“Smart” car?

You know granola chrunchers are just victim to a smart marketing tool: “Save the environment” “Go Green”. For instance, the food industry makes a much larger return on their produce if they sell it as “organic”. You know how expensive organic food is? It’s ridiculous.

DaimlerChrysler built the Smart car to help save mother earth, right? No, it’s been produced to increase DaimlerChrysler’s revenue. They appeal to a new group: the tree huggers. Pretty smart if you ask me. Here’s my view: Johnny can buy a new Dodge Neon for $13,800 or an electric Smart car for $27,250. The Neon gets 30 miles per gallon, the Smart car doesn’t use gas at all (it operates on electric power, which is not free by the way). Let’s do a little math. I have a Neon, and my work is about seven miles away from home. In other words, I could get away with having an electric Smart car, which only goes 40MPH, because I don’t have to use freeways to get to work. Living so close to work, I only use a tank of gas a month (ten gallon gas tank). At four dollars a gallon for gas right now, I spend $40 a month. Now the difference between the price of the electric Smart car vs. the Neon is $13,450. How far would that money go towards gas at $4/gallon * 10gallons/month? It would go 28 years ($480 a year in gas). You’d have to drive that two passenger POS around for 28 years (at only 40MPH) for it to be worth the savings in gas money. No thanks, not for me. But, gas prices might continue to rise. Let’s say they’re going to double, to $8/gallon. And, let’s say I double the amount of monthly driving I do to 20 gallons/month. At those rates, you’d have to drive the electric Smart car for seven years before buying a new car to avoid losing money ($1,920 a year in gas). Is it worth it? Not for me. I’ll keep my 5 passenger seating, ability to go more than 100 miles in a trip and speeds over 40MPH. And as for Johnny, well, he took one in the pocket book because he’s swung at DaimlerChrysler’s sales pitch to the environmentalists. Is he really going to be able to go seven years without buying a bigger, faster car? Props to him if he can.

I just think it’s interesting how environmentalists get screwed by the high prices of the products their lifestyle requires them. Maybe it’s a testament to their faith to actually pay that much to live their beliefs, albeit their beliefs are incongruent to mine.

What do you think?