Chevy Bumblebee Camaro
The Northeast Auto show is back in Providence this week (well mostly last week). Today is kids day, and they will feature Spider Man between 11am-1:30pm and the Incredible Hulk between 2:30pm-5pm.
The auto show got kicked off to a start on Thursday, and while the auto show this year featured some new concepts there was really nothing all that eye catching to speak of, of course there were a few things such as the usual Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces you might expect to see at an auto show and a few concepts and interesting new models, but nothing really with that wow factor aside from maybe one car i.e. Bumblebee.
Last year there was the Chrysler me 4-12, and the year before that Ford had some interesting Concepts and put on quite a show with their robot.) GM looked to be the only one of the big three that really decided to show us a lot of sporty cars; it looks like they really have a hit with the Bumblebee car, which just seems like a very natural step for them considering the success of the Transformers movies. Both Ford and Chrysler and showed us the Mustang Cobra, and the Dodge Challenger respectively.
One nice thing they are doing this year is they are allowing visitors to test drive a car. However, there are a few rules that have to be followed on a test drive. 1. Obviously all traffic laws. 2. Must test drive some other car before driving a Camaro. 3. You have to pass a breathalyzer test on the spot before you get to drive. You follow those rules and you get to go for a short distance, basically around a city block in a new model car of your choice, and also look cool in a Camaro for a few minutes.
Also quite a few of the companies had hybrids there, but it is really hard to get excited over a hybrid. They really have not brought the hybrids to a performance level yet, they are costly and lower powered and/or heavier, and the real kicker is that baring any extremely drastic gas shortage, it often can take over a decade for the gas saving to really offset the higher initial cost. Don’t get me wrong it is great to be green, but if being green bankrupts us what good is it? Hybrids despite their greater present and production are still quite costly considering what they often.
The big three did not really have a lot of unique concepts, and the real big push this year seemed to be the green concepts or rather greener tweaks to current models. Amidst all the new cars there was one section up on the nestled up on ballroom level of the Rhode Island Convention Center that had some antique British cars, which were displayed courtesy of the British Motorcars of New England. They were a pleasant delight amongst all the new cars, a throwback to when cars didn’t have big brother monitoring systems built into them. One such system being marketed now by Ford is called the MyKey, which allows “parents” to limit vehicle speed and stereo volumes. Don’t get me wrong, these systems certainly help us, but yet somehow we have that yearning for bygone eras. This is in part why many new cars are often designed with a throwback look. The MyKey would be great used by parents, but as with any technology there is a potential for abuse, especially as the technology progresses.
One type of car that really does seem to make a lot of sense in terms of going green is the fuel cell, however I only saw one fuel cell there, a crossover by GM; the Chevy Equinox.
However, the problem with the fuel cell at this stage is they are still little more than a green marketing gimmick. Back in 2000 it looked as if the technology should have been 10 years away when I saw a fuel cell prototype at Epcot. However, today really affordable fuel cells are still at best another 10 years away. Aside from the production cost of hydrogen fuel and the hurdle of being able to store enough of the lower energy fuel onboard a vehicle; it seems pretty apparent that the biggest hurdle is simply infrastructural development, and there is still a need for some more technological development.
They have simply reached some physical limits, which require in some areas greater technologies, but what they really require is even more innovative thinking about how to use the current technologies in the mean while. One would think that by now they ought to have come up with at least some workable solutions for short commutes, and some sort of mass producing for a cheap fuel cell that gets that price down maybe even enough to encourage more well to do people to purchase fuel cells as a second car short commute car, that is if they were really serious about green at the highest levels in this nation. However, apparently government funding has been cut and in many instances research has reached some dead ends and/or has simply stalled or at least slowed drastically.
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