Spreading awareness about the dangers of SUVs.

“Hello, Abu Dhabi? Yeah, this is Taste. I’m outta here.” Well, you can’t really blame Taste now can you? There’s only so much abuse a sense can take, and the motorists of Abu Dhabi – the same gulf emirate that ordered up the gold-plated Rolls-Royce – have taken things one step too far. Several, actually.

Your eyes do not deceive you, and this is not available for rent to drive your kids to their homecoming. This custom HUMMER H2 convertible was spotted at the Emirates Palace Hotel, a location whose overdeveloped sense of opulence is rivaled only by the horrid monstrosity parked in front.

A topless HUMMER? Okay, the original H1 was available without a roof, but not with a seven-seat, red leather interior, a matching tribal pattern paint job, blistered wheel arches housing chrome wheels and what appears to be a hood scoop packed with a row of driving lights. You know, just in case someone could have missed this tooling around the streets of Abu Dhabi at night.

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According to Toyota, its plug-in Prius hybrids are averaging 65 miles per gallon in real world testing. This is an improvement of 15 mpg over the recently-unveiled 2010 Prius. The secret to the big fuel mileage increase is a battery with the capacity to store much more energy than the unit in the standard Prius. This means a lithium ion technology and a much greater expense. So far, Toyota has not committed to a date when you’ll be able to actually purchase a PHEV Prius for yourself, but it does plan to bring in another 150 test cars for testing.

Bill Reinert, Toyota’s U.S. alternative-fuel vehicle manager, points out that this 65 mpg figure is from drivers who were instructed to pilot the test car the same as any other vehicle, so there are no hypermiling techniques required to achieve the mileage boost. Of course, the car must be plugged into an outlet to recharge its battery pack and fuel but mileage and range are still mostly determined by the driver’s right foot. This is one reality that affects any car, including hybrids and fully electric machines.

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I’ve spent the better part of today updating the blog. I’ve implemented a new theme that retains a similar look as the main site, yet provides a separate and unique experience… It also enables me to utilize many of the features I added with the other recent updates, but I can organize everything so it’s a little more user friendly.

Along with the new theme, I’ve also changed the standard feed over to a Feedburner one. One benefit of this change is that you can now subscribe to the feed and receive updates via email. Simply enter your email address in the form on the right, under the Search box, and click Submit.

So, again, thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy the changes!

We are in quite the pickle when it comes to cars. Our society is based on transporting goods and people from one place to another inside of gasoline-powered vehicles, and not enough people use electric cars yet. After awhile, we realized that we can’t transport things in oil-powered contraptions forever, and that our climate and possibly our society might be destroyed by the machines we’ve based it on.

We can’t do away with cars overnight. We’d have anarchy. People rely on cars to bring them life-sustaining foods and medicines. Plus, people have to get to work and perform the necessary tasks to keep our cities and governments running. We have to find a way to preserve our civilization without destroying our civilization. We are in a very awkward transitional age. Soon, mankind will probably find some way to travel about in green way—we’re already seeing cars running on biodiesel, ethanol, hybrid and electric cars—but until that time, we all just have to do the best we can by choosing to rent or buy a car based on fuel efficiency. With that I give you Department of Energy’s list of the most fuel-efficient cars of 2009.

The Most Fuel Efficient Car

The 2009 Toyota Prius
The most fuel efficient car ranked by the Department of Energy. No surprises here. This hybrid car gets 45 miles per gallon on the highway and 48 mpg in the city. It uses 7.4 barrels of petroleum per year and emits only 4 tons of CO2 during that time on average. (All numbers henceforth are on an annual average.)

Most Efficient Two-Seaters

1. 2009 Smart Fortwo Convertible and Smart Fortwo Coupe
   These cars get 33mpg city and 41 mpg highway. They use 9. 5 barrels of petroleum a year and only emit 5.1 tons of CO2. Check out the upcoming electric drive smart fortwo.
2. Pontiac Solstice
   This car gets 19 mpg city and 28 mpg highway. It uses 15.6 barrels of petrol a year and produces 8.3 tons of CO2.
3. Saturn Sky
   The Saturn Sky gets 19 mpg city and 28 highway. It also consumes 15.6 barrels of petrol and produces 8.3 tons of CO2 annually.

