[s-cars] Thought-provoking stuff.......NAC, but all Car stuff.

[Fred Munro]

Big subject, Jim.

I see two big problems here, oil and transportation. As Mark pointed out,
North America is built on oil and the automobile. Both are tightly linked to
our economies and lifestyle. Expensive gas and oil? It's not expensive. We
have a free market system. Oil and gas will be expensive when most of the
people can no longer afford to buy it, and cut back their consumption to the
point that the oil companies drop the price to get the volumes back up. I
think we are a long way from that point yet. Still lots of gas guzzlers sold
and on the road. Big profits for the oil companies? Yup. The value to the
consumer is much higher than the cost of production. That's how capitalism
works; you make the investment, you reap the profits.

Why is the value of gas so high to the consumer? We have built our North
American infrastructure on the premise of cheap and inexhaustible oil and
personal, not mass, transportation. Suburbs spread all over with people
living many kilometres from work and the nearest store, dentist, school,
etc. The local Mom and Pop stores? Gone. Big Box stores, massive parking
lots, get your low-priced Chinese-made goods here. No rapid, high density
mass transit systems. You need the gas and car just to get to work and to
get food and the knick-knacks so dear to our hearts. How much is that gas
worth to John Q. Public, when without it he's stuck in Happy Valley 5 km
from the nearest store?

Electric cars? Yup, disengages the citizen from the oil companies.
Transportation is still a problem and still individual. Pollution exists at
the generation plants and in battery manufacture and disposal, not at road
level. The U.S. is pretty well maxed out on electrical generation and going
electric on cars would overload the system. The Tesla is a nice electric car
concept - ultra high performance, laptop battery banks, but the ~$100,000
price is out of reach for most.

Our real problem is our North American lifestyle, which is not sustainable
over the long term. Will new technologies save us? Perhaps, but the history
on "new technologies" shows they have created more problems than they
solved. I see three groups of people out there. A very, very, very small
number recognize the problem and have changed their lifestyle to accommodate
the issues. They move downtown, sell the car, walk, bike, and bus to work
and the services they need. Very European. A somewhat larger and growing
group, and I include myself in this one, recognizes the problem and
continues living the non-sustainable lifestyle anyway. It's a great
lifestyle and I love my Quattro's. The largest group doesn't even recognize
the problem.

Want to read a good book? Try "Collapse" by Prof. Jared Diamond. He examines
past civilizations that collapsed and those that survived, identifies common
links, and projects them onto our civilization. Very thought-provoking and
not total doom-and-gloom, but not very cheery either.

Anyhow, enough ranting. As Mark said, don't get me started :)

Fred Munro
'97 S6 (fill 'er up!)


-----Original Message-----
From: s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com
[mailto:s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com]On Behalf Of Jim Fleischer
Sent: June 11, 2007 3:58 PM
To: s-car-list at audifans.com; urq at audifans.com; 200q20v at audifans.com
Subject: [s-cars] Thought-provoking stuff.......NAC, but all Car stuff.


Hey quattro fans,

Please forgive the NAC, and also posting to the three lists I subscribe to,
but I saw something last night that is starting to disturb me.  Let me start
by saying that I am a quattroholic, currently owning a '95 S6 Avant, a '91
200 TQ 20V and an '83 ur.  I've had a total of 8 Audis (7 quattros) in my
driving career and have loved every one of them.  That said, I just watched
"Who Killed the Electric Car" last night and I found it quite compelling.  I
also found it quite disturbing.  If you haven't watched it yet, I suggest,
even for entertainment sake, that you go and rent it.  Now, I'm not one of
those "conspiracy" types, but I find it quite troubling to know that we, the
car buying public, are not given the option of purchasing a different
propulsion technology for our transportation that would seem on the surface
to be very economical, reliable, "emissions free" (I put that in quotes on
purpose....of course I know it takes either nuclear, natural gas or coal to
make the el
 ectricity to charge the damn things,) etc.  The fact that the major
automobile manufacturers have gone to great lengths to destroy every last EV
they had made makes for some interesting "conspiracy" thoughts in my mind.
What are they trying to hide?

My intent here is merely to provoke some mindful thought about what we, as
consumers, are facing in the real world when faced with high gas and oil
prices (while oil companies are enjoying record profits), environmental
pollution from oil and gas spills, and not to mention Global Warming due to
internal combustion engine exhaust, (I'm not even going to go into the
geo-political conflicts costing American lives in the oil-rich Middle East.)
And to also inform people that there are (were) other viable options
available as recently as 5-10 years ago that could possibly have kept us
from the possible environmental predicament we are currently facing.  Am I
willing to give up my trio of quattros at the moment?  No, but I am thinking
of the possibilites of transforming a 4000 quattro to electric power
sometime in the future........the technology is there to do it.

I invite all thought provoking criticism, constructive and otherwise.......

Best regards to all,

Jim Fleischer
'95 S6 Avant
'91 200TQ
'83 ur
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