I will agree with you, but to each their own. My Mom & Dad drive around in a H2 Hummer, and my brother drives a Denali (?Spelling?) Pick up. They seem to like what they drive, I like what I have. I always get teased that they will run me over in my little car. I always laugh and say that after I have blown them away on the street, I will wait for them while they fill up with gas. HaHaHa

 

I saw the commercial, it pissed me off!

Is that even legal for them to compare a Cadillac to a MINI!?!?!?!

 

Anyone who really believes anything in advertising today is just plain stupid.

Anyone who goes out and buys one of those things because they believe they will get better gas mileage than a mini deserves what they get.

The ones who do go out and buy one of those really don't care about the actual mileage. What they care about is if they are "green" or not. The ad makes it sound like they will be as "green" as if they had bought a Mini. So they can trot into the country club and tell all their luncheon friends how "green" they are now that they have a hybrid monster. Yep, all between the ears is vacuum, filled by blabbering of Hollywood 'stars'.

We have my Toyota Tundra and her Clubbie S. Soon to have another motorcycle too. Funny thing is the Clubbie was a tough choice for her. Between a Hummer (H3), Toyota FJ and the Mini! Gas crunch? Doesn't matter much to us.

charlie

 

Mini owners as a group have no room to talk about useless bling and superficial options. There are lots of $40K Minis running around that are functionally $22K Minis with a bunch of marginal bling items that are of no more value than the stuff that adorns a $65K Escalade. As I said earlier, there is no moral high ground here.

- Mark

 

I really don't understand though why you would even use the MINI as comparison, besides that it's one of the hottest cars on the market right now. Someone who wants a MINI isn't going to be interested in an Escalade anyway, hybrid or otherwise - and vice versa. I really can't see someone who was shopping for a MINI seeing that ad and going "YEAH! I want one of THOSE instead!"

The ad is deceptive but it's like comparing ants to horses in so many ways - initial cost, size, passenger ability, hauling ability, appearance, etc.

Anyone who truly wanted a MINI (for MPG or otherwise) that ends up in an Escalade hybrid deserves what they get, simply for failing to do any research.

 

Spot on. Even if fuel economy and gas prices were not issues, no way I would be seen in one of those pigs. Truth be told, even if someone gave me an Escalade to drive for free, I'd walk rather than drive that testament to bad taste and gluttony.

Sidenote: Didn't Tony Soprano drive an Escalade? Seems the type of vehicle OJ Simpson and Gov. Bloggo too would have in the garage.

This is Tony making a getaway in his Escalade, carrying in the back someone who could not get away.

 

I say to each his own.. if someone wants an Escalade, they should buy one. I'm sure there are plenty of people who can't fathom the attraction in owning a MINI.

 

Yeppers To each his or her own! If you can afford it and want it buy it! Only go around once!

 

Meh... being able to afford a gluttonous lifestyle is not the issue. It's like in Europe, people don't need a 3.5 ton gas guzzler to get around.

Does not matter anyway, the Big Three have gone broke because of manufacturing these 300 to 400 HP tanks. Just today another Bay Area dealership who sold these gas guzzlers closed down.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=6579064

The people and government have spoken. I imagine some day people who insist on wasting energy by exercising their "right" to drive these hippo mobiles will have to buy used since there won't be any new ones available.

Sidenote: Has anyone else noticed that people who drive these things are typically the most rude and obnoxious drivers on the road? Usually it's some cigar chomping 300 lb. broad in the driver's seat.

 

If they want to compare apples to apples, the same 70k for a hybrid Escalade will get you an all-electric MINI (with enough left over to buy a 2nd car for the track):




Shall we talk mpg now?

 

Well, I am cigar chomping, and, part way to 300lb, but, not a broad

Driving ability? Well, if I judge it against some of the Mini drivers out there I am quite good.

Don't worry, if the big 3 won't produce a truck for me to drive then Honda/Toyota/BMW/Porsche/etc will make them

charlie

 

it's what our buying public wants. In writing an article on what's driving (partial) electricfication of drivetrains, WE, the US purchasing public, have totally ignored resource dependance and the overall increase in internal combusion engine efficiency while vehicle weight as gone up and acceleration times have gone down. The public and government were speaking! Ever since about 1984 both were saying "to hell with the future! Let's indulge now!"