Most Efficient Minicompact Car

2009 MINI Cooper
If you drive the manually shifting version of this car, you’ll get 28mpg city and 37mpg highway. The automatic version gets 25/34 respectively. The manual version emits 5.7 tons of CO2 and burns up 10.7 barrels of petroleum annually. The automatic emits 6.3 tons and uses 11.8 barrels. Find out more about how the MINI Cooper works.

Most Efficient Subcompact Car

Toyota Yaris
This car also has two versions of transmission. The manual is better for the environment than the automatic.

The manual gets 29mpg city and 36 highway. The automatic manages a competitive 29/35. The manual version uses 10.7 barrels of petrol and injects 5.7 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The automatic version stays fairly competitive with 11 barrels used and 5.9 tons emitted.

Most Efficient Compact Cars

1. 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid
   The Honda Civic Hybrid is the second most energy efficient car on this list. It gets 40mpg city and 45 highway. It only utilizes 8.8 barrels of petroleum and emits 4.4 tons of CO2.
2. 2009 Volkswagon Jetta
   This guy gets 31 city and 41 highway. It only eats 11.6 barrels of our petrol and emits 6.1 tons of CO2.

Most Efficient Midsize Cars

1. Toyota Prius
   See top.
2. Nissan Versa
   This car gets 26mpg in the city and 31 mpg on the highway, consuming 12.2 barrels of petrol a year and emitting 6.6 tons of CO2.

Most Efficient Large Cars

1. 2009 Hyundai Sonata
   This car gets 22 city and 32 highway. It eats up 13.7 barrels a year and emits 7.3 tons of CO2.
2. Honda Accord
   The Honda Accord gets 22 city and 31 highway. It uses 13.7 barrels annually and pumps out 7.3 tons of CO2.

Most Efficient Small Station Wagon

The Jetta Sportswagon is the top of this list. It has two types of transmissions. The manual transmission is more fuel efficient. It gets 30 city and 41 highway compared to the automatic which gets 29 city and 40 highway. The automatic consumes 11.6 barrels and produces 6.2 tons of CO2. The automatics stats are 11.9 by’s and 6.4 CO2.

Most Efficient Midsize Station Wagons

1. Kia Rondo
   This stationwagon gets 20 city and 27 highway, using 15.6 barrels and pumping out 8.3 tons of CO2 annually.
2. 2009 Saab 9-5 SportCombi
   The SportCombi gets 18 city and 27 highway. It consumes 16.3 barrels and pollutes 8.7 tons of CO2.

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Along with a host of other layoffs announced Monday, HUMMER H2 maker AM General announced it was temporarily laying off 200 workers from its civilian line. According to an AM General spokesperson Craig Mac Nab, plant production will be shut down until at least March.

Workers leaving Monday afternoon were largely mum except for one who told local CBS affiliate WSBT, “”Nobody’s safe in this day and age.”

AM General in the past has been able to shift some workers from its civilian operations to its military plant, and that may be an option now for some workers.

“What we are doing at considerable difficulty and expense to the company is moving all eligible employees from the H2 workforce into other parts of the company — finding them jobs,” said Mac Nab. “That will start to happen at the beginning of March. Some of the older employees have already been moved.”

AM General nor HUMMER would speculate on when the H2 production would ramp back up, and Mac Nab added, “Nobody knows what’s going to happen with the H2 plant.”

The loss of jobs can be largely attributed to GM’s announcement Monday to cut 2000 jobs and slow production at nine plants across the country.

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There have been some fairly large changes, though you may not notice them right away. First, the blog was recently upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, which is pretty amazing! But that’s not all we’ve been up to…

The behind-the-scenes updates – Visitors can now post comments without having to register. Comments will continue to be moderated, however. Plus, those who wish to link to their sites via their username in their comments will have the added benefit of the DoFollow plugin. Normally, search engines are not able to follow links to other sites. We’ve taken care of that.

