G. David Felt

I would love to see the Encore in a Gold mist hue. That color shift paint that can go from a greyish gold to a bright gold. I suspect it would look killer in a Blue Green shifting teal paint job. I think car companies need to use more of the color shift paint jobs like ChromaFlair or Rust-Oleum color shift paints.

We are at least 50 if not 75 years from this even being any where close to prime time. 100 years before it will be ready to become the standard. Eventually I do think we will see pure electric that can go for thousands of miles on a real road trip. NOW - CNG is the Answer, Compressed Natural Gas is the logical step away from Arab / Foreign oil and onto our own energy source. We have the worlds largest deposits. Rock on CNG

Very True, it is worthless Junk! Good use of the word!!!

This is no Surprise, you have a very limited amount of people who are willing to spend this kind of money on a 40 mile limit car. Before anyone says but no they are 80 miles, the Leafs in the Seattle area are only averaging 40-50 miles at most and there is a huge forum here where they have been very vocal about it. Nissan has promised to replace the batteries once they have a newer better battery, but for now, it is only a city commuter car. Worse yet is the tax payers are footing the bill for the bloody charging stations being put in at the park and rides and for the electricity they consume. I feel we should get a rebate in tax dollars we pay for gas here due to this free bee. Time to turn off the free hand outs. They need to pay and survive on their own.

Has anyone found what the real fuel mileage is for these baby Duramax engines? I have searche and seens numbers from the mid 20's to the mid 30's but nothing really stated by GM. I am wondering just how fuel efficient they are. I would love to have the 2.8 in a mid size SUV with mileage in the mid 30's.

It really is amazing how people can be so stupid in regards to driving and taking care of their auto.

But the midwest is flat and I would agree that FWD should get you around even in the winter snow since it is so flat form what I have seen of the midwest. Yet on the coasts with mountains, AWD/4WD is the only way to go.

Would love to see pictures with the Weather Tech mats in as I am interested in them for my own car. Thanks for the update.

Amazing the incompetence of people. If this ever makes it on any body of BC waterways with marine patrol it will never pass inspection and be confiscated. This has to be a backwater redneck who thought his idea was cool but is really dangerous. WOW

I owned the Sentra as that was the car my wife had when we married, but I got rid of it soon afterwards for better american auto's.

Very nice update, I look forward to hearing how a road trip is in the car and what the real world mileage you get.

I agree, I think from an OEM stand point, no useful purpose in building a Stepside for the masses. From a 3rd party upgrade/parts supplier stand point it would make sense to build and offer for sale to the public a StepSide bed that can be had in full metal or with more traditional wood slates in the bottom. I can see a custom market for these parts.

I disagree on the price since the Kia Soul and Scion xB would cost a little bit more when equipped like the cube. Those are both over priced also for what you get. A cheap POS sold to keep people from having better auto's especially when you look at the price.

Interesting, in the city, it seems to be a perfect fit and option, but even then, I find the price very high compared to alternative auto's out there in this same market segment.

Sad state of affairs.

WOW, Was that a functional Air scoop? Way too funny, performance Air Scoop with eyelashes!

Nice Job, far superior looking with the tint. Very happy for you.

I concure that the Tiquan, Rav and CRV are turds as FWD appliances. I see no reason for them to exist since they truly have no benefit beyond sitting higher since they do not have true cuv/suv on road/off road capabilities. LOL yet the Encore is a "great CUV" for your parents? Did I miss something about its capabilities over the much larger compact CUV's? Yes as an AWD CUV, the Encore can at least give you far superior traction compared to FWD Turds. I will expand my feeling that any American, Asian or European FWD only CUV is a turd that should not be built/sold.

Who cares if there were a few 68 and 69's in the show, the car was cool and Daisy was hot for the time of a young boy growing up. How can you go wrong?

That is really sweet.

Hot Tamales

I concure that the Tiquan, Rav and CRV are turds as FWD appliances. I see no reason for them to exist since they truly have no benefit beyond sitting higher since they do not have true cuv/suv on road/off road capabilities.

Marketing, this boils down to marketing and the current message does not appeal to people. They are not showing how their product is needed for peoples life style and how it enhances their life style. This lack of good marketing means most tend to ignor the company.

I wonder how much of business closure is due to the burden of taxes on small businesses? Washington state has a repressive B&O tax (Business & Occupation tax) So even if you cannot afford to pay your self and still have sales, you have to pay a tax on the gross sales to the state. So while we only have a sales tax in this state, businesses that are trying to get going have to pay a tax just for being a business even if you do not have a profit to pay yourself yet. Very sad and sucky state of affairs. This is a critical point in our current elections for washington state as many small businesses are closing down due to this burden. How does a state expect to have you pay a tax if you cannot even pay yourself in the early stages of getting a business started. I can understand wanting to redevelop a site and hopefully if the NAPA was profitable or break even the owner will consider coming back once the new building is in place.

