Phil Resler: These aren’t the same class of vehicle. The Tahoe is body-on-frame and the larger of the two. The Highlander is unit-body construction. The truck buyer will prefer the Tahoe.

I’m talking about the new Highlander. That one is quite similar in size and capabilities to the Tahoe and it’s probably more rugged (who would take a hybrid on dirt roads? I wouldn’t)

For most people (i.e. suburban kid schleppers) the unit-body construction is the better choice.

Davey,
Personally, I do all of this towing with a FWD minivan that gets 24 MPG on average. My minivan is rated for 3500 lbs towing and it works fine.
Getting a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid to tow 6000 lbs seems kind of ridiculous to me (this spec is probably even exaggerated, so in practice you probably can tow only slightly more than my minivan).
I see a lot of people doing heavy towing with something like a F-350 pickup truck. But that’s far beyond the capability of this Chevy Tahoe Hybrid…

High incomes will quickly allow someone who travels a lot to justify a plane. Any business owner who travels a lot, makes over 150k per year, and thinks they could fly a plane should look into it.

The planes themselves do not really depreciate at all if yo buy one over 4 years old (the average piston plane in the fleet is about 30 years old). You can usually beat a car by a good amount on any trip over 3 hours driving. You can also beat the airlines. I took my friend from Houston to Indianapolis in under 5 hours each way. Operating costs were about two hundred more than the airline tickets. Door to door was about the same. If we had been going on any shorter trip, or had not been competing with a non stop flight, we would have beat the airlines in cost. Convenience is always a win, and you never lose your luggage. The biggest thing holding general aviation back is that cities all rip up their airports. The developers and governments conspire to redevelop the land, and it all makes sense until you start figuring in all the costs and benefits that they never consider. Oh well.

Are you sure about that? Our office as 2 company airplanes(or 4 they just upgraded and I don’t know if the old ones have been sold yet) and we use them all the time for site visits and meeting all over the southeast. The planes are cheaper to fly and maintain than driving or going commercial from a time and efficiency stand point. We spend more time in the office actually working then traveling, plus the single engine is more fuel efficient than a car, so the pilots in the office tell me. If time and finances weren’t so tight for me right now I would have gotten my licenses 6 months ago when they were pushing me to do it.

I’m sure your situations are completely different since travel trips always get billed to the clients weather we fly or drive and flying actually saves them money. There is something about the connection to the road and machinery I like about cars that I would miss while in the clouds. I think that is why I like my motorcycle more than cars, no safety do-dads, electronic this and that or comfy couches. Just Me, my gear, the bike and my abilities, although I would love fuel injection.

Steven I used to enjoy those North Georgia roads going up to see friends in college at UGA 10 years ago and man those were some fun fast roads. Tons of fun with the top down through those logging towns where you wouldn’t see another car for almost an hour, and you could haul some ass on those long sweepers. It seams like it’s become one big metropolitan area now with very very very bad drivers.

I used to drive a lot of sports cars and Q-ships around the winding roads of Northern Georgia. It’s a lot of fun and the scenery at this time of year is absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, the traffic has become worse and worse and there is rarely a time where I don’t see some accident that was due to driver error.

Having someone talk on a cell phone, pick up their brood, and drive a 5,000+ pound SUV or pickup in these once rural areas is becoming an all too common sight. I’ve been cut off several times by these morons (we drive 50+ around here on the non-highways) who were simply too transfixed on turning at the yellow light to realize that I was actually there. What’s worse is these morons seem to actually slow down in the middle of the turn once they finally realize their error. Thereby blocking the entire lane.

Even young kids who want to drive and talk at the same time, will end up swerving between the yellow line and shoulder. I’ve actually called in bad drivers several times and, (surprise) the police in my neck of the woods usually respond within five minutes. Aggressive jerks who have money to modify their cars, and yet have ‘Tag Applied For’ as a license plate, tend to be my favorites.

What I love about being in asmall plane for now is that you are completely cut off from all that. We have a fellow in our business who actually uses a helicopter to get from auction to auction (some auctions are less accomodating to him than others due to parking space) and a lot of auctioneers and dealers have actually talked about chartering small planes for flights between Atlanta, Albany and Savannah.