Blame the big three for being late on adopting the most cutting edge technologies that make efficient use of gas, no matter the size of the vehicle.

They're some of the last to do direct injection, some of the last to go small displacmeent turbo, some of the last to do high gear count automatics... Crap, when Ford went away from the pushrod V8 to the overhead cam mills that they're using now, lots and lots of the "traditionalists" were mortified!

But really, the supercharged Mini was a relative gas hog. The newer motors have direct injection to cool the intake charge and keep knock at bay. The older motor didn't so it just ran really rich, with the extra gas used to cool combustion. Far from Green. My 5.0 pushrod V8 in my mustang gets 22 MPG, 2 down from my modded MCS. And it weighs over 500 lbs more.

The add is clever, if deceptive. Why get mad at data that's true?

Some other thing to keep in mind... If you give a 25% increase in city MPG to a 14 MPG pig and 35 MPG civic, and they're both driven the same number of miles, guess which one saves more gas overall? The alignment of hybrid drivetrains with compact cars is driven more about who is willing to buy them than from any type of resource efficiency. Don't belive me? Just do the math....

Matt

 

I don't understand:

14 x 1.25 = 17.5

35 x 1.25 = 43.75

What am I not seeing here.....

 

UGH, I saw this commericial and had to see if anyone else saw it...by the length of this thread it appears so.

Ridiculous. I agree, if you want an escalade get one, but what i thought was odd was the comparison as the two markets don't seem to overlap. However, my boyfriend pointed out that they are going after the person who is looking at a mini as an option b/c its fun to drive, status symbol and they have discretionary income to spend. Not necessarliy MINI enthusiasts. I still think its a poor comparison. You can fit the MINI in the commericial in the front seat of the Escalade.

I also absolutely HATE the argument that someone made above (too lazy to quote it) that GM is only making SUVs b/c that is what the consumers want. BS! Look at the advertising dollars GM spends on SUVs alone. Not just the obvious commericials but in product placement across ALL networks, the glamourizing (if that's a word) of the SUV in movies, celebritiy reality shows etc. Its a complete brainwashing of the American public...then to say "well we only make what the public wants" If you did the same product placement/propaganda for small cars/fuel efficient cars you would see THAT is what the public wants.

 

GM is targeting those who want an SUV and giving them an excuse by saying if you get a hybrid you get better MPG than this itty bitty car. Personally, I would rather the folks who were going to buy an SUV anyway (for city driving) get a hybrid that gets 20mpg in the city rather than 10mpg. And this way they also help subsidize GM so taxpayers have less heavy lifting to do .

And GM was making big vehicles because that IS what people wanted. More importantly, they made big vehicles because the gross profit on a $75k Escalade was huge since people were willing to pay it.

Without facts in hand, selling one Escalade likely made the same gross profit dollars as selling 10 to 20 small GM econoboxes. Seriously.

Rant here:
To those who say American car makers don't make cars anybody wants, try this. At every intersection you stop at, look at each car at the intersection and see who made it. If anyone is in the car, say aloud who the mfr is. I have done this with several folks and all were surprised at how many American cars there are and how much bias they had in their thinking about the American car makers.

Everybody talks about how much domestic mkt share Detroit has lost. I wonder if in Europe they talk about how much mkt share the British/Italian/German/French car makers have lost compared to the 1960s. I bet Ford Europe was a lot smaller years ago than it is today.

Folks say Detroit has too many dealers. True, but I also know when I drive through small towns I see small Detroit dealers, but I never, ever see foreign dealers.

I am not saying domestic is better or foreign is better. Just look at facts and not emotions or perceptions or media reporting even.

 

If you drive all four scenarios 100 miles.... The base truck takes about 7 gallons and saves 25% of that going hybrid, for a savings of a bit under two gallons.

The econ car takes a bit less than three gallons to go 100 miles and the hybrid version just over two saving less than one gallon.

Taking the tank hybrid saves almost twice as much fuel as the econo box.

FWIW, one of the largest customers interested in hybrid drivetrains is the US military, for just this reason....

Matt

 

So let me get this right, if I buy the worst mpg pig to drive, then trade it for the same pig in the hybrid model I am a better environment steward for saving two gallons over every 100 miles than taking the econo hybrid?

