Quote:
Originally Posted by peter eldergill
My brother is an engineer at a fuel cell company in Vancouver. He is quite dissolusioned at the general public. He told me one of the major problems is that people are not willing to spend the extra money on things like fuel efficient cars.
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When it comes to transportation (especially in Canada, where you have relatively long distances under relatively subobtimal road conditions), you need the support structure in place first.
We're all for fuel efficient cars. But if we can't get them out of our driveways due to excessive cold / inability to get the thing maintained or refueled, then we
can't buy. I can buy a gallon of gas, at will, without going further than a mile. I cannot buy a hydrogen cell. Period.
The Prius came out at about the same time I bought my Corolla. Know why I bought the Corolla? I couldn't get performance stats/reviews for deep winter conditions (-25C and below). I'd been with my old non-starting Topaz to know exactly what happens when a battery gets cold. And the Prius runs (in city conditions) on batteries. So, with all apologies to your friend, but 30 grand is a bit much when you don't know if the darn thing is going to run when the weather turns.
I went with the optimal choice. Reasonable performance/price, maintainable, works in the deep winter, decent fuel economy,
and I can get fuel for it.