The beauty of a high performance car

It amazes me

On the rare occasions when I take a look underneath the hood of a car I am totally amazed at how complicated the thing looks. All those wires and connections, all those parts that are interconnected and work together as a whole with just one purpose: propelling the car forward. There is such a lot that can go wrong when you think about it that it is amazing that most often, things just work!

The classic combustion engine is a machine that runs on controlled explosions. Think about that: tons of controlled explosions are taking place every time you start an engine. They take place in little chambers and they push a valve outward. Timing is of the essense: the valves are interconnected and go back and forth like a seesaw, so you don't want simultaneous explosions in interconnected chambers, right? So something directs the traffic of the impulses to explode, the sparks.

The spark plugs are given the explosion command by the internal computer of the car I suppose. I'm not quite sure on the mechanics of that and because I don't know this is where the magic begins for me.

The magic is also in the performance enhancing that you can do by installing high performance parts for cars in your vehicle. To me it's sheer magic that you could install a beautifull gadget and it will make your car go faster or burn less fuel, whatever it's set out to do.

Polishing and pimping

Polishing all the chromium parts and making all the visible parts shiny is a bit of a hobby for the serious car-buff. When it all looks shiny it even goes faster, or at least, it feels that way. When you've polished everything on the outside you're a bit of a show off, but if you polish everything under the hood, you're my kind of person. I don't like grease stains on my hands and clothes and on anybody I associate with so going for that clean look is really a must for me.

Pimping your car with spoilers and suchlike can also improve the performance of the car, creating less air resistance and as such they are, aside from nice looking extra's, performance parts that can make a real difference in your car's behavior on the road.

Another thing often overlooked in terms of performance are the tires on your car. Esspecially if you live in an area where there's a big difference between summer and winter it's important for the performance of your car to install wintertires in wintertime. The rubber on wintertyres is softer and that way it has more grip on the snow. It's a sin to keep the wintertires on in the summer though, for two reasons. One is that they tyres will deteriorate quickly when you're driving them on hot roads. The other is that there's a minute amount of drag from the tires that will slow you down considerably. It will also keep you from having the optimal miles to the gallon ratio and in these expensive times every little bit you can gain there counts.

Blasting away

Not really a Velocity factor but important for the enjoyment of the vehicle by men and women alike is the car stereo. With state of the art surround sound and big bass boosters the car is one of the few places where you can truly enjoy great music and feel like you're encased, enveloped by the music. The sound inside a car can be just as overwhelming as during a live concert and it really takes you away. It is palpable in your gut, you can sense it with more than just your ears.

Naturally, when you're enjoying great music in your car, it's important to keep your attention on the road as well. You wouldn't want to wind up driving 20 on the highway because you're so engrossed in your mantra's or classical music, nor would you want to get a speeding ticket because you're rocking to the Boss himself. Still, a car stereo is a beautiful addition to an electric high performance vehicle.

5 questions about the future of cars

Foreign cars

The American car industry has missed the whole point of last few decennia. Instead of going with the trend and building ever smaller cars. Cars that perform well but are smaller simply because not that much space is needed in general when you're just driving to work or the grocery store. The new type of car is smaller, more economical in terms of how they use their space ánd get's great mileage.

Instead of building what most customers want: something that will get them safely from A to Z and back without guzzling too much gasoline. Even if the customers appear to want the bigger cars, this is only so because there simply aren't that many small cars available to them. They aren't used to them being out on the street and even if they are there, they seems somewhat out of place with the big models. It takes a real man to choose a small car.

Not only is the performance of the smaller car great in terms of mileage, withimport performance parts their speed of acceleration just to name an item can be improved on dramatically.

Small is the new big

The same developments we've seen in personal computers is starting to happen for cars. Instead of the gazz guzzing machines of yesteryear, people are now more likely to invest in an electric car and thus save at least half on fuel, more if you couple it to your own solar panel units.

Any child can see that it takes more energy to more a huge object than it does to move a small object (assuming that both have a similar weight/size ratio) So if you have a huge car, like the Hummer or some of the other rather backward American type cars, you're burning more fuel. If there's only one of you in a Dodge Ram, you're using up more than your fair share (if there is such a thing as a fair share) of the earths powersupply.

Things could move rather fast if we allow technology to develop unhampered by vested interest from the oil company's. Telephone has seen a similar speedy development where we started with Alexandre Graham Bell, making those bulky plastic phones all the way down to the first mobile phones with which you couldn't call for hours, simply because your arm would get too tired. All the way to todays smartphone, that basically is a unit larger than the first 4 types of computers, with more memory and more possibilities than it's predecessors from 1980.

It's time to start rethinking the concept of large cars and discover the joys of thinking out of the box with cars.It's time to start being curious about the why of things.

Why four wheels?

