Well with the Gas prices skyrocketing like they have been, I've been thinking... about the possibility of a hybrid (i wouldnt even call it thinking yet) But i was wondering is car audio a possibility in a hybrid. I wonder how the electrical system would react to another high voltage current draw.
Its just a thought.
Has anyone ever seen anything done to a hybrid that would cause such a current draw. or know of reasons why this couldnt be done?
You'll have to look into the extra cost of buying a hybrid to even see if it is worth the extra money vs the fuel savings. I looked at Escape Hybrid and calculated out the gas savings at the mpg listed on the window. It would take alot of years to save the 7-10,000 dollars extra you have to pay for one. We went with the TDI Passat because the fuel mileage is better or equal to most hybrid's and the fuel is already paid for sitting in the yard. Not to mention it is a 100% tax write off.
I need a yard, I was actually looking at a 05 Jetta TDI... seems alright a bit pricey though...
What are diesel costs like now anyways?
scoobasteve,Aug 31 2005, 12:37 PM Wrote:I need a yard, I was actually looking at a 05 Jetta TDI... seems alright a bit pricey though...
What are diesel costs like now anyways?
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Diesel right now is 94-97 for you commoners. For me it was 88 last fillup. 05 Jetta should get around 58 mpg highway and probably 45-50 city. I get 41 combined with the passat wagon automatic, which has a bigger engine.
Damn, its so tempting
I wish Vdubs werent so boring.
MYVWLEMON.COM
After the trouble you're having with you Ford, I can't believe you would actually consider a VW.
V-dubs are worse than Ford.
haha, i'll have another 60,000 km of warranty though that makes it better. lol
Or maybe ill just... Sell a kidney and get a MB Eclass Diesel... theres one parked in front of the MB dealership on mavis... says it can get 1129km to the tank
ANTHONYD,Aug 31 2005, 01:03 PM Wrote:MYVWLEMON.COM
After the trouble you're having with you Ford, I can't believe you would actually consider a VW.
V-dubs are worse than Ford.
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:lol:
:rolleyes:
Truuuuuuuuuuuuuust me, your still ontop with a TDI vs costs of fixing a focus. LOL, vw having more trouble than ford.....good one!!
I can hear meford pounding the keybaord for his reply now. :rolleyes:
My focus has cost me like 2k in maintenence and repairs since its come out this year.
not to mention costing ford 3000... w00t my clutch came in at dixie... add another 1k to fords warranty repairs
I would say so, VW has alot of problems yah just never here about it. If there wasn't a week my uncle's and families/family friend's volkswagen weren't at a shop id eat my shoes :lol: good on fuel but thier problematic rigs though
500 bucks for a coolin fan motor for my uncle's volkswagen, nobody carried it besides VW :rolleyes:
Kool_ZX3,Aug 31 2005, 01:19 PM Wrote:I would say so, VW has alot of problems yah just never here about it. If there wasn't a week my uncle's and families/family friend's volkswagen weren't at a shop id eat my shoes :lol: good on fuel but thier problematic rigs though
500 bucks for a coolin fan motor for my uncle's volkswagen, nobody carried it besides VWÂ :rolleyes:
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Ask scooba about his focus and its problems
Ask AnthonyD about the problems and his focus
Ask 2001_ZTs and the problems with his focus
Ask Me about the problems I've had with my focus
Ask Steedaboy about his focus....
See where Im going with this? :lol: :P i could go on in case you dont
Now before anybody starts flaming me cuz I had Jay install a trubo kit and should expect problems.....nothing Jay has done to the car has ever broken.
Just these pasts few weeks
-Iginition cylinder: $383.00
-Coil Pack Harness that nobody but Ford carries: $52.00
-New plugs: $14
-New Wires: $45.00
I'm out of warranty so Im expecting more :P :rolleyes:
EDIT: I still love the POS. :o
lol, change that to focuses... the ZX3 was worse than the svt.
The thing with the Focus is it's a car with a sticker price of 18k, so people drive a round witht he attitude of "what do yu expect?" I've even heard it here.
But when your shelling out 32k for a fackin Golf.... Give me a break. VDUBS suck. It's even in the consumer reports, VDUB even admitted to having a real problem the past 6 years. I wish I could find the article.