Along the lines of giving something back to the visitors who comment on the BanSUVs.com blog, come the next updates – If you have a blog, you can take advantage of the CommentLuv plugin, which will provide a secondary link to a recent post on your blog from your comment on ours. Additionally, those who comment the most will have their username and link added to the right sidebar of the blog. If you do comment, and wish to keep track of subsequent comments, you can opt into email notifications simply by checking a box.

Lastly, all of the posts on the blog have been retagged to help with the tag cloud on the right sidebar, as well as the new Related Posts feature. Below each post, on it’s full page, you will find a list of similar posts.

We hope to have the blog updated more and provide a more user-friendly experience to garner more interaction, good or bad. So, please, feel free to comment! We’d love to hear from you!

A company that helps auto insurers spot high risks says in a new report that drivers of the H2 and H3 are ticketed by police at more than four times the rate of the average driver – the highest of models it studied.

But contrary to the stereotype of the aggressive sport utility vehicle driver, the report by ISO Quality Planning of San Francisco also found that drivers of Chevrolet Suburbans and Tahoes, big SUVs that share structural and mechanical basics with the H2, are among the least likely to get tickets for moving violations, based on a study of tickets issued nationwide in a 12-month period ended last year by drivers of more than 1.7 million vehicles.

Why the difference? Quality Planning executives can only guess. “The sense of power that Hummer drivers derive from their vehicle may be directly correlated with the number of violations they incur,” president Raj Bhat said in statement. “Or perhaps Hummer drivers, by virtue of their driving position, are less likely to notice road hazards, signs, pedestrians or other drivers.”

On Long Island, homebuilder and renovator Steve Nemiroff of Roslyn Heights said yesterday he has never been ticketed for a moving violation in 163,000 miles of driving the 2003 H2 he bought from North Bay Cadillac Hummer in Great Neck. And he said he does feel safe behind the wheel. “No matter what the weather or where I am,” he said, “I never worry about me getting hurt.”

Quality Planning said other vehicles whose drivers attract above-average numbers of tickets are those that appeal to young people, especially the Toyota/Scion xA, xB and tC; and at least two that appeal to auto enthusiasts, the Mercedes-Benz CLK63 AMG and CLS63 AMG.

Quality Planning’s survey isn’t the first to single out the drivers of Hummers; the Highway Loss Data Institute, a suburban Virginia-based group affiliated with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, says on its Web site that H3s have a “substantially worse than average,” rate of claims for property damage, though not for other types of claims.

The institute says the larger Hummer H2 has a substantially worse-than-average record for property damage and also for bodily injury and even fire and theft claims.

Drivers of these vehicles get the most tickets: *

Hummer H2, H3
Scion tC
Scion xB
Mercedes CLK63AMG
Toyota Solara Coupe
Mercedes CLS63AMG
Scion xA
Subaru Outback
Audi A4
Toyota Matrix

Drivers of these get the least:

Jaguar XJ
Chevrolet Suburban
Chevrolet Tahoe
Chevrolet C/K 2500/3500 pickup
Buick Park Avenue
Mazda 6
Buick Ranier SUV
Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan
Buick Lucerne
GMC Sierra C1500 pickup

*In order, based on percent of average rate per 100,000 miles driven

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The most common compliant about true hybrids like the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius is probably the bland pod-shaped looks. There are now some leaked photos of the new Honda Insight with sporty new looks that should answer most of those concerns and possibly help it break into the youth market. Now this is what a hybrid car should look like…

A Hawaiian Chevrolet dealership setup a jacked-up Suburban to crush a vintage Honda Accord to send a message to anyone buying Japanese. The message became somewhat cluttered when the tiny Honda broke the SUV.

James Severtson, the general sales manager of Island Chevrolet in Hilo, Hawaii, hired a Chevrolet Suburban monster truck to drive over a used Honda Accord before a large crowd in order to highlight the importance and strength of American automakers. Instead, Severtson highlighted domestic quality issues when the truck blew a hydraulic hose and started leaking fluid after its first pass over the Accord. A few hours later the truck was repaired and the Accord, which proved to be too tough a competitor, was replaced with a Hyundai Excel.

This time it went off without a hitch. Let that be a lesson to you. If at first you don’t succeed go to the White House for help try, try again.

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