The cost factor favors cars by quite a bit. But the stress and time factors favor those dang aeroplanes. Now if only I could get one with submachine turrets whenever I see an SUV Sally in the sky. Now that would be perfect.

I used to love sports cars. A combination of things changed my preferences. Having to unload my wife’s formerly flooded car has convinced us both that living in the Bayou City means having a high car. Folding into a sports car or even a sedan got old as I I got older. And finally, learning to fly made an impact.

Getting your speed fix in the air makes a LOT more sense. The speed limits are REALLY high. Also, once you get used to flying, the idea that the car on the other side of that yellow line could cross it and kill you is simply more apparent. Most new pilots start driving more defensively (unfortunately, there are a few very visible idiots that people tend to associate us with).

I don’t fly for business much anymore, so I was thinking about taking up aerotrekking. Google it.

I don’t really think SUV’s are evil, I mostly just don’t get their appeal. But different strokes for different folks.

These aren’t the same class of vehicle. The Tahoe is body-on-frame and the larger of the two. The Highlander is unit-body construction. The truck buyer will prefer the Tahoe.

but this Chevy hybrid gets no improvement at all over a Highlander.

But the 2Mode Tahoe gets a large improvement over the same-class gasoline engine Tahoe in city fuel economy, and 3mpg better than Highlander in city, which I doubt is achieved by Highlander drivers in real world city driving.

Phil

I am not in a big disagreement with you. I could go with a reasonable policy that says I should pay more taxes for a heavier vehicle. There are several reasons I should pay more. One thing should be recognized though – I do pay more, and so do you. Less MPG = More tax per mile.

Furthermore, the insurance companies precisely measure and charge me more because I am in a pool of Land Cruiser owners, and the more damage we do to small cars, the higher our rates go. We should not be charged higher rates for accidents that are not our fault. In my state, I must have liability, so as far as I can tell, I am paying every penny I owe due to the carnage that vehicles like mine cause on the highways. The truth I suspect is that Land Cruisers aren’t actually all that more dangerous to other vehicles. It’s not just the physics of a crash involved here, you have to have a crash first. Personally, I slowed down a lot since I got my cruiser because I was told that they do not like hard driving. Hard driving eats parts on these trucks.

As for your reduced visibility, I really think that goes too far. Your job is to avoid hitting me if you are behind me. If one can’t out brake a much larger car in a much smaller car, then one shouldn’t be driving. You know you don’t need to see in front of me to stay safe. You can always just back off if conditions allow. I always stay extra far back from performance cars and motorcycles because no matter if I can see past them or not, they can out brake me whenever they want to, not just when they have to.

It’s a nuisance to you (I used to have a miata), but within the rules of how we are supposed to drive, it is not a concern worth measuring and paying for. You would have to give me a specific example before I will go for that one.

We are mostly in agreement I think. I just haven’t heard any reasonable argument with numbers for raising the gas tax so that we pay our fair share. Like you, I believe gas is cheap, and I am up for it.

Let me explain.
This Chevy Tahoe Hybrid gets about the same MPG (21/22) as the (non-hybrid) Toyota Highlander (18/24). Both vehicles have similar towing capacity and cargo volume, but the Highlander is much cheaper and drives better.

The Chevy Tahoe hybrid clearly doesn’t stand out (like the Toyota Prius stands out among cars).

The two-mode hybrid system simply doesn’t offer all that much MPG improvement. The Prius gets close to 2x improvement over a Camry, but this Chevy hybrid gets no improvement at all over a Highlander.

GM has spread itself thin and now developed about half a dozen different types of hybrid systems.
None of them offer an improvement that seems worth the trouble.
How can a company come up with so many duds?

But it is not just the SUV driver bearing the reduced safety of their choice, it is me, in my small car, having to worry about getting smashed into by them. You as an SUV owner are not bearing the cost of my reduced safety due to reduced visibility and higher likelihood of getting wedged under your truck if you hit me. This is exactly the kind of distortion that taxes should be used to address, not to fund the programs Phil either suggested or panned – I am in favor of lower overall taxation, smaller government, and taxes being used to encourage/discourage behaviors rather than generating revenue to “feed the beast”.

