Driving a Minivan Isn't as Bad as You'd Think

I never imagined myself behind the wheel of a minivan. In fact, on the list of vehicles I'd imagine myself driving, "minivan" comes in at number 147, five below a Soviet-era Russian tank, though edging slightly higher than "the PopeMobile".

But I have to say driving a minivan, at least the specimen I drove tonight is a good experience. Smooth handling, good suspension, and a built in premium sound system (although it only sings "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" over and over again).

So scratch number 147 off the list. Next up, The General Lee.

The smart Car

In August of '01 I took a 3 1/2 week long trip across Europe, starting in Copenhagen, Denmark, and finishing in Grenada, Spain. It was during my stay in Amsterdam, the second city I visited, where I first saw a smart Car. It was love at first sight. For me, at least. The vehicle's emotions were very hard to read.


Smart Gmbh, the company that originally produced the smart, was a partnership of Daimler and Swatch. Apparently the car was Swatch's idea, not Daimler's. The former approached the latter about production and distribution. Swatch's original concept was to create a vehicle under 250 cm in length, short enough to fit "nose-in" to what would normally be a parallel parking spot. The idea was to enable three smart cars to park where one standard vehicle would normally fit.

The model that I first saw, the Fortwo, pictured at the top, was also designed to be extremely fuel-efficient, safe (on European roads), and affordable. Playing to its younger target demographic, the Fortwo was easily customizable, sporting snap-off exchangable colored plastic body panels. A hybrid engine was planned, but never implemented.

After our torrid, if one-sided love affair was sparked, I was hooked. I wanted to own one so badly, but importing into the US meant costly shipping fees, and extensive customization to meet U.S. road requirements. All I could do was sit drearily at home, watching the uninteresting U.S. street legal cars buzz past my window, and fantasize about that bright day in the future when either the U.S. was annexed by Germany, or Smart rekenoodled their cars for the U.S. market.


Thankfully the latter (and not the former) has arrived, as I'm sure anyone with eyes and a brain is aware of. The new smart Fortwo is a bit longer than the original (8.8 feet as opposed to 8.2 feet), and considerably heavier, but still all smart. The interchangeable exterior panels are still there (I'm pretty sure), and the interior is just as mod as the original. It's now rated as having the highest fuel efficiency of any vehicle in its class (hybrids aren't included in this), and it gets very high safety ratings.

Plus the price is right, starting at under $12,000. Unfortunately, my original infatuation has been tempered by pragmatism. Not that the car itself wouldn't fulfill my vehicular needs. It's just that my Civic is nearly paid off, and the thought of living without a car payment is extremely sexy. Sexier than that smart little vixen, much to my chagrin.

One day though.

Air Travel

Even with all of it's faults, and there are a LOT of them, air travel is still the best and fastest way to get from point A to point B, assuming A and B are sufficiently far apart.  And considering all the potential fail-points, air travel is remarkably safe.  I know I've seen statistics that say you have a much better of chance dying in a car wreck than dying in a plane crash.  I'm going to quote an answer I found on Yahoo Answers.

"To put it in perspective, roughly 30,000 people have been killed in car accidents in the USA in 2008. That's the equivalent of two Boeing 747's loaded with passengers crashing and killing everyone on board, each and every week of the year."

I read that in the last two years there hasn't been a single crash related fatality in the United States.  Given the number of flights each day, your odds are pretty good.  In fact, you have a better chance of being struck by lightening, or so I've read.

Air travel is fast and immensely safe.  I think I can live with the fact that I can only carry on three ounce of hair gel or it gets stolen.

The Electric Car, From Cingular?

I've always been enamored with the idea of a fully electric vehicle.  Hybrids are cool, but most of them don't accomplish much in terms of real world fuel savings.  The technology had promise, but I think it got lost when the world went green.  Suddenly being environmentally-conscious was cool, and any technology displaying even the remotest savings was heralded as savior.  The gloss of green, requiring the least inconvenience, was more important than actual results.  So the hybrids that actually produced these, but were ugly (by necessity) to some people, like the Insight and the Prius, were eclipsed by hybrid versions of existing models.  The hybrid civic for instance.  Or hybrid SUVs.  Hybrid SUVs?  That's like a hot fudge ice cream sundae with Meuslix sprinkled on top.

This post is sounding a bit negative, but I don't mean it to be.  I started it like I did as a counterpoint to what I'm really excited about now.  A fully electric vehicle, and a truly functional network to support it.  This guy named Shai Agassi started a company in 2007 called Better Place, to build an electric car grid based on a concept most of us are familiar with.

A quick explanation.  The grid works like a cell phone network.  Better Place makes deals with electric power grid operators across the country to place charging stations as densely as possible.  It then negotiates with these operators for preferential rates on the power they dispense.  Having done that, they build all electric vehicles and sell them for an extremely low price point, creating demand.  Their goal, ultimately, isn't to make money on the sale of the cars.  In some cases they may, like cell phone providers, give the cars away for free.  They'll make their money selling the electricity used to charge the vehicles.  The consumer gets a free or very inexpensive vehicle in exchange for signing a contract promising to pay so much per month for electricity.

In the end, Agassi sees the per mile price of electricity being a good bit less than gasoline.  So it's a win, win, win.  The consumer wins, Agassi wins, and the planet wins.  I think it's the first truly workable solution to break the world's dependancy on gas.

And if it works other companies will likely start building their own charging station networks, competing with Better Place, driving costs to the consumer lower and lower, while driving battery and vehicle efficiency steadily higher.  Already two countries have signed on to roll out the plan and the cars are going into production.  This is not a pipe dream. It's happening, and I can't wait to buy my first Better Place vehicle.

Plus, the whole system makes "Roll Over" minutes (mileage) really funny.