 

hybridizing large vehicles will save more gallons than hybridizing econo-boxes, if the miles driven are the same. That's not to say that the large vehicle is the appripriate vehicle to drive....

Matth

 

As someone mentioned above... yes and no. The big 3 have every bit as much responsibility as the buying public, because the fact of the matter is, advertising works. Perhaps not on every single individual, but on average... yes it does. The Big 3 have been pushing the large SUV on the American market for a LONG time now, even exaggerating their "safety" (never mind the rollover factor, or the fact they drive like the fat pigs they are, even harder to avoid accidents in the first place) and their "ruggedness" (even though almost all of them are sold as daily drivers, even garage queens, but can't hold a candle to a Jeep Wrangler). So I hold the Big 3 just as responsible as the public that buys into the myth. They created this phony "need", and the other companies these days (Honda/Acura, Toyota/Lexus, etc.) just joined into the fray that the Big 3 created because hey - they wanted to get their piece of the new cash cow too.I agree that the data is true, but it is a very lopsided example, of course... especially since they chose the worst possible MINI for gas mileage (1st Gen, S Convertible, automatic). Not just to make a point, but also because it was the only MINI variant they could really make that comparison with (if I'm not mistaken). Not to mention that the SUV is a 2009 model and the MINI is a 2008 model - not even the same model year. Is that fair?

The ad may not be a lie, but it certainly is deceptive. It says "this" MINI Cooper... as in... this specific one that they hand-picked for the purposes of the ad. Nevermind the myriad of other choices that debunk the insinuation they were trying to make. One that no doubt Hybrid Escalade owners will get wrong, telling any MINI owners they meet "well, my SUV gets better gas mileage than your MINI".

True, deceptive advertising is not illegal if it isn't factually inaccurate (i.e. fine print saves the day). That doesn't prevent people who realize just how deceptive it is from getting pissed off about it! Exactly, Matt - on your example of the amount of gas saved per vehicle type... as true as it may be, if the same city trip, on paved roads, often carrying only 1 or 2 people, can be made in a small efficient car (hybrid or not) versus a huge hybrid SUV... is it really a question of the amount saved with hybrid technology or the amount spent in the first place?

"Look Ma! I spent $80 on gas and saved $20 with Hybrid technology!

or

"Look Ma! I spent $40 on gas and saved $10 with Hybrid technology!"

Who made the better choice?

Look, I accept that hybrid technology has even greater benefits on large vehicles... but my point is that we should instead be trying to get out of these oversized vehicles for the many situations where the need isn't really there. That starts by regulating all passenger vehicles, regardless of whether on a car or a truck platform, by the same rules. After all, these days, they are most often being used in the same manner. Why should truck-based vehicles still be held to a different standard? (both fuel efficiency and emissions)

 

WTF is your problem? All I'm doing is putting some math in the debate...

So, by saying that the car companies told us what to buy and we belived it, seems your saying that the public isn't responsible for thier actions. Bad adds only work on those that are unwilling to self-educate. I'd say the act of willfull ignorance is a greater "sin" than creating self serving adds.... After all, who's gonna pay to make an add that says "You can do better than to buy our stuff!"

You bring up fairness in advertising? That's a freakin' joke!

And then you go on a rant about whether or not the SUV is the right choice of vehicle to drive? Didn't you read my post? I was specifically not speaking to that point, assuming that many can make the decision about what is an appropriate vehicle for them to drive...

Listen, this is an add on TV. It's not a peer-reviewed double-blind test of the efficacy of some new drug or scientific theory. It's a self-serving, presentation of incomplete data only for the benefit of the vendor creating the add. Kind of like every add that implies that you life will be improved in some great fashion if you use thier product.

Matt

 

I liked when I found this on caddie's website:

"Fuel Economy EPA estimated 20 mpg city, 21 mpg highway (RWD)"






Now...just imagine the highway mpg if they actually needed it in 4WD on the highway...

 

I didn't disagree with your math. I just said that the math you provided doesn't tell the whole picture either, because the total quantity of fuel used (for what is most often the same type of vehicle usage) is still a relevant point.No, I said that both were responsible. I thought I made that clear. The fact of the matter is that ignorance is all too common, and well-informed consumers are rare when it comes to most products in the marketplace.