As for not lambasting performance cars, I drive one and it is a ridiculous gas guzzler – I’m not ashamed to admit it. The car I drive is one of the best arguments for a huge gas tax. People like me should be discouraged from driving silly vehicles when I could make due with something far more economical. But gas is cheap, I like driving my car (a lot), and therefore I am not discouraged at all from doing something I shouldn’t be doing.

Call me a hypocrite if you want, but I never said you should give up your SUV any more than I should give up my S4 – just that you (and me) should be taxed up the wazoo for what we drive. :)

This is precisely the thinking that truncates the influence of environmentalists. Enviros have a habit of campaigning for wholesale change and then complain that few have followed. 2Mode Tahoe is exactly the kind of meaningful incremental gain embraced by a volume market that environmentalists ought to drive for more often. A clear improvement in efficiency is being introduced to a sector with sales potential in the millions of units annually. If this solution were widely embraced by that sector’s buying public, the net environmental benefit will far exceed selling another 100,000 Prius. Further, encouraging people to buy multiple vehicles to have an appropriate technology for each driving task will drive up production of new vehicles, which has its own environmental footprint. Environmentally, having one SUV with dramatically-improved city mileage may have less environmental consequence than owning a less efficient SUV, a compact car and a motorcycle.

So, there’s real logic behind this award going to 2Mode Tahoe, *this year*. Tahoe has enough towing capacity (and yes, the reason the electric motor isn’t sufficient in concert with a smaller engine is battery capacity) to meet most such buyers’ recreational needs. It has space for people while also offering multiple fuel-saving technologies (2Mode, cylinder de-activation, energy recovery) and room for gear. In urban and traffic choked suburban areas, the fuel savings are going to be real.

I’m not saying you can’t make a good case for one of the other contenders, but 2Mode Tahoe is not bereft of a convincing case. But you have to change your aim from promoting an ideal to promoting volume solutions that big populations will accept.

I don’t believe the populations of hybrid prospects and large SUV intenders are as mutually exclusive as argued here. If people can obtain a large vehicle that meets their emotional and rational needs while delivering real efficiency gains without seriously sacrificing usable power, those conflicting concerns intersect, and I think the longer this solution is on the market and as the cost differential shrinks, that intersection widens.

The GM 6.0L V8 is not a huge engine. Only its displacement is relatively large. In fact it is compact in its exterior dimensions and is fairly light for what it delivers. It may be mechanically simpler than a DOHC mill, but that doesn’t mean it is less sophisticated. Its simplicity is advantage and its power delivery relative to total engine size as well as natural materials used to build it is exceptional. Also lost here is the fact that the vehicle has to hump the equivalent of 2 cornfed Americans in batteries. A lot of value will come out of extended field experience with this drivetrain in a truck, to be applied to continued refinement and downscaling for sedan and compact applications.

Last, the 2Mode Tahoe is going to slip into an efficiency class that will exceed some of our beloved sports and performance cars. Are green car advocates on TTAC ready to go after the Porsche Carerra 4S? Its city mileage is worse (17) and its highway mileage is only marginally better (25), and you know that most drivers aren’t driving those cars to get anywhere close to those numbers.

We can’t lambaste the modern SUV anymore without also directing ire at Porsche, BMW (M5 is 12/18!!), Ferrari, Maserati, Audi, et al.

Phil

CeeDragon, it should be noted that most rental companies have restrictions against using their pickup trucks for towing purposes, and most moving companies won’t allow anything smaller than a 14/16′ box truck to pull a trailer.

Simply put, renting a truck to tow a boat simply is not an option.

We agree on the tax, but Phil’s comments are applicable to that. If a reasonable argument is made on societies costs not reflected by the market, then go for it. However, then can you stop whining about the SUV because we ARE paying the correct cost?

As for crashworthiness, we get what we pay for. You can’t tax the manufacturer, you are taxing the end user. It is the end user who is making the choice about safety, and personally, I would take the Land Cruiser with it’s lower safety over a Yaris that meets the standards, thanks. Still, the rules were made, mostly by left leaning legislatures. Then I make my choice within the rules. Game should be over, no? So why the complaints? CAFE will only make it worse because fewer of us will be able to get the big SUV’s and the rest will be driving cars we can crush.