G. David Felt Staff Writer Alternative Energy - CheersandGears.com September 25, 2012 Alternative Energy, what is the logical next step for America Part III? Join me as I write about the various forms of alternative energy and how I see them stacking up in today’s market place. Hydro, Geothermal and Wind While excellent in being renewable energy for use by homes and businesses, Hydro, Geothermal and Wind lack the ability to drive an auto by itself. When combined with alternative forms of creating energy, these three renewable forms of energy can truly make a difference. Hydropower, water powered cars or hydrogen/oxygen powered cars using 100% water as fuel is real. Splitting water by electrolysis and creating hydrogen/oxygen gas or Hydroxy gas, the molecules are bonded together positively in a ortho hydrogen state. Due to the power of this gas, you do not store it so it must be made as you drive. The special alternator generates amps to run the special stainless steel cell that allows this gas to be created and used to run the engine. One can research Stan Meyer’s Water Powered Dun Buggy to see what this technology is capable of. Yet with all the potential possible, either we have a true conspiracy from the oil companies with this technology being killed off or a solid scam. You decide! Now you have the alternative Hydrogen powered cars that rely on tanks, a hydrogen stations and what most engineers call the PEM (polymer exchange membrane) fuel cell. The PEM fuel cells have the advantage of being light and small. They consist of two electrodes ( a negatively charged anode and a positively charged cathode), a catalyst and a membrane. Hydrogen is forced into the fuel cell at the anode in the form of H2 molecules, each of which contains two hydrogen atoms. A catalyst at the anode breaks the molecules into hydrogen ions (the protons) and a flow of electricity (the electrons). The ions pass through the membrane, but the electricity has to go around. While it's doing so, it can be harnessed to do work. Just as hydrogen is forced into the fuel cell at the anode, oxygen is forced in at the cathode. The protons and electrons reunite at the cathode and join with the oxygen to form water, most of which become the fuel cell's exhaust. Fuel cells are designed to be flat and thin, mainly so they can be stacked. The more fuel cells in the stack, the greater the voltage of the electricity that the stack produces. Fuel cells have two major advantages over fossil fuels. First, they don't deplete the world's finite supply of oil, which helps us preserve the existing supplies and they could also reduce our dependency on foreign oil. Second, the only byproduct from a fuel cell's operation is heat and water, which means fuel cells don't produce pollution. This is vitally important in a time when carbon emissions from cars are believed to be promoting global warming. Perhaps a more important question is how the hydrogen itself will be produced. Given that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, constituting roughly 90 percent of the atoms in existence, you'd think that this wouldn't be a problem. Well, think again. Hydrogen is also the lightest element in the universe and any uncontained hydrogen on the surface of the Earth will immediately float off into outer space. What hydrogen remains on this planet is bound with other elements in molecular form, most commonly in water (H2O) molecules. And there happens to be a lot of H2O on the surface of the Earth. But how do we separate the hydrogen molecules in the water from the oxygen molecules? And if we don't use water as a hydrogen source, where else can we get hydrogen? The simplest way of getting hydrogen from water is the one that Sir William Grove knew about more than 150 years ago: electrolysis. If you pass an electric current through water, the H2O molecules break down. Similar to fuel cell operation, this process uses an anode and a cathode, usually made from inert metals. When an electric current is applied to the water, hydrogen forms at the cathode, and oxygen forms at the anode. Although this process is slow, it can be done on a large scale. An alternative source for hydrogen is natural gas, which consists of naturally occurring hydrocarbons. A process called steam reformation can be used to separate the hydrogen in the gas from the carbon. At present, this is the most common method of industrial-scale production of hydrogen and would likely be the first method used to produce the hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles. Unfortunately, this process uses fossil fuels -- the natural gas -- so if the point of building cars that run on hydrogen is to avoid depleting fossil fuel reserves, natural gas would be the worst possible source of this fuel yet with North America having the largest reserves in the world we have a 150-200 year step to the eventual holy grail of renewable energy with almost none if not truly no carbon footprint of green house gas. Some experts have suggested that it might be possible to build miniature hydrogen plants that will fit in the average person's garage, so it won't even be necessary to drive to the local fueling station to fill up the car's hydrogen tank. The most extreme form of this idea has been the suggestion that electrolysis could be performed inside the car itself, which would make possible the astounding idea of a car that runs on water! However, the power for the electrolysis has to come from some sort of battery, so a water-powered car would need to be periodically recharged. Your three biggest challenges to a Hydro car is cost of developing the hydrogen technology. Platinum is the most widely used catalyst in fuel cells leaving one with a 100K fuel cell cost. Storage is a thorny problem. Hydrogen is a gas that likes to spread out so compression into a reasonable size while dealing with expansion issues from warm days means that your tank would vent out and in a couple days you would have no fuel to run the car if it was sitting for days, this on top of the explosion factor due to being highly flammable. One only needs to