America goes environmental

We all love America but many here and there are concerned about the impact the country has on the environment. So, with the new leadership of President Obama they are starting to do something about it. Some, as we have seen with the banks and AIG, have not quite got the issues we are facing. Well GM is on the ball - they have designed a hybrid Cadillac Escalade.

Lets not knock it too much. We all have to start somewhere, so why not with a 332-horsepower, 6 liter V8. It includes cylinder deactivation technology - so does my car. My car has a V8 in my imagination, but 4 cylinders are permanently deactivated. Of course the Cadillac comes with lots of Hybrid badges just in case somebody is not convinced. My car in fact has none, but then, it is not a Hybrid. It simply uses a lot less fuel.

The Cadillac does seat 8 people, comes with 16.9 cubic feet of lugage space behind the back row of seats and can tow up to 6,000 pounds. Not sure what that means, but it sounds like a big caravan. Why you would want to tow a caravan if you have a car big enough to house a family of four escapes me, but then again, I was the one with a car with only 4 cylinders.

So what do we get for this additional feature. Well there is the fuel consumption. The standard Escallade gets 12 mpg in town and 19 mpg on the open road. These numbers go to 20 mpg and 21 mpg respectively in the Hybrid version. The biggest BMW X5 I could find got 26 mpg on the open road, but then again it only has 6 cylinders. Sorry, I forgot to look at how many liters it had, but I am sure it has the power to tow that caravan.

I won't go into what my modest Volvo gets and I am glad to see GM is moving into green technology. Well done guys, but don't spend the bonus just yet. The Escallade still costs more than $80,000, which is $30,000 more than the Beemer, so I have a feeling that the environmentally conscious crowd may give it a miss, not to mention those of us who have been credit crunched.

May your fortunes and ours improve.