Green with Envy, Riddled with Guilt

Bling Goes the Hybrid

November 21, 2008 at 3:49 pm Leave a comment

This is the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, a vehicle that Cadillac is calling, “The Future of Luxury”. At 22 mpg (up from 18) and $70+ thousand, this monstrosity would really be better referred to as “an awkward but perhaps inevitable consequnce of America’s transition to true green transportation.” Even when you ignore the yards of leather, numerous flat-screens and other shiny, non-recycled decorations lining the interior of this “car”, the fact that this eight-seater only gets 22 mpg (highway!) is a real shame.

Cadillac boasts that the Hybrid Escalade is the “world’s first full-size luxury hybrid SUV”. Maybe it’s just me, but the phrase “luxury hybrid SUV” is a bit of a brain-bender. It seems like the Cadillac people have maintained the illusion that they can have their luxury SUVs and be green too. But they’re wrong. My 1995 Volvo 850 sedan gets 28 mpg. It’s 13 years old, not a hybrid, and it’s still better for the environment than the new Escalade. Granted, my car does not seat 8, but you can buy a Toyota Sienna mini van for 1/3 of the price, seat the same number of passengers, and get a whole extra mile to the gallon – and the Sienna isn’t even a Hybrid. It’s just Japanese.

The moral of this story: it’s officially time for the American Car Manufacturer to wake up. WAKE UP! Just because you might sell a few of these luxury hybrid SUV’s to trend-setting Rappers and other LA types doesn’t mean that they’re worth making. It’s time to make some compromises and develop some really nice cars for real Americans. You can keep the shininess, but you might want to consider dropping some of the extra tonnage and make a nice, efficient hybrid (or even an electric car! why not?) that gets over 40 miles to the gallon. The true bling is in the MPG.

Entry filed under: clothes, shoes and other goodies (or badies), energy, rant time. Tags: Brooklyn, cadillac, environment, escalade, green, Gwen Schantz, hybrid, living, mpg, New York, sustainable.