remember the Hindenburg. Fortunately, hydrogen fires are not as hot as gas fires and less likely to start a secondary fire. Third challenge, Hydrogen is it really nonpolluting? A fuel cell only produces heat and water as exhaust but the process to create the hydrogen in not necessarily clean. Electrolysis uses electricity and that electricity will often come from plants that burn coal, a highly polluting source. And when hydrogen is extracted from natural gas, it produces carbon emissions, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid by using hydrogen in the first place. Geothermal Think back to your grade school science class about using the heat lying deep beneath the Earth’s surface. As we look to alternative ways to reduce our dependence on Fossil Fuels, it is not uncommon that every potential energy source is being considered as a replacement. How can geothermal power your car? Geothermal energy resources include an array of earth-sourced energy, including heat found below shallow ground, hot water and rock found a few miles deeper, and even the extremely high-temperature molten rock known as magma, lying deep beneath the surface of the Earth, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Although it has garnered more attention of late, heat from the Earth, or geothermal energy, has been warming water that then seeps into underground reservoirs since the beginning of time. With temperatures reaching extremely high levels, from 225 to 600 degrees F, these reservoirs form a usable source of energy that can then be used to produce electricity. In fact, the U.S. has used geothermal energy from reservoirs such as these to generate electricity at power plants for the past 50 years. As research continues on how to extract and use this renewable energy, expect geothermal energy to continue to become more competitive on a cost basis with fossil fuels. As supplies of fossil fuels dwindle, geothermal technology will already be in place to shoulder the energy needs. Currently, three types of electric generating plants have been developed to utilize geothermal energy. Used since 1960 as a replacement fuel for coal and other fossil fuels to generate electricity, technologies relying on geothermal energy have been developed primarily in three ways to power electric generation plants. One of these is known as dry steam. In this technology, steam from underground wells is used to turn a turbine that then activates a generator to produce electricity. However, due to a lack of underground steam resources, the only dry steam plant generation in the U.S. is at The Geysers in California. In binary cycle technology, heat from reservoirs of temperatures between 225 and about 350 degrees F is used to boil a working fluid that is then vaporized in a heat exchanger and used to power a generator. Water from this process can be injected back into the ground to begin the process again. But the most common kind of geothermal-powered electric plant is the flash steam plant that makes use of water from reservoirs of high temperatures, brought up through wells where it boils into steam and is then used to power a generator. Leftover water and steam can be returned to the reservoir for reuse. Geothermal resources are geographically favored. Although geothermal heat pumps can be used throughout the country, electric generating plants and direct-use systems are limited in the western states because geothermal resources are geographically concentrated in the western U.S. Part of the reason for the geographical limitations are that drilling technology is current limited to development of geothermal resources from shallow water or steam-filled reservoirs, which again, are found primarily in the west. So while this has enormous potential for clean power generation to power electrical cars, we have multiple limitations at this time for being a favorable source of fuel. One is the charge time for electric cars; two the distance an electric car can travel and three is the current state of development of geothermal power. For these reasons this is not a replaceable form of fuel for petrol. Wind The idea of a wind-powered car is nothing new. Back in the 1960s, Douglas Aircraft engineer Andrew Bauer allegedly created a working prototype of a "directly downwind faster than the wind," or DDWFTTW, vehicle. However, no official records exist exploring whether it was faster than the wind. Today you have an engineer Richard Jenkins who dreams of creating a vehicle that can use air to power a auto and in the process set his own land speed record. You can find much on the Greenbird built by Richard yet while the autos are propelled and driven by wind. There is still the large scale production of such a car and the need for constant wind to make them a reality. The issue of cars powered by wind electricity is less one of supply and demand, and more one of sociological and cultural shifts in habits and thinking. Going from miles per gallon to kilowatt hours per mile means more than plunking a battery where the gas tank used to be. It's about changing driving habits, travel habits and even our concept of working and commuting. But when (and if) these cultural traditions are changed, wind power would still come up short on supply. Sure, it could generate the necessary power, but only if there were enough wind farms and only if there were enough ways to distribute the power -- if and if and if. But the wind is a fickle beast, despite modern forecasting techniques. Wind is seasonal, wind is dependent on storms and wind is variable and changeable -- much more so than human behavior. The best bet on wind is where wind is a constant, so that wind generators can create the electricity that can go into charging auto’s this can have a very small carbon foot print and yet we still end up with the shortages of an electric auto. What we need to be asking ourselves and demanding for US independence is as follows: What is the logical next step to remove our dependence on Oil from other countries while allowing us to move to the next better fuel for auto’s? View full article