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Old 12-28-2007, 12:27 PM
 
Location: Santa Monica
4,714 posts, read 8,444,754 times
Reputation: 1052

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Hey, I can call a tricycle an SUV if I'm a car company. If you can't tell the difference between a truck chassis and an nontruck chassis, then God bless you. A Nissan Murano is marketed as an SUV but it's actually a jacked-up hatchback. For a lot of the models, it's only a marketing definition.
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Old 12-28-2007, 12:33 PM
 
Location: The Rock!
2,370 posts, read 7,739,786 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saganista View Post
Or the exact opposite may come to pass. In DC, it has been the case for a decade or more that people are flocking into those very crime-infested inner city wastelands and turning them into upscale havens of beautifully restored architecture and smart-growth modern development. This isn't much help to the poor who had been living in those neighborhoods, but as life with zero or very limited use of cars is entirely possible in such areas, they may end up being a lot more attractive going forward than what one might think.


No, we would have been better off without the spikes, achieving the same (or even greater) overall increase in pump prices via a smooth and predictable process. Plans for using the federal excise tax on gasoline to drive just such a process were being developed 30 years ago. But Reagan junked them all. New morning in America and all that...
I think there will be a limit to what the average American can afford to do. Gentrification in DC helped explode some prices in some of those semi blighted areas in NE so that folks like me still could not afford to buy there. I would have LOVED to have lived in DC but even with all that going on, prices were out of my range so I got pushed out. Most of us couldn't afford what will be offered when SE and Anacostia get leveled and redeveloped either. That's why I think middle income people like myself will leave the larger cities for smaller cities with more accessibility. I'm not saying I don't think what you're saying with totally without reason. But my experiences watching parts of DC and Baltimore get gentrified and redeveloped indicate to me that it won't the middle class moving back in.

Now...the stuff about 30 years ago, I wouldn't know about. It probably would have been a much better concept than what we have happening today. But that's spilled milk.
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Old 12-28-2007, 12:34 PM
 
6,762 posts, read 11,601,159 times
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Muranos get a 5 star crash rating. They get over 20mpg. They are marketed as a crossover SUV just like most of the newer crossovers that are an SUV/stationwagon blend.
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Old 12-28-2007, 12:36 PM
 
Location: The Rock!
2,370 posts, read 7,739,786 times
Reputation: 849
Quote:
Originally Posted by ParkTwain View Post
Hey, I can call a tricycle an SUV if I'm a car company. If you can't tell the difference between a truck chassis and an nontruck chassis, then God bless you. A Nissan Murano is marketed as an SUV but it's actually a jacked-up hatchback. For a lot of the models, it's only a marketing definition.

Are you implying most SUVs are built on a car chassis? Not sure I understand this post.
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Old 12-28-2007, 12:37 PM
 
Location: Santa Monica
4,714 posts, read 8,444,754 times
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A "crossover SUV" has a car chassis, not a truck chassis. The Murano is a jacked-up hatchback with fat tires.

Does the SUV have 4-wheel drive? Is it rated for off-road use? What are the gear ratios? What about the suspension (truck or car)? Etc. Etc.
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Old 12-28-2007, 12:51 PM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,399,977 times
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Originally Posted by Wild Style View Post
my first degree is in International Econ. yes you are right its elasticity versus inelasticity.
Actually, the OP's usage was correct...gasoline is an inelastic good in that over observable ranges, unit increases in price produce less than a proportional decrease in demand. The demand curve for gasoline is actually a fairly interesting one, in that in functional terms, it may be indeterminate outside of relatively narrow ranges. It is certainly the case for example that relative price-elasticities vary dependent on timing. If one introduces a short-term price increase from say 300/gal to 350/gal in one great leap, demand will decrease noticably, but if one introduces the same increase over a series of narrowly separated 5-cent increments, demand will decrease by less. Some suggest that this effect motivates a pump price that is ever changing over relatively small increments such that consumers cannot become too acclimated to the actual cost of gasoline at any particular price. This type of market-segmentation by confusion would work to the advantage of oil companies by allowing them to maximize total revenue by manipulating what are in effect a calculated series of surcharges and rebates. Such a system would work entirely to the detriment of consumers and of society as a whole of course, but in a free market economy, neither of those entities actually matters for very much...

Last edited by saganista; 12-28-2007 at 01:43 PM..
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Old 12-28-2007, 01:50 PM
 
6,762 posts, read 11,601,159 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ParkTwain View Post
A "crossover SUV" has a car chassis, not a truck chassis. The Murano is a jacked-up hatchback with fat tires.

Does the SUV have 4-wheel drive? Is it rated for off-road use? What are the gear ratios? What about the suspension (truck or car)? Etc. Etc.
Thats the whole idea. A vehicle that is taller than a station wagon with a similar amount of storage.

SUV's have not always been designed to be offroad, nor have they always been designed to be heavy duty enough to tow.

The Murano looks like neither a hatchback nor an SUV. Would it make you happier if they marketed it as a jacked up hatchback?
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Old 12-28-2007, 01:53 PM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,399,977 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by YoAdrian View Post
The thing is, you can get ethanol from any cellulosic plant source, like switchgrass, sugar cane, even hemp. Why the discussion always focuses just on corn, I'm not sure. If corn isn't an economical means of producing fuel, other methods do exist.
Mostly because the technology re corn is already in place and being used. It's also popular with farmers. The technology for cellulosic ethanol production is still in the latter stages of development. Although Range Fuels broke ground in November to construct a celluslosic plant in Georgia, actual mass-production of ethanol from switchgrass, cordgrass, hemp, etc. is still a ways away...
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Old 12-28-2007, 01:56 PM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,399,977 times
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Originally Posted by Stormcrow73 View Post
I agree with tallrick, the ethanol "solution" is a farce.
It isn't necessarily meant as a solution. But it can be a significant first step, and we do have one of those journeys of a thousand miles to make...
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Old 12-28-2007, 01:59 PM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,399,977 times
Reputation: 4013
Quote:
Originally Posted by ParkTwain View Post
What about all the macho Italians puttering around Rome on scooters. Macho, baby, macho! Economics trumps image every time.
Heck...Romans aren't macho! Bunch of wine-drinking euro-phonies and ladies-man wannabe's. When's the last time you saw some Roman guy twirling around town carrying a chain-saw!!!
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