IC,

Yes, I am ruining your view. What does this cost you. Apparently, you place little value on it since it drive a low sports car. What about the semi blocking my view? How about cars with tinted windows? What is the view really for? Do you need it because you are tailgating? What is the societal cost of tailgating?

And the crash compitoble argument was had here on another thread where I did a fairly good job of debunking it. The market has spoken and we chose against it. No one wants to tell all the sports car owners and truck owners that they have to have the same bumper height. Then you need the cars to all have the same height, and the bumper needs to be about a foot high. The suspensions in all cars must be extremely firm to prevent more dive than the foot high bumper can compensate for.

Give it up.

This is about free markets and choice. Yes, we need some standards, and we have some. We should improve them, but going over board won’t happen. We will not necessarily choose a standard that you like, and then what? The standard will likely result in innocent deaths in the name of saving others. Is that okay with you?

If you want to destroy the markets, you have to realize that the result will not be a conservationists utopia, it will be an ecological disaster. Everywhere free property and markets are thrown out, the same thing happens.

Free markets mean that people get rewarded by what the market determines is the value of their input. If the rewards are all the same, the market does not exist. I earned my Land Cruiser, and I did it by making the companies I worked with better and more efficient. Why work so hard if I have to drive the same POS everyone else does. Make whatever rules you want, but some people will come out on top, anyway. Where is it different? Where is it better?

And yet, Europe’s high fuel taxes are barely allocated to “present and future energy insecurity, miliary efforts to secure and protect foreign energy assets…” Guess who pays.

The problem with taxing fuel is responsible allocation of the resulting proceeds on a sustained basis. I’d gladly pay another buck or two per gallon as an explicit tax to defray the costs of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, and to boost equipment levels for troops. But as a mindless subsidy for mass transit, or a torrent of money into the general fund with no accounting for use, no.

Phil

The guy with the better view is also ruining the view from a car. I’ve always countered this argument with, “What happens when everyone has SUVs and minivans?” For reference, my car’s roof is lower than the bottom of the window of a RAV4, let alone a taller vehicle. Granted, it’s a lowered sports car, but that doesn’t change the fact that the difference between a car’s roof and an SUV roof is best measured in feet.

Now typically, I like smaller cars. I have no way to explain that. It’s just my preference, but I have had SUVs, a Bronco II, and a 2 door Explorer. At one point I had three vehicles, the Explorer, a 97 neon, and a 240SX. The Explorer was only bigger than the cars in a couple exterior physical categories. Those being height, weight, and ground clearance. The neon was longer overall and wider, and both cars had a longer wheelbase. I will give Ford some credit though. The bigger heavier Explorer with a bigger motor and taller gearing got better real world mileage city and highway than the Bronco II. Both 4×4 and 5 speed manual trannies, and yes, Explorers come with a manual. I will admit that the SUVs had a better view, but I know that comes at the expense of cars and taking a maneuverability handicap as well.

My vote for Green Car of the year: Nissan Altima hybrid.

-> Body-on-frame SUV’s are cheaper than they would be if they were required to meet all of the same safety standards as conventional cars. This is an implicit subsidy to SUV buyers; it could be corrected by imposing a tax equal to the approximate R&D cost savings manufacturers enjoy per SUV.

-> There are negative costs to society associated with excessive gas consumption (present and future energy insecurity, military effort to secure and protect foreign energy assets, possible environmental impacts, crowded roads, etc.). The cleanest way to address this would be a sizeable gas tax, a la Europe. This is exactly the kind of tax that makes theoretical economic sense: one that directly influences consumer behavior in a desirable way and corrects for externalities.

Not to mention the safety issues I brought up earlier (X5 is heavier and higher and therefore more dangerous to me as the driver of a “normal” car, more likely to roll over in an accident thereby increasing my healthcare and public service costs, etc.).

Same source, combined mileage, BMW X5 vs. 5 series wagon with same engine and awd. Combined mileage difference is 2 mpg.

One guy is ruining the planet, the other is responsible? BTW: you don’t know how much they drive, how much they stomp the pedal, etc. Yet the greenies want to crucify the guy with the better view? Seriously?