Yep, sitting straight up is a good thing, and some people are long enough to have to recline to drive cars like the wife's. Then there's the nice all-wheel capability in my Escape that gets me over unplowed areas like the three miles to the ambulance garage. It's also able to pull a trailer and
500 BF of wood back from vacation, and responds straight ahead when two wheels are in slush and two on pavement or any other combination I've found.
Of course it's 22 mpg only with the V6, and no tax advantage at all, but it's safe, roomy and comfortable.
Have you noticed all the "me too" foreign SUVs that have appeared since the Explorer set the pace?
This is way off the woodworking topic, but the function of an anti-drainback valve is to keep the filter full after the engine is shut down and oil pressure is no longer generated. It is normally a rubber flap which acts as a one way valve.
ZAP is well known as a company which is 95% hype, 5% substance. The actual products they are selling are generic Chinese electric scooters and low speed three wheel electric vehicles which are little more than golf carts. Why three wheels you might ask? Well, so that for safety regulation purposes they are considered motor cycles.
You must not be familiar with travel nurses. They go from job to job as temps. Here in California many hospitals rely on travel nurses for a significant portion of their staffing.
I don't know, that is a number you pulled out of your hat. I can assure that alcohol does not improve nor maintain gas mileage.
I do know that those lighter weight E85 vehivles that I test drove with smaller engines had EPA gas mileage estimates that were 10 to 15% less than the vehivle that I bought with 25-30% more hp.
I suspect that may be true however the Chey Volt has very similar performance, mileage, and operating cost expectations. Additionally IIRC not all Zaps are 3 wheeled.
There are personal home care nurses, my next door neighbor is one, she was an RN and found that dealing directly with individuals was much more lucrative.
Not doubting you here but that sounds kinda high. With about 175 million women of all ages living in the US that would be 1 in 175 this year and or 1 in 5 since 1972.
Most SUV discussions don't refer to Escapes, Foresters, Hollanders, CRV's, RAV4's, etc... They're really referring to the boats, even though the smaller vehicles are still SUV's.
FWIW, My 2.5L, 4 cy. 5 spend manual, '01 Subaru Outback only got 23 MPG, with my 4 bike Yakima rack on top, so the Escape is doing very well! The Subie towed a 1500-2000 lb. trailer nicely! I only ditched it for the Tacoma when I bought a bigger trailer and realized that I was tearing up the interior with wood. That Subaru was by far, the best snow car ever... I really wanted to keep it and ditch the wife's Wrangler.
That's where the newness is still a detriment as mentioned previously. At present, the distribution and blending is still in the hands of the oil company distributors who have little, if any, incentive to make it cost-competitive. There are a few places (AgriTalk guy on radio based in St Louis mentioned it just the other day) where it is, indeed priced based on actual costs, but many places aren't yet as you're seeing, unfortunately. It was about 40-cents less than premium iirc, that particular day there in his area of St Louis.
It'll take time, but it's gradually happening and will eventually sort out its place in the market as the ethanol producers get sufficient infrastructure in place to compete directly that the oil companies don't have such a stranglehold. There are a few of the producer co-operatives that are in the process of investigating actually building some distribution channels themselves. They would certainly prefer to not have to do so, but may find it necessary to hasten the process.
One of the actual difficulties is that the mandates for usage, while promoting the development of refining capacity has caused a flurry of distilling capacity which has, at the moment, outstripped the distribution capacity.
One other thing they (the oil companies) are dragging their feet on now is a (mostly) bogus argument about UL-listed E85-compatible pumps.
Again, it ain't the final answer and it ain't perfect (it would be really, really nice if ethanol had as high or higher specific energy as gasoline, but it's a much lower molecular weight and that's the name o' that tune so it has what it has), but it can and will help for at least an intermediary period. When the development of stover and sawgrass and similar products are complete as feedstocks, then the production costs relative to corn will drop significantly as will, undoubtedly, the temporary tight corn markets. Of course, the actual corn supply shortage that is all the rage in the urban media is as much related to a relatively short crop owing to weather as it is to the increased demand
-- both are about equal in magnitude in terms of reduction of supply and increase in demand. And, of course, the worldwide wheat supplies are at
20+-yr lows owing to harvest shortfalls in all the major wheat producing countries in the world, not just the US.
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