Shocking, maddening and everything in between 
Wayne Gerdes –
CleanMPG – Jan. 1, 2008
What started out as a year with plans of Hypermiling reviews and Auto Show visits turned out to be much much more. The biggest news of 2007 came about from a vehicle now known as the Chevrolet Volt concept. Few had known anything about the Chevrolet Volt’s existence prior to the 2007 NAIAS (Detroit Autoshow Press Event) and now, billions do. Although completely unexpected, this little known preview said it all. GM’s
Chevrolet “VOLT” did indeed shock the industry!
From February through the beginning of summer, the Chicago Autoshow,
2007 Milwaukee Autoshow - some members will be there in person with the Milwaukee Hybrid Group in attendance, multiple Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago Group Meets, and the annual Hybrid gathering at Miller Park in Milwaukee occurred.
Then of course the grand daddy Group Meet of them all,
Hybridfest 2007 happened! We had
Hybridfest 2007 Videos,
The Unofficial HybridFest Live-Blogging and photo thread 56K beware and
Who did you meet at Hybridfest 2007? showing us all what we missed
One of the most labor intensive but satisfying gatherings of all happened in the small town of Pewaukee, WI in late fall. What came to be known as the
MiHG Prius Electronic Block Heater Install gathering turned out to be a labor of love for Wayne Mitchell and Ken Keuler helping members of the MiHG set their hybrids up for winter.
The final show of the year was held in Los Angeles, California and included the 2007 GreenCar of the Year, the Chevrolet Tahoe 2-Mode. For a retake of that event, the
2007 LA Auto Show Wrap-up should take care of any discussion regarding why a car was labeled green while receiving a paltry 21 mpg combined
The final Group Meets of the year included the
Madison Hybrid Group Meet on Nov. 10, the
Milwaukee Hybrid Group Meet on Dec. 15 and a new group that hit our radar screens going by the name
MN Hybrid Group Meet held on Dec. 22.
And what about the madness? We have all had the opportunity to hear about the latest Energy Bill passing including the initial details spelled out in the
Energy bill passes the house and stalls in the Senate coverage. What happened afterwards was the Tax breaks for the largest oil companies were left in place, the renewable power generation sections were stripped and we received a new car FE bill so watered down with loopholes it will leave us dependant on foreign oil supply until the last drop has been sucked dry
And of course the
Turkey’s (the automotive variety) of the year nominations arrived just before Thanksgiving. Let us only hope sales of these birds fall to such a low level it makes these monstrosities simply an asterisk in the pages of 21st century history books!
As far as vehicles are concerned, we had the opportunity to look back at one of the vehicles that started the hybrid movement in a review tagged “
A Wolf in sheep’s clothing.” That 2002 Prius-I not only proved that older Hybrids still had an ace or two up their sleeves but another of the same make, model and year is pushing into the record books for a hybrid vehicles total miles traveled. That being Jesse’s
“Ride of the week” – August 1, 2007 and it is just about to hit 350,000 miles!
Another proverbial favorite was shown to us courtesy of the European continent in the form of the Honda Civic 2.2L iCDTi. In the review captioned “
Shot across the bow, the Diesel invasion of America is about to begin”, many of us learned what is in store in the not to distant future. Oh what a future it is too
The real fun began when we had the opportunity to take a closer look at the upcoming
2008 SMART Fortwo. It doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or empty; it is still a fun to drive runabout for a city dweller in particular!
While
driving around in a 2007 Toyota Prius-II, a new all-highway but slower speed FE technique was discovered and thus named
SHM. Trust me, if you own a Prius-I or II, you will want to try this one out
A look back at some CleanMPG stats. Here is where we came from (
Happy New Years All!), and here is where we are today.
CleanMPG now has 2,287 members vs. just 439 a year ago, 7,417 threads vs. 2,969 threads a year ago and 60,426 posts vs. 17,809 from a year ago last night.
My own upload pics, files and posts log: 6,033 total posts vs. 5,055 a year ago, 1,743 PM’s (sent and received) vs. 950 a year ago, 1,116 photos vs. 1,682 photos a year ago (I am a slacker, aren’t I
) including 63,969 MB’s vs. 74.288 MB’s uploaded. All from a year ago yesterday.
And finally, my own CleanMPG 2007 Word stats revealed the following:
| Word document | CleanMPG News 2007 | CleanMPG Posts 2007 |
| Pages w/ 10 pt. font | 783 | 1,004 |
| Paragraphs | 12,500 | 22,628 |
| Lines | 43,406 | 55,899 |
| Words | 386,145 | 432,513 |
| Characters (no spaces) | 2,242,395 | 2,267,127 |
| Character (with spaces) | 2,621,919 | 2,683,038 |
What can we expect for 2008?
Group Meets, Group Meets and more Group Meets! 2008 Detroit, Chicago and LA Auto shows, a 2008 Prius-II and upcoming 2009 Prius-III review/pre-view, the upcoming 50-state compliant 2009 VW Jetta TDI review, Hybridfest 2008 coverage by the same and who knows what else we will have in store as the year passes. I suspect Tom Baleno (co-owner of CleanMPG) will have some interesting surprises and with that, may you all have a Great and Happy New Year!
Now who is going to be the first to place all the pics above with the proper story?
Linear Mode