Why four (or more) seats, if there's only one of you?

Why a new car every year or two?

Why fossil fuels if you can go electric?

Why doesn't my employer offer me an electric lease car?

Worries about performance?

Your motor won't have to move so much steel and glass if your vehicle becomes smaller. This means quite simply put that you save a bundle on fuel that way. If it only has to carry one person, why not go for a one person car? Time for the industry to sit up and pay attention: we want personalized vehicles.

We also want the option of personalizing the driving experience by putting inimport performance parts to enhance the speed and acceleration of the car. That way instead of having a shady, unecological alternative, you have a vehicle that makes hardly any noise, uses hardly any electricity (non if you hook it up to some solar panels).

How to let your old clunker go (and why)

Selling or giving away

These are difficult times and a bit of extra cash can go a long way. The financial crisis has been around long enough to clear out most of our savings and put our family finances past it's stretching point. To make ends meet we have to find ways of cashing in on stuff we've gathered over the years and that are perhaps less than useful in todays economy and that can be converted to cash, like that old clunker sitting in your driveway gathering rust. There's a lot of things that still hold value to others sitting around your home. Selling them to family car buyers can be a great way of simplifying your life and getting your clutter back in control.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

In Europe today the trend is to arrange things without money. Trading and giving away things is a good way of bypassing the flailing money system and it helps to recycle and reuse things. One of the more succesful sites in the Netherlands is “free stuff” where people can list things they are done with, like furniture that is no longer in use and people can come and pick this up for free. Doing it for free has the advantage that a things find their ways to peoples home. In spite of the crisis in money, people still own a lot of things and rather than paying for storage or for having it removed it's an easy and fun way to get to know people and lessening the pressure of garbage on our environment.

Recycling can be profitable as well. That old wreck that is cluttering up your driveway or garage can be sold a a profit. This way you can convert something that is a hindrance to you into something that can enhance your life, like cash. Selling your car can be done profitably at http://www.familycarbuyers.com/

Ask and you shall be given

There's also a trend, coupled with the free stuff initiatives that is called: “Ask for it”. People who dare to ask for what they need have a much greater chance of getting it than those who don't, is the simple filosofie behind the idea. There's a great many things that go from hand to hand because of people asking for it. And it's not all just junk either, I've seen people ask for Ipads and planetickets and get them, because someone had what they were looking for and didn't need it anymore.

Giving away stuff you're done with is also a way of contributing to a better standard of living for people who are down on their luck. In the past few months I've gotten a fat-boy from someone who no longer needed it and I've gotten rid of several cookbooks which I don't need because I allready know how to cook. I've gotten a wonderful stylish lamp and an end table from some nice people who didn't want it anymore and I've given away a bicycle that needed just a bit of repair, like new tires and a new lock.

Spiritual cleansing

Spiritually it's a good thing for the soul to clean out stuff that you don't need. A good practise in letting go, letting go of your attachment to stuff. There's a classic piece by American comedian George Carlin about stuff. Giving up our attachment to stuff is a very buddhist, new age, spiritual cleansing sorta thing which means that George was probably way ahead of his time on that point.

Some things have intrinsic value though and although giving stuff away is good for the soul, making money is also a concern. In particular getting some cash for your junk car can help meet the bills. There's a lot of components to a car that can and should be reused and selling your junker to www.familycarbuyers.com. They even come and pick it up at your home and give you a good price for it.

How to quite paying for gasoline, buying an electric car

A new car for the new year

If you're still driving an old vehicle that is drinking gasoline like water and perhaps even burning oil, pay attention! You're burning money and killing the environment! Time to sit down at the kitchen table and look over the options for a new car. Now I don't know your wallet so I don't know what kind of money you have to spend, but you can look at a few options for getting money as well. Selling your old car to family car buyers for instance, instead of trading it in, might be a good way to add some money to your pocket book.

There's many ways to go about buying a new car and many things to consider, so I'm going to focus on buying an electric car because I care about the environment. Now we all know that electric cars are better for the environment and get a lot better milage for your money, in particular if you go ahead and put some solar panels on your roof as well to recharge the battery with. Also recharging is offered in a growing number of places. If you're an average Joe, driving a maximum of 50 miles to work and maybe to the lake on the weekends, the average electric car will get you there and back on one charge.

Hybrids?

If you're not that average and have to drive long distances in your vehicle, a hybrid might be the way to go. This you can run on gasoline when necessary and on electricity when available. In addition running the car on gas allows you to recharge your batteries, in the smartest of cars they even store the energy you waste on braking. Also, the technology is relatively new so expect improvements to be made on your vehicle for some time, making our dependence on fossil fuels drop dramatically, with all the political advantages internationally.

