Super Duper fuels

[ckrug7380 at comcast.net]

Instead of asking the government to solve the fuel problems. people really need to do more themselves.  You don't need a 3 ton SUV to drive to the convenience store for a pack of cigarettes.  Drive something smaller or get a bike.  
One thing that I haven't seen anyone even mention is the energy costs in building all of these new cars, whether they're alternative-fuel or not.  Not only is there energy used in the production, but there's also trasportation, and quite a bit of waste to be handled.  I've never seen one speck of data on this, but I would guess that it would take quite some time to recover this energy, even if the new car was 10 mpg more efficient than the one it replaced.  It takes very little energy to keep my 18 year old Audi on the road.  Manufacturers don't want to hear about this, they would much rather keep selling new stuff.   I started to notice that even small items are made to wear out and be replaced.  For example, light bulbs... when i was in the dealership end of the car business, we relpaced a lot of bulbs. headlights, taillights, all of them seem to have a lifespan of 1-2 years.  I've had many older cars, and on most, the bulbs were all original after 10+ years.  I guarantee t
 hat it
 isn't any more difficult,and probably only marginally more expensive to make that ten year bulb, but they get to sell 5 times as many of the two year ones.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that everything that you throw away, you also throw away all the energy used in making it.   Most of the solutions that have been suggested are, as one lister said, "smoke and mirrors", and are even more distant from the real issue, and are about as far from reality as the EPA mileage on the window stickers.   Has anyone gotten within 20% of those numbers?  More smoke and mirrors.  Hey, if the new cars get 30% better mileage than the cars in the 50's, and 20% of that is an illusion, then it's more like 10%.   Is that really an improvement at all?   
Just a little something to ponder.

Calvin