Eco-friendly Hummers, Suburbans, and Tahoes?
category: Going Green
I love Hummers. A few months ago I heard they are going out of business, but they just released their newest model, the HX. So are they going out of business or not? I hope not. In my neighborhood, there are like 10 people with a Hummer in their driveway. I know Hummers use lots of gas and are huge, but do you think it would ever be possible to make a “green” Hummer? It seems like all the “green” and eco-friendly cars are boxy, ugly, and small. Why can’t they make a big eco-friendly car? That would definitely be hot, because Americans like big cars, but we also want to be green nowadays, right? So why dont car companies just do that? Would it be so hard to make an eco-friendly or more fuel-efficient Hummer, Suburban, Tahoe, Escalade, etc? And if not, why is it taking so long?
linlyons …
I never said I WANTED or bought a Hummer because my neighbors have one or for any other reason. I just said that I liked them. I’m only 16 and I already have a car. I’m just asking, why dont they make big eco-friendly cars.
Related posts:
- Eco-Friendly and “Green”Cars”?
- The Benefits of Environmentally Friendly Cars
- do car manufacturers really support eco-friendly vehicls?
- Will Eco-Friendly or “Green” cars ever be more powerful, and faster than “normal” non eco-friendly cars?
- How are eco-friendly resources eco-friendly if they take things from the enviroment?
yes it would be hard.
i’m sure they’ll make a hybrid, of at least one of them, but it’ll get less than 15 mpg.
you just cannot push all that weight around, against all that air resistance, and get good gas mileage.
so, you’re not going to find anything close to an eco-friendly hummer — even if they tell you otherwise.
just because there are others, does that mean you need one?
surely you don’t buy that many groceries.
and while the price of gas isn’t bad today, it’s going to go back up again.
maybe you’re rolling in dough.
i just bought an old subaru, 2.2 engine, 4wd, for $2500.
wouldn’t that make more sense?
do you really have a limitless checking account?
(in which case, obviously i don’t have to leave anything under your tree. :-)
well, the very concept of being an enormous beast AND being green is contradictive right off the bat, since it’s a cars small size and light, aerodynamic frame that makes it so fuel efficient.
Things like hummers could probably be green-ER, but their enormous size is automatically a huge drain on fuel economy and so they’ll never be nearly as green as say a Prius or even a gas only accord.
Besides that, the people that drive these gas guzzlers tend to not give a damn about the environment anyway otherwise they wouldn’t have one of them.
Plus, making a hummer greener would have to mean taking away some of it’s HP, which is what turns people on to getting a hummer in the first place. so it really doesn’t make much sense to try and make Hummers green
It may be possible if the Hydrogen fuel cell works out.
well dey started makin hybrid tahoes n i think suburbans, but hummer would never b green bcause deyr so big n heavy n average 9 mpg which is very low
that’s like having a blue orange.
or a 4 sided triangle.
hummers are big boxy and ugly. the not all eco-friendly cars are boxy ugly and small. actually, i’ve never come across an eco-friendly car that’s like that. if your talking about those honda fit’s and toyota yaris’s, those are not ecofriendly, those still use gas.
what eco-friendly should mean is a car that doesn’t use gas. like electric cars or hydrogen. there are tonnes of mean, lean, and green electric cars. electric cars perform much better than gasoline engines…its the gas companies that tell you that they’re slow and that technology isn’t ready…but infact, electric motors were in cars before gas engines. you can actualy convert any car to be an electric, and it will have better range than that stupid chevy volt.
so why don’t automakers make more fuel efficient cars? because gas companies pay the government and automakers big bucks to keep making cars that use a lot of gas. why do you think in the 90′s, the US government gave people incentives when they bought SUV’s? also, in the late 90′s, gm, honda, toyota, and ford all had electric vehicles. they later scrapped them, apparantly because of lack of consumer support. i think its lack of consumer KNOWLEDGE. they didn’t even advertise these vehicles, people didn’t even know about them.
really, oil companies are just shoving cash down their throats to shut them up.
watch the movie “Who killed the electric car” on youtube. it basically explains why there aren’t as many fuel efficient cars on the road. not just about why there aren’t electric cars, i’m taking fuel efficiency in general.
People like Paris Hilton, and the other CEO’s of corporate America and Europe would never like to ride an eco friendly Ferrari or Hummer.
Raise fuel prices for people who own such cars and let them pay more for burning extra gas.
Hummers look cool. I’d love to be able to afford one but alas I can’t. I hear they have some serious reliability issues though and that is as big a turn off as anything else.
Lets examine how eco friendly a car really is. Most people look at mpg and nothing else. What they forget is the details. For example the lifespan of a car. Every year a car is on the road that is a year the Earth doesn’t need to be raped for the materials to build one right? As such all these emissions programs are actually counter productive. Not only are they incurring the emissions and burning oil to get the critters and or the parts to make them here. They are using almost all virgin materials including huge amounts of plastic. After you get done with the emissions from the transportation of raw materials, refining those materials, manufacturing of the car and the transportation of the car to it’s new home you’ve already generated a huge chunk of the emissions that car will ever generate in it’s lifetime. However Greens think only in simple imediate terms often doing more damage with their simplistic solutions than the action they are fighting. Real environmentalists follow the chain and don’t slop agendas in with protecting the Earth.