It's absolutely true that a huge share of the blame goes to those consumers for not educating themselves. However, it's also true that much of the blame goes to the companies that take advantage of the situation. In this case, it was that type of narrow-minded idiocy, focusing on short term profits and greed (never mind real fuel efficiency/economy, or reduced emissions, until way way too late) that led to the Big 3's current situation.

...which is why I think that any bailout money needs to be absolutely tied to completely changing that mentality. Not to mention throwing out all of the management that won't adapt. Now. The bailout money should save the jobs of the common worker that had no control over these stupid decisions.

In any case Matt - my point is that the companies share the blame as well, for the products they create and market. Simply blaming the consumer alone isn't looking at the whole picture. Both!It's not a joke to most of the people who have created and posted in this thread. Besides, I think you mentioned the word "deceptive" before I did. I was merely trying to point out that deceptive advertising is usually going to illicit a strong negative reaction from most of the people who realize it's deceptive. And that's what happened here.Of course I read your post, and I answered your post... but I was also speaking to the larger issue of what this ad evokes. It is precisely because this ad is for a monstrous SUV that it has illicited such emotion from many posters. The "vehicle choice" argument absolutely plays a role in the mindset of many of those who posted here.

Matt, is it your honest opinion that the Big 3 companies share no responsibility of the blame for the explosion in the SUV market? The whole "bigger is better" (and badder) mentality?

 

they do the very same type of comparisons, where they cherry pick models of cars to make the point that they're playing in BMW/Mercedes/Porsche land.

As I did my research for an article on vehicle electrification, I did a bunch of learning about how gas mileage trends have been going since 1975. What I learned is that it's much easier for us to get all indignant and blame the big three companies than it is to look in the mirror and admit the mess we've all created.

It's just an add. It's not worth getting bent about.

Matt

 

gets you thinking about what adds one could create... Here are the Nov US vehicle sales (last ones available on Rueters...)...

http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...28287220081202

Even crappy Chrysler outsold Honda YTD! I can just see it now "We're the littlest of the big three, and even we kicked Hondas A$$!"

In September, there were more Pontiac G6s bought in the US than all makes of Acura!

The notion that the big three just make crappy cars that no one wants is just wrong. One of thier biggest problems is that they have too much production capacity, not that they have crappy product or that no one wants to buy thier cars.

But I forgot, it's just cause they make clever adds....

Sorry for going even farther off-topic. But since I first came across this thread I've been sensitive to other auto adds that "stretch" the truth.... And they're everywhere. Any one that make a specific brand comparison does some degree of cherry picking and false implication. I guess that the buying public has given the add men (and women) every reason to believe that this type of deciet works well in influencing sales. Should we get angry? I don't think so. We should get accurate knowledge to make good purchasing decisions without depending on self serving adds to provide the information. If we all were to do that, then I think we'd all see less of these types of adds that are factually correct but contain inference and implication that is not.

Matt

 

No, but then again, companies in the US are structured to chase the short term stock gain and EPS numbers. So building large vehicles with more power than is needed, more mass than is needed, and that maximized short term profits in a way was thier duty to thier shareholders.

Really, what I think is the root of all this "Bigger, faster, cheaper" crap is that the price of gasoline doesn't include all the "external" costs and is just based on the price of extraction, refining and delivery. There is practially no cost of emissions (after use costs) nor for the costs implied by being so heavily dependant on a foreign resource (oil imports in 73 were 1/3rd of consumption, now it's 2/3rds of consumption). Both national security costs and economic risk are not included in the price we pay for gas. Look at all the countries that make all these cars that we say we ought to get here. They have "market external" mechanisms to bring the price paid for gas closer to the real cost of using it, and as such it costs about 2x more in most of the world to buy a gallon. This is a massive failure of government as well as a big conceptual mistake of the public about how markets work. If we have a market that doesn't accurately reflect true costs then it doesn't arrive at a correct price. Gas costs too little in the US (less than bottled water) and because of this we can all happily go using way too much of it. This leads to larger displacement motors, higher vehicle weights and doing this all while 0-60 times dropped.

