With the birth of our daughter this summer, Karen has been hinting about wanting to get a minivan sometime in the near future. In general, I have been against this idea for a few reasons, but mostly dealing with cost of the vehicle and my environmental concerns and the general poor fuel economy of the larger vehicles. I agree that there are times when a van or SUV would be nice, especially on trips to simply picking up larger objects at my toy stores (Lowes or Home Depot).
Lately I've been telling Karen that she can get a van under two conditions. Her car needs to be paid off first, we have a little over a year to go on that, and she can only get a gas-electric hybrid. My thought was that Toyota was supposed to be releasing a hybrid version of their Sienna van, but I have yet to see anything on their website or hear from my dad who works for Toyota. With the incredible success of their Prius, this is the hybrid engine I want since they have the best one on the market and in general, the Toyota is a very reliable, and environmentally friendly vehicle.
I started to do a bit of research into the actual fuel economy of the minivans since it's not looking like a hybrid minivan is going to be available by the time we really need to get one and found a few interesting sites. I was told by John that Yahoo! had a chart comparing all of the vehicles by type and their MPG rating, but I couldn't find it. I ended up at www.fueleconomy.gov which has a great listing in PDF or print form of every vehicle made, broken up by model year. I also found NESEA's Green Car Club website which has a list of "green" vehicles and a bunch of pointers for improving the fuel efficiency of your vehicle by changing some of your driving habits and keeping your vehicle in good condition.
It will take a bit more research to convince me that a gas powered mini van will get a reasonable MPG rating, but I am looking into this. Don't expect a mini van in our driveway in the near future though, still have the other car to pay for first.
Posted by doug at November 24, 2004 12:38 PM | TrackBack