Grumpa Joe's Place

The creative side of my head keeps telling me to draw a cartoon depicting a hybrid semi-truck. Before I go to the trouble to make the drawing, I felt it wise to find out how much oil truck use as compared to cars. The current gov’m’n’t  push is to conserve oil by telling us buy expensive hybrids that will increase gas mileage from 29 mpg to 48 mpg.

Now, more than ever, I am convinced the USA can live without the Department of Energy. For the last week, I have been researching the Internet for data regarding the amount of fuel used by various modes of travel. This should be easy, I thought; just go to the DOE site and search. Wrong. I needed to visit many websites for each type of transportation to find one simple number. How much fuel do the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes in the USA consume within one year?

What I have learned is that every time Barack Obama or one of his denizens begins spewing rhetoric about man-made global warming and the oil shortage, it is best to change the channel. Another reason for channel flipping is any dialog about the urgency to sell your gas hog in favor of a hybrid.

There is one thing this research did for me. It made the USA Energy Policy stand out. The policy is to make everything run on oil.

Oil is the organic compound breathing life into the modern era.

The hybrid trade off for me is about 170 horsepower and a lot of comfort. Hybrids with high mileage are tiny puddle jumpers that run on four cylinders and weigh less than three thousand pounds.(A puddle jumper in my day weighed 1800 pounds, how did the  Prius get so fat? Batteries?) I spent twenty years driving puddle jumpers at a time when even the most Left person in the country had not awakened to the fact that maybe burning gasoline will pollute the air.

At my current age, I want enough horsepower to climb a hill without the need to downshift four times and have to crawl to the top. I also prefer a seat large enough to handle my wide body, air conditioning to minimize discomfort, a quiet cabin, and a trunk large enough to carry my luggage.

Here is the chart I made using the data gleaned from many sources. Even I have a hard time believing what I see.

Chart by Grumpa Joe May 18, 2011, Data from various Internet sources

Here are some questions to ask:

1. Why on earth are we picking on cars to save oil when trucks, ships, and trains consume more than cars?
2. Why isn’t Obama pushing the truck industry to buy hybrids?
3. Is there such a thing as a hybrid truck?
4. Why do we buy oil from the other side of the world when the largest polluters are the ships hauling the oil?
5. Why is Obama pushing high-speed passenger service when he should be pushing high-speed electric freight?
6. Is Obama aware that the country’s average mileage for a car is 18 mpg? (Most likely tilted to the low end by illegals buying two hundred dollar cars that are low mpg.)
7. If diesel-electric locomotives are so fuel efficient, why don’t we use the same principle on semi-trucks?
8. If all electric trains are so much more efficient than diesel-electrics why aren’t we pushing for that?

The questions can go on and on, but no one is asking them.  Instead, we get a bunch of BS from our leader about the urgency to trade in the SUV.

Related articles

• Natural-Gas Trucks Face Long Haul (online.wsj.com)
• Prius sales pass 1 million as hybrids become ‘mainstream’ (usatoday.com)
• Poll: With gas prices high, Americans want 60 m.p.g. fuel efficiency (csmonitor.com)
• NRSC video says Obama’s energy policy is … (hotair.com)

Filed under: Conservative, economy, Government, politics | Tagged: Barack Obama, Energy Policy, Fuel efficiency, Semi-trailer truck, Sport utility vehicle, Toyota Prius, United States, USA |