Hello Thor Briefly, for now - re this:
>You wrote that surveys show that Americans are willing >to pay extra for greener and more economical vehicles. > Can you point me in the direction of some of these >surveys? I had a sense of unease when I wrote it, that I might not be able to find the main ref I wanted so easily. I've been lax with the housekeeping chores on the hard disk, and it's just caught up with me, lost in the chaos and unravelment, and searchers didn't help. I did find these though - the one I wanted is there somewhere, it'll turn up. A national survey released Thursday by the Mellman Group found that 76 percent of pickup drivers support a boost in vehicle fuel standards. Another 87 percent said they would be willing pay $500 more for a new, higher-mileage, pickup truck if they could save $2,000 in gasoline costs over the life of the truck. Of the 600 pickup drivers surveyed, 57 percent lived in small towns and rural areas. http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09062002/reu_48353.asp Gas-guzzling pickups make drivers pay Friday, September 06, 2002 By Reuters 60% of car buyers would purchase hybrid -- $1,000 extra is limit, study says (Chicago Tribune, March 6, 2002) As a debate about fuel efficiency standards rages, 60 percent of new-car buyers say they would purchase a hybrid electric vehicle that gets better mileage than a conventional model, but most of them said they do not want to pay more than $1,000 extra for the benefit.Those are key conclusions in a study released Wednesday by auto industry researcher J.D. Power and Associates on hybrid vehicles. A 2002 survey by J. D. Power and Associates, for example, revealed that while 60 percent of US consumers would consider a hybrid for their next vehicle-primarily to reduce fuel costs-that proportion dropped to under 20 percent if the extra purchase cost exceeded the fuel savings. And of recently marketed "green" vehicles, only those (such as the Toyota Prius) with performance comparable to that of cars powered by internal-combustion engines have had acceptable sales, even in Europe. Hybrid Electric Vehicles: Consumers are Ready Now! The Power Report-March 2002 http://www.jdpa.com/businessservices/automotive/hybrid/images/0302PR_Malesh.pdf In a 1995 national telephone survey conducted by the Merck Family Fund, 88 percent of Americans agreed that "protecting the environment will require most of us to make major changes in the way we live" and 67 percent acknowledged that "Americans cause many of the world's environmental problems because we consume more resources and produce more waste than anyone else in the world."6 Nevertheless, most people interviewed had not thought deeply about the specific ecological implications of their lifestyles and did not know precisely what they needed to change. 6. Harwood Group, Yearning for Balance: Views of Americans on Consumption, Materialism, and the Environment (Takoma Park, MD: Merck Family Fund, 1995). http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/guide.ch1.html UCS Consumer's Guide: Chapter One I suppose there are just as many that say just the opposite. Later. Keith Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
