about 10-15,000 PhD's behind him. If you want to be one of Exxon's mighty expert army trying to debunk that, I'm sure they'll hire you on and provide the credentials. At this point they have about 7 recruits, but they're always happy for more!

Sugarless gum should have such universal acclaim!

John, this being a major Delta hub this story is getting press like crazy here, but it was likely in every paper in American this morning. Sadly, I think we'll be seeing a lot more like it the days and years to come.

Delta CEO says fares need to rise 15-20% (This Summer)

And, don't forget ATA. They folded early this month after losing a government charter contract.

There have been five worldwide 'low cost' airlines fold or declare bankruptcy in the first two weeks of April: ATA, Aloha, Oasis (Hong Kong based), Frontier (operating in Ch 11... ), and SkyBus (Columbus, OH.)

Somebody said the canaries are dying... Can't argue that.

My bet is USAirways will go under next, assuming the Delta/NWA merger happens.

Cost will go up, reducing passengers, reducing revenue, increasing cost.... a downward spiral.

JMC

Nobel Peace Awards:

2001. Kofi Annan. (No mention made of him and his son skimmimg millions from oil for food money.)

2002. James (Jimmy) Carter. (No mention made of of his bumbling ineffective efforts that did little more than give gravitus to tyrants/terrorists)

2007. Albert (AL) Gore. Shared prize. (No mention made of his 12000 sq ft house or extensive travels by private jets while he exhorts the "masses" to sacrifice. No memtion made of his justification of above by buying "carbon offsets")


Any year Acadamy Award winner. Pick any politically correct, racially diverse, sexually perverse, gay pushing, liberal over the top cause movie, and it got an award for something.


The Academy Awards have been a publicity driven joke for years. The Nobels, at least as far as "soft sciences" are concerned have been used to make political statements also for years. Were I looking to gain credibility I wouldn't cite either of those "Awards". Most "awards" of this nature are agenda driven and the awarders couldn't care less if the awardee was a Maroon or not as long as their agenda is pushed and people are manipulated into a certain point of view.....Bob

Just to keep on theme here....

Buicks are purchased and driven by both politically correct, racially diverse, sexually perverse, gay pushing, liberals and by we less 'enlightened' plugger types. In fact, Buick will sell to anyone.

Kofi Annan... now, there's a lead to a whole new discussion area. I'd vote the UN as the most systemically corrupt and bureaucratically inept organizations in history. They only want socialism... one planet at a time. They also operate a fleet of Buicks as staff vehicles... but, maybe I made that up.

Cheers,
JMC

I thought all movies were, just like rock and roll went downhill after Buddy Holly died. Damn surfin' s--t!

Nah, just the ones that are fawned over by the "Hollywood Elite". And, HEY, I like the Beach Boys. They had some rockin car songs like Little Deuce Coupe. Oh wait a minute. That would be a street rod. DOH!........Bob

Hey, careful... you don't know surfers! At least the old dogs. They're more conservative than you might think... oh, and boy, are they ecology conscious. See: http://www.surfrider.org/

Cheers, dude...

A live surfcam. HAW HAW HAW. Ya gotta luv it.......Bob