this could be the car of the future
Honda's hydrogen
Honda FCX Clarity - Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle - Official Web Site
Honda's hydrogen
Honda FCX Clarity - Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle - Official Web Site
You're right. Apparently those clever devils have repealed the laws of thermodynamics. I notice that there are no plans to actually sell these cars, but you can inquire about the potential to reserve the option to get a place in line to get an application to eventually consult further about the process needed to maybe lease the vehicle.You should let Honda know, they appear to be past the development stage and have started limited production. I guess their engineers aren't too sharp.
Thanks everyone I had the oil and filter changed for $53 and that seemed to help alot. I am going to trying and keep it as long as I can. Maybe I can get a few more years out of it.
Regular fluid changes (engine oil, tranny, anti-freeze) are the cheapest preventative maintenance going.
As I said, serviced every 3,000 miles, a vehicle with only 100k miles on the odometer is still "new."
Can you explain to me why it is important that the US is the leader in manufacturing all products? Is it ok to have computers or t-shirts made abroad as long as cars are made domestically? Why is the car industry special? The way I see it, I purchase the goods that are good quality and competitively priced, and I don't worry where the company that makes them is located.
Until the US consumer wakes up and realizes we need to support our own manufacturing economy first, they better hope that Honda and Toyota are going to step in and take care of their kids retirement programs- because an economy based on us selling hamburgers to one another isn’t sustainable over time.
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Invest in America- we are still the greatest country on Earth.
I have been gritting my teeth reading thru the responses to this post. Never have I seen such a Nippon love-fest. We do still have a domestic auto industry folks, and they are turning out a decent product. Don’t just take my word for it- go look !
No, the Big Three decided that the American people were stupid, would buy a subpar product forever, buy a new one every three years on some perceived sense of loyalty, and life would carry on.The big three are struggling, no doubt – some of it self-inflicted, but the biggest problem is subsidized imports.
The loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs (auto, supply chain, steel, engineering, etc.) is a serious threat to our long term economic well-being. Manufacturing is what built the US economy. (look at what is going on in China, Mexico, India, etc today) I have traveled extensively around the world selling specialized manufacturing machinery, and have observed first-hand how desperate developing countries are to get their products into our market, while simultaneously shielding their domestic market from US imports. Our open-door trade policies are too one-sided, and are eroding the backbone of our long-term economic well-being.
I realize that the Japanese automakers are now “building” cars here- but only to appease the uninformed consumer-primarily with imported parts manufactured in low-cost labor markets. Pouring our hard-earned money into the Japanese (or Korean or Chinese) auto economy isn’t doing a damn thing to help grow the US economy, fund our ever-increasing social programs, or ensure your retirement benefits will be viable over your lifetime.
Until the US consumer wakes up and realizes we need to support our own manufacturing economy first, they better hope that Honda and Toyota are going to step in and take care of their kids retirement programs- because an economy based on us selling hamburgers to one another isn’t sustainable over time.
You can’t evaluate a new car purchase strictly with your computer- go test drive a new Chevy, Ford, or Dodge product. Objectively compare it with the imports. You will be surprised how far the US automakers have come- The new Malibu is a case in point-competition is a good thing- buy something with an extended warranty if that gives you sense of financial security. There are some tremendous deals to be had right now- as in rebates, 0% financing, etc. Quit listening to 10 year-old rhetoric from your latte-slurping liberal yuppie neighbors about how they will never buy a US car, blah-blah, blah.
Gee, that poor old Cavalier only lasted 15 years… And I venture to say that many of the people driving imports haven’t objectively compared a US-made product recently.
If you think the Dodge Caliber is a world class car, you've been hitting the bottle a little early........
Can you explain to me why it is important that the US is the leader in manufacturing all products?
If you aren't the lead dog the view is always the same... Our service economy is stagnant while the expanding economies around the globe are all investing heavily in manufacturing.
Is it ok to have computers or t-shirts made abroad as long as cars are made domestically? I didn't differentiate- I am an advocate of strong (not exclusive ) domestic manufacturing of all products.
Why is the car industry special? It isn't- the same principle applies to every sector of the manufacturing industry. As for your T-shirt/computer question, we no longer have a textile industry or much of a domestic computer manufacturing industry, either. Containerized shipping and cheap offshore labor have just about killed the US furniture industry- along with a lot of other value- added products.
