 As I sit here listening to some music and reading on Facebook, I came across this which I feel very strongly about. In my life, I have had friends make fun of me for driving a small car and not 'enjoying' what I earn. But to me its about prioritization and I just want to owe less in my life and focus on important things like buying good food and toys for my kids. Have a read and hope you share with others. And if you don't understand Malay, http://translate.google.com is your friend! Kekayaan ‘Bocor’ Kerana Kereta.  As you can see, the price of oil has been at its highest for quite some time. We all feel it daily as we can see the cost to refill our cars, the increasing price of goods and also especially the portions of food becoming smaller and smaller. But in a way, car manufacturers are to be blamed. They make a lot of money and are focused on selling more cars each year to make more money, like all businesses. I think that they are also to be blamed for the increase of oil demand worldwide! When you look at a car brochure, what do you see? Wow... the car looks good, it has a CD player! Reverse camera, 10 airbags etc. But what many of us immediately look at is... the engine specs. How many cc's? How much horsepower? 0-100? An of course, how may liters/100km... And we will rationalize to ourselves that we won't be stepping on the gas so much and we will drive sanely... All governments and safety groups will always tell you "Speed kills!", "Drive within the limits", "Penalty points and higher fines are the way". Public will cry out "I want an efficient MRT/LRT/Train system", "Public transport sucks", "It's not convenient to take the bus". And all these add up to more petrol being used. But there is a much simpler way to save petrol. If all governments around the world get all the car makers around the world to make cars that can't go above the speed limit, what will happen? We probably will get souped up Tata Nano's like the Aston Martin Cygnet.  But won't that be much more interesting? We spend much of our time stuck in traffic jams, going to work and back. A small, comfortable car with a nice interior will be great. You can't use your 500+hp in a traffic jam at all and all that fuel saving technology like engine stop/start, cylinder deactivation, FSI, ultra high compression etc will not be so useful after all. It is just to make the cars pass through federal inspections to look good on paper.
End of the day, if all car makers look at building a car that can do 100km/liter of gas, with a lovely interior will we still need so much petrol? Will companies like Ferrari, Lamboghini etc be relevant? I won't mind buying something like the Cygnet if it was affordable so I can use it as a daily driver.. but all small cars are either very cheap with bad safety or very expensive like the Audi A1, BMW 1-series. And cars like the Prius C, Honda Jazz have interiors that are not comfortable at all. Maybe I should go make my own car... but stupid JPJ won't allow it. |
AuthorTechie tuned entrepreneur... wonder how the journey will be like and will I be able to succeed? 
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Photo used under Creative Commons from Dave Goodman