Ohh the focus is a bad car for some, well 60% LOL but volkswagen are just as bad and parts are much more expensive. Id rather fix the focus then a VW, id have to ask my uncle what all he put on it in the 1 and a half he had it. must be about 3500 or more. 500 for a electric motor, that's fackin dumb :rolleyes:
FOUND IT!
Germany's most protected company has been rocked by a boardroom scandal just as its business is facing a severe test
VOLKSWAGEN (VW) cars ranked a miserable 34th out of 37 brands in a recent quality poll by J.D. Power, a market-research firm. âUnacceptableâ, says Wolfgang Bernhard, head of VW branded vehicles, who addressed investors on July 13th in an effort to convince them that the firm's quality and cost issues are being tackled. But these are just a symptom of deeper problems at Europe's biggest carmaker. The real sickness lies at the management levelâthe source of a sex and corruption scandal now gripping Germany.
The latest and most senior head to roll, this week, was that of Peter Hartz, VW's director of personnel, a friend of Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and architect of the government's labour-market reforms. Mr Hartz took responsibility for the alleged misuse of company funds by workers' representatives under his command. The allegations included the procurement of prostitutes and luxury foreign travel for employees who were also members of VW's supervisory board. State prosecutors are investigating.
Scandal at Volkswagen
Jul 14th 2005
Volkswagen
Jul 7th 2005
Germany
The motor industry
Volkswagen has information for investors. See also GM, PSA Peugeot Citroën and Audi.
In mid-June an internal audit by VW began to uncover a web of dummy companies that Helmuth Schuster, head of personnel at Skoda, VW's Czech subsidiary, and others at VW appear to have used to channel backhanders in exchange for business favours. Mr Schuster and Klaus-Joachim Gebauer, a personnel manager, were fired. Klaus Volkert, a workers' representative on VW's supervisory board, quit at the end of June. Juicy allegations have appeared in the tabloid press. Even the supervisory board chairman, Ferdinand Piech, may have to go for presiding over the mess and defending Mr Hartz.
VW has lived too long in a twilight world between business and politics. Its biggest shareholder, with 18.2%, is the state of Lower Saxony, which also has two seats on the supervisory board. According to a 1960 law, no single shareholder can exercise more than 20% of the voting rightsâso VW is in effect protected from being taken over, while the political stake makes it hard to cut jobs or close excess capacity. The European Commission is trying to get Germany to change this law, arguing that it inhibits the free flow of capital across EU borders. It took the case to the European Court in March, but is unlikely to get a verdict before the end of 2006.
The workers rule, OK
The troubles at VW have also been blamed on Germany's co-determination law. Any firm with 2,000 employees must give workers' representatives half of the seats on its supervisory board. With over 20,000 employees (VW has 343,000) there must be ten of them on its 21-member boardâseven from the workforce, three from the unions. Adding the two political board appointees, the private shareholder representatives are outnumbered. No wonder VW has become somewhat indifferent to the needs of those shareholders.
For IG Metall, Germany's biggest blue-collar union, VW is so crucial that it sends along its boss, Jürgen Peters. All but 3% of VW's employees are IG Metall members, including executives such as Mr Hartz. Mr Peters this week claimedâoptimisticallyâthe right to propose Mr Hartz's successor.
The bad publicity and resulting management shake-up come as VW's core business is in its worst shape in a decade. Profit before tax fell from a peak of â¬4.4 billion ($3.9 billion) in 2001 to only â¬1.1 billion last year. The VW brand itself actually lost â¬44m in 2004: the firm's operating profit of â¬1.6 billion came from its other brands, such as Audi, and from financial services. Its plummeting quality reputation in America (especially) contributed to losses of over â¬900m there last year. The firm's Chinese business is no longer the nice little earner it was: General Motors has grabbed share in a market whose growth rate has been slowing down.
Still, the firm's brands remain ahead in western Europe, with a combined market share of nearly 18%, in front of France's PSA Peugeot-Citroën group (just over 14%). But VW-badged cars have slipped from 11% to 9.4%, allowing Renault to become Europe's leading brand. As well as France's resurgent carmakers, VW must contend with the renewed drive in Europe of Japan's and South Korea's carmakers.