If you have to go more than 50 but less than 100 miles to your place of employment (where you have to spend 8 hours earning your keep) you might want to talk to your employer about putting a recharging station in the parking lot. That way you can still use your car to go to work and back and half the electricity will be on your employers tab. With a little investment in solar panels this could work out very well for both of you. And 8 hours is ample time to recharge your batteries! This might eliminate the need for a hybrid and give you the option of buying a fully electric car.

Picture perfect: an electric car and solar panels

So let's make some calculations. Let's say you're driving 100 miles a day on average, going to work and back, etc. This means you drive a total of 36.500 miles yearly. Give or take a few miles, let's say it's 40.000 a year (for easy calculation)

Gasoline is $3,60 a gallon now, and more likely to become more expensive than less so, but for the sake of argument let's say it's going to be an average of $3,50. Your current family car, that old clunker you are going to sell tohttp://www.familycarbuyers.com get's about 20 miles to the gallon? You should be so lucky you say? We'll go with 20 MpG anyway...

This means you buy 2.000 gallons of gasoline each year. At $3,50 that means you're spending 7.000 dollars a year on gasoline alone! Average family, average use, average expenditure on a family car, am I right? Your situation may be a little or a lot different so you best do your own math on this one. If you have the money to invest in an electric car in combination with solar panels your average expenditure goes down to zero.

The electric car is free!

Buying an electric vehicle isn't cheap. However driving it is going to be a lot cheaper, up to zero expenditure in combination with solar panels (and a good deal with your boss for charging during the daytime). So how can you afford nót to buy the electric car?

What's the cost of a new electric car? You can purchase one round about 35.000 dollars, which would mean that if you had the money in cash you would start saving yourself 7.000 a year. The solar panels to feed your car would run about 7000 dollars as well. This means in only six years time you will have saved on fuel the full cost of a car and solar panel system. Put a different way: If you drive this car for 6 years it's essentially a free car.

If you have to get a car loan the interest on that is all you pay on top of what you would normally pay for gasoline alone. Selling your old car at family car buyers will give you a bit of capital and perhaps you have some savings so you won't need to loan the full amount. Interest is steep but remember, you'll be saving yourself 7000 a year (almost 600 a month) in gasoline cost.

Worth considering ain't it?

Why pay for gasoline when it's ever more expensive: the alternative is here!

Why bring your paycheck to the pump?

Sit down some day and think about all the money you've been spending on fuel! Your old family car, the one that get's maybe 25 miles to the gallon on a good day has served you well over these years but it has also guzzled up a major portion of your income. Not to mention that fuel cost is on the rise still! Time to put a stop to it and leave the oilbaron's servitude and consider the alternative. Time to get rid of that old junker, sell my car for cash and invest in an electric car. Because electric cars are the way of the future and you might need to get one today to keep up with the wave of the future.

Fuel cost is a major portion of your family budget, on a par with the cost of renting a home or paying a mortgage. I've heard stories a few years back that the complete income of one of the partners in a marriage went to cover fuel alone. Insane amounts of gasoline are needed to keep people on the road and incredible amounts of money go into the open jaws of the oil industry. It really doesn't matter if these are Texas oil barons we're feeding or Middle Eastern Oil Sheiks. Truth is we're getting the short end of the stick no matter what.

Democratization of energy

There's a revolution going on and we're all part of it. We're democratizing our energy consumption and taking the production of energy into our own hands. Too much of our money has gone to gasoline, electric companies and other sources of energy when the sun is beaming down on us constantly. Solar panels are showing up all over the place and people are getting off the grid and onto smartgrids: sharing energy in coöperative efforts with their neighbors. Solar panels, wind turbines: people are taking their own energy production back from big companies.

I see at least two reasons for this trend:

1. Of course there's the rising cost of energy. It's quite simply becoming relatively cheap to produce your own, because the electric companies, gascompanies and assorted others are overcharging customers left and right to make more money for their shareholders.
2. Underperformance of electric companies. Power outages are becoming more frequent and it appears that the current net needs some big revisions (meaning more rise of cost). It also doesn't seem very efficient to make energy in one place and transport it longdistance, when form most places there's ample local energy in wind and sun.

Going off the grid is going to be the trend, with technology improving in leaps and bounds and startup cost getting lower by the month.

Hook up your car to your solar panels

It's time to act. To grab the bull by the horns and take your energy consumption and production back into your own hands. You can save money every day on your car by selling your old gasoline consuming vehicle to places like original cash for cars and put the money towards solar panels and an electric car. Today's electric cars have enough range for average, every day use (just think about how much you normally drive in a day).

Even without solar panels and essentially free solar energy, the electric car runs at half the cost that your classic gasguzzler does. If you save up the money you would normally spend on gas and put it towards a nice family vacation you can finally make that trip to Hawaiï you've always dreamt about.