Let's look at this another way. Pretend your at the shareholder meeting when one of your big investors asks "Hay Wagoner, why didn't you make big SUVs like Ford did? They're printing money hand over fist!" (The most profitable vehicle factory ever was the ford one that made Expeditions, I think... I'm on my second cocktail, so I may have that a bit wrong). If darling Rick had said "That's tainted money because it's not in our national interest to sell large vehicles that have crappy gas mileage" he'd have been laughed out of the hall and all those shareholders would have sold GM.

So, cause number one is that we have gas prices way to low for the risk that massive dependancy on a foreign resource would dictate. This is a government leadership issue.

Now, let's look at the buying public. We're, to be frank, as a group a bunch of freakin' morons. The percentage of people who were surprised by $4/gal gas is just shocking. This is willfull ignorance of the first order. But what do you expect from a nation whos collective savings rate is between 0 and 1 percent? Our public makes it's decisions based on "now" and not "tomorrow". So if gas is cheap now, why not get a vehicle that gets less than 20 mpg? I mean, it's cheap to buy, it's cheap to run. What's the problem? The problem is risk exposure. A concept that I don't know how many in our country could explain (but it must be a higher number now after all the economic crap we've been through in the last 4 months or so). If we, as a group, really understood this concept, we wouldn't have huge credit card balances, nor finance our lifestyles through mortgage re-finance (while we could) that extracted equity from our homes instead of via actual salary increases (who's real buying power has been flat for close to three decades, for most of us). These are all failures of the buying public.

Last is the auto makers themselves. While I'm not a fan of the technology leadership that they didn't assume, for the most part it was a safe corporate bet. I really wonder how much of a problem we'd be having with the "big three" had not the banking sector really screwed the pooch in ways that it had never been screwed before! If there were still short term commercial paper, I really doubt that we'd be hearing "Big 3 Bailout" on any news show at all.... But anyway, where I fault the big three isn't where most do, but really on some (relatively) minor things.... GM could have had the whole freaking hybrid car market, if only they'd listened to reason when they had the EV1. The EV1 was a technology leader, but didn't make any money. But it was a harbringer of things to come. The drivetrain was derived from A/C Propulsion, the same DNA that is in the Telsa and the Mini E. They flushed it down the toilet. But they now have the Volt on track for 2010. The very same a*holes that we all want to fire as part of the gov help have got that sucker on track for a 2010 model year intro. Not ideal but better late than never. 20 years wasted but at least it's happening now. Ford got the idea of OVC engines before the rest did, and got lots of the "pushrod" crowd all pisssed off about it. But overall, lighter alloy engine materials with cutting edge control mechanisms were slow out of the US compared to European or Japanese counterparts. This sucks for us all (but remember the gas price issue?) Sure Toyota has the prius hybrid, but since it came out in the 90s, it's sold just over 1 million units. There is a lot of conjecture that none have created any profits for Toyota either (I"m OK with that... They got billions of dollars of PR and good will to offset the Tundra!) But to put that in perspective, that's just 4 months of GM sales in the US alone. And yes, GM has lots and lots of hybrids in the pipeline that we can all buy.... Oh but I forgot, we're all pisssed that they made this freakin add comparing the gas mileage of a large vehicle with a technologically advanced drivetrain to a no longer available Mini Cooper with 90s tech in the power plant to ever buy one.

I could go on and on about stuff like this, and no, the companies aren't without thier share of guilt.

I"m actually torn between the gov leadership failures and the publics willful ignorance as to which is in the lead for screwwing us big time. I think I'll give it to the public, cause if any government had tried to do what was needed to do to steer us all away from our own self-detructive tendancies, they wouldn't have been in office for very long at all.

So heres my list of where to place blame:
1) Us, the public, for being massively willfully ignorant.
2) Government, for massive failures of leadership.
3) The car companies, for being short sighted.

honorable mentions......
Car magazines.... While lamenting energy and the like, they still say stupid things like "we'd like to see more HP for a car that costs $30k" or even quoting the 0-60 times for a full sized pickup!
Us again. We like our echo chamber sound bites. Doesn't matter what the truth is, if it reinforces our pre-existing notion of what's true, we give it air time because to do otherwise loosed market share. We run to that which reinforces and away from that which educates. Come to think of it, it's not even close. The buying public is in the lead in the blame game, by leaps and bounds...

Matt