Bernd Pischetsrieder, VW's chief executive, is still trying to rescue the firm from the legacy of the flat-out growth strategy pursued by his predecessor and (for now) supervisory board chairman, Mr Piech. This strategy involvedâsensibly enoughâthe same platform (chassis and underpinnings) being used for an entire range of models, from VW Golfs to Skodas and Seats. But VW failed to manage the risk that all these models would be in competition with each other. And it ignored other growing segments of the market, such as that for the compact MPVs (multi-purpose vehicles) invented by Renault with its ground-breaking Scenic in the mid-1990s.
There have been other management failures. The decision to launch a luxury VW, priced at over â¬90,000, has wasted time and money. And VW invested heavily in Brazil at precisely the wrong time, just before the market collapsed.
Mr Pischetsrieder's response to growing troubles last year was to hire Mr Bernhard, who had previously put Chrysler back on the road by cutting costs and improving quality. Mr Bernhard was due to take charge of DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes arm early last year, but he so ruffled the unions and middle management with talk of radical surgery that Daimler's boss Jürgen Schrempp got rid of him.
This week, Mr Bernhard told VW's shareholders that the firm's emphasis is now on profits rather than growth. He has much to do at VW. Factories at Wolfsburg, its home in Lower Saxony, are operating at only 70% of capacity, well below the profit-making level. VW's labour costs are 40% above those of its rivals. Yet Mr Bernard's hands are tied by last year's labour contract, struck to great acclaim by Mr Hartz, which guarantees VW's workforce job security until 2011 in return for a wage freeze for three years.
Mr Bernhard aims to raise VW's operating profits by some â¬7 billion a year by 2008 to meet his boss's target of a boost to net profit of â¬4 billion by the same date, given the threat of rising steel prices and a falling dollar. He says he hopes to get â¬2.2 billion by selling more cars. That is plausible, as the firm's latest models have cut the age of its model range (usually a leading indicator of higher sales) to under three years, one of the youngest fleets in Europe. But the other â¬5 billion will have to come from squeezing suppliers and other costs.
Mr Bernhard will spell out his plans to his (perhaps much changed) supervisory board by the end of the year. For now, he avoids going into detail, apart from insisting that he will do everything possible to honour the labour contract and avoid compulsory redundancies. He told analysts on July 13th that there would be no âsacred cowsâ when it came to cost cuts, but also said there were no plans for factory closures. That did not end speculation that a VW plant in Brussels will be closed.
Will the scandal make it easier for Messrs Pischetsrieder and Bernhard to win concessions from the unions and change the culture at Wolfsburg? Mr Pischetsrieder certainly knows how highlighting a crisis can trigger change. While boss of BMW he shocked its British workforce during a product launch by his ailing Rover subsidiary when he publicly chastised them for poor productivity. The result was swift and unexpected: the board fired Mr Pischetsrieder for over-dramatising the firm's troubles. Surely history is not about to repeat itself?
You boys are doing just fine smaking the VW.
Your a complete moron\insert dummy name here/
If you like it that much, go buy one and good riddance,
Don't let the broken electrical wiring hit you on the way out.
meford4u,Aug 31 2005, 02:56 PM Wrote:You boys are doing just fine smaking the VW.
Your a complete moron\insert dummy name here/
If you like it that much, go buy one and good riddance,
Don't let the broken electrical wiring hit you on the way out.
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AMEN :lol: that's another thing with my uncle's volkswagen, half the s**t wouldn't work sometimes.lights,ac,radio etc..
meford4u,Aug 31 2005, 01:56 PM Wrote:You boys are doing just fine smaking the VW.
Your a complete moron\insert dummy name here/
If you like it that much, go buy one and good riddance,
Don't let the broken electrical wiring hit you on the way out.
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OH MAN. BRYAN......I HATE TO SAY IT....YOU'RE RIGHT.
lol. i need a car thats good on gas. and doesnt break like my focuses.
Goddamn, maintenence was cheaper on the acclaim with 230km when i had it.
scoobasteve,Aug 31 2005, 02:03 PM Wrote:lol. i need a car thats good on gas. and doesnt break like my focuses.
Goddamn, maintenence was cheaper on the acclaim with 230km when i had it.
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buy a yota.
I have a tercel you can buy.