New Times / Letter To The Editor

Go diesel

Bob Blair

Going green with the wrong technology will always put you in the red; for example, green hybrid buses purchased with federal and state money that can’t haul passengers up a hill (“Hybrid buses broke,” Nov. 5). Members of the Mercedes Benz Club of America recently toured the Mercedes factory and restoration center in Germany. For the first part of the tour, the visitors drove on the Mercedes test track in their Mercedes Benz diesel tour bus. The brain trust at GM gave up a few years ago and sold Detroit Diesel to Mercedes Benz. If you go to Europe, look at their transportation systems.  

Mercedes and Volvo buses all have air ride and handle like sports cars. General Motors is building clean diesel Cadillacs for the European and Asian markets. Ford has turned around because of the diesel vehicles it sells in the rest of the world, yet those vehicles do not come to the U.S.  

The American Smart Car gets 42 miles per gallon of gas but the German diesel version gets 71 MPG. GM advertisements hawk “May the best car win,” but you simply can’t purchase the best car in the United States.