The way I see it, I purchase the goods that are good quality and competitively priced, and I don't worry where the company that makes them is located. You had better worry, when your grandkids can't find decent paying jobs and are flipping burgers or stocking store shelves with cheap imported products at minimum wage. You should be concerned when your neighbor loses his job and defaults on his mortagage because you and a lot of other peope- "don't worry where the products you buy come from". Who is going to pick up the tab for the myriad of job-failure related social costs?- you and me, my friend, not the companies who are flooding this country with low cost products built with low cost labor in any number of countries. The current mortgage crisis is the tip of the iceberg- what do you think is feeding the affordabilty gap? It shure as he!! isn't high-paying manufacturing jobs. As for US companies moving their manufacturing offshore, it is usually a last-resort matter of survival for labor-intensive manufacturers - $30/hour and $2.50/ mile cannot compete with $30/week and $4000/container no matter how you slice it. Try running FIRECALC with your anticipated retirement savings based on a working lifetime at the wages that many foreign companies are paying their manufacturing workers. Oops- 100% of those cycles will fail...
Currently, the US car industry has very large retirement programs that make it difficult for them to offer the lowest prices. I am sure that there are a lot of retirees (many of them on this board) who are benefitting from these programs, or similar programs in other formerly strong US industries.
I think you'll find the people on this board are very meritocratic, and do not make purchases/investments based on emotional appeals.
Making a concious choice to supprt your country and countrymen is not an "emotional appeal". I see it as social responsibility and patriotism.
I'll "invest in America" when I see products worthy of my money.
Look objectively, instead of listening to the knee-jerk anti-Detroit attitudes that are killing the auto industry. And good luck finding those products, so much of what we buy these days is no longer built in the US- thanks to subsidized imports and the high legacy labor costs that make it possible for many of us to be on this FIRE board.
The way I see it, I purchase the goods that are good quality and competitively priced, and I don't worry where the company that makes them is located. You had better worry, when your grandkids can't find decent paying jobs and are flipping burgers or stocking store shelves with cheap imported products at minimum wage. You should be concerned when your neighbor loses his job and defaults on his mortagage because you and a lot of other peope- "don't worry where the products you buy come from". Who is going to pick up the tab for the myriad of job-failure related social costs?- you and me, my friend, not the companies who are flooding this country with low cost products built with low cost labor in any number of countries. The current mortgage crisis is the tip of the iceberg- what do you think is feeding the affordabilty gap? It shure as he!! isn't high-paying manufacturing jobs. As for US companies moving their manufacturing offshore, it is usually a last-resort matter of survival for labor-intensive manufacturers - $30/hour and $2.50/ mile cannot compete with $30/week and $4000/container no matter how you slice it. Try running FIRECALC with your anticipated retirement savings based on a working lifetime at the wages that many foreign companies are paying their manufacturing workers. Oops- 100% of those cycles will fail...
The likelihood that my grandkids will be working in any kind of manufacturing effort is approximately nil. Nor are they terribly likely to be flipping burgers or stocking shelves. Like most Merkins of their day, they will very likely have advanced degrees and specialized skills that will be used to participate in whatever passes for the service economy at that date.
Here's what I don't get about the "Buy Merkin - its your patriotic duty" adttitude: do these people not understand that most manufacturing jobs are relatively low value-added and relatively open to competition around the globe? We shouldn't want to protect inefficient industries or encourage our labor force to cling to low value-added jobs. We should be encouraging growth of our most productive, most competitive industries and helping our labor force constantly upgrade its skills to stay at the peak of the competition in high value added industries.
If you slip into the protectionist cesspool, the protected companies do the same thing they always do: change little if at all, pump up executive compensation, and focus on milking the protection for excess profits and lobbying against efforts to take the protection away. Instead, the best thing to do is open these industries to competition, since it forces the domestic firms to become efficient/productive, or they close and the resources thus employed become freed up to for use in more productive sectors of the economy.
FinanceDude, if you took the time to actually read my reply you would see that I was skillfully and artfully responding to a post by Abreutime...
All good points........I think "bigwonderfulwyoming" has drunk too much Kool-Aid to know. Just about everyone has heard of the West Bend Company (pots, pans, griddles, etc.. They are 20 miles up the road from where I live. They closed a number of years ago because Chinese imports were killing them on price. In the end, around 500 $13-$21 an hour jobs were lost. Did it cripple the town? No, West Bend is booming, without the company. The resources were deployed elsewhere.