Next if you drive in an area that sees lots of flooding then having a vehicle that can survive submersion or is resistant to such is a huge benefit to the environment. Pretty much every year in Houston for example hundreds to thousands of cars get submerged in flooding. Houston would do more for the environment by requiring people drive a car with X amount of clearance than all the emissions laws combined would do even if it mean more larger vehicles on the road. There are of course more practical solutions such as raising roadways and improving drainage. Instead they attack the poor with emissions testing and instead of removing rush hour which causes the high pollution levels they are actually trying to build up downtown Houston the very cause of that pollution. Just doesn’t make sense it’s like biting off your toe to cure gangrene on your finger.
Actually they are attempting to make some. However right the people who are “concerned” about the environment have a vendetta against any car that can actually carry a useful load or go off road. In large part it is a quiet attack on rural America who is stereotyped as nothing but Rednecks. By attacking big vehicles even if they get just as good or even better gas milage than other cars they both attack the Right and get a feel good but does nothing to help the environment cause. My SUV because of how I drive and because I have a standard gets better MPG than many economy cars. By avoiding rush hour by refusing to work in downtown that alone reduces my emissions and improve my MPG dramatically.
Most Greenies are urbanites or suburbanites. So they see no need to go off road. They see granny Moses driving a big Suburban and they stereotype the lady not knowing that maybe she needs something that big to carry her husband’s wheelchair or that she has a grandaughter with a horse that they use it to carry feed too or whatever. They just assume this person drives a big vehicle for no reason. How is it that people are so ready to judge another? Folks I know who drive big vehicles do so for a reason.
I drive an SUV because I play in bands and need to transport my instruments, I also often play taxi to a car full of children, I frequently need to transport lumber and other materials, I often drive through high water and until recently often went off road rather frequently. An SUV is a perfect vehicle for me. Vans get worse MPG, are actually on the unsafe side, have no get up and go and look pretty dorky to be honest. Cargo vans are not safe for gaggles of children and passenger vans are poor for cargo. Pickups have either a shortened bed or limited passenger space.
So to answer your question it’s simply politics. You can change that however. Just start by asking the auto makers that question. Start getting together with non-greenie environmentalists and lets get practical in ways to help the environment instead of punishing the poor and attacking people with often false judgements.
they might be eco-freindly if they are sunk to replace the coral reefs being lost; or used as greenhouses or aminal shelters etc
but a car used for personal human transportation cannot be eco-freindly, even a Prius or Tesla – only less envioronmentally or ecologically damaging
it probably takes over 12 gallons of oil to make an off-road tyre, an ordinary tyre is 8 gallons.
but an electric hummer is certainly possible; it would aid the military as terrorists wouldn’t hear it comming 4 blocks away. It would reduce the logistics and storage of fuel to a war zone etc.
but then if we wern’t so dependent on oil would there be a war, and would the military still get billons to pay GM to produce such camp gay icons? and the advertising is targetet at men who feel the need to “restore their manhood” http://www.slate.com/id/2147657/
Well that really depends how you define “green”. For example, there’s a hybrid Chevy Tahoe, but it still only gets about 20 mpg. Personally, I don’t consider that green, but it’s better than a regular Tahoe.
It should also be noted that “green” cars are not boxy. The boxier a car, the less aerodynamic it is. For example, the Toyota Prius is very much not boxy – it’s the most aerodynamic car currently available.
The problem with the Hummer is that it’s huge and boxy. I mean you say you don’t like boxy cars, but the Hummer is basically a big box! So even if you make a Hummer “green”, it’s still going to be inefficient.
That being said, there are “green” Hummers. For example, one mechanic retrofitted a Hummer to run on ethanol, hydrogen, biodiesel or natural gas. The car gets the equivalent to 40 miles per gallon.
The conversion costs $24,000, in addition to the already high cost of a Hummer, but it’s certainly a relatively green Hummer. However, as you noted, GM is considering getting rid of the Hummer brand altogether.
Sure, no reason they couldn’t be. GM already has a hybrid powertrain suitable for the Hummer, they co-designed it with Chrysler and BMW. It’s now used in the Tahoe and Escalade, Silverado I believe.
However the future is plug-in hybrids, and really, the size barrier is going to go away. It’ll boil down to cost, are you willing to pay for bigger battery packs etc. For faster charging you’ll also need to use a 240V dryer circuit instead of 120V normal, which may limit your convenience charging on the road. Your ride will use more power than the smaller cars, so golly, you’ll be paying $80/month extra electricity instead of $30. When the auxiliary engine runs to power your ride past the battery range, your MPG will be worse. Like I said, cost.
Also, plug-in hybrids will result in a repackaging of cars. You’ll see the return of the “full-size car”. The only reason SUVs ever existed was because they evade the fuel economy laws for cars, so GM did marketing to convince you SUVs were the “best”. Heh. You will find cars much cooler than the Hummer heading your way.
Actually, they already make a hybrid Escalade and Tahoe but there around $75,000!
They get 20 mpg city which is better than a V6 Camry.
Highway is still like 22 mpg.