Thursday, July 05, 2007

Wow!

Evidently, Al Gore III was caught speeding--with illegal drugs--at 100mph in his Prius. While I don't condone the apparent drug use, I do salute the fact that, unlike his father, he's actually sacrificing something for the environment by driving a hybrid. I also am impressed that a Prius can do 100mph. Early versions were said to top out at about 75mph.

On the other hand, somehow I don't think that a Prius gets good mileage at 100mph. I'd guess about 20mpg or so--air resistance goes as the square of speed, so if you get ~40mpg at 75mph, it's not going to be pretty at 100mph. So maybe he wasn't doing so much for the environment after all.

4 comments:

Shawn said...

...but he got there quicker, so he spent less time polluting.

hmm...maybe that's like "walking through the rain gets you less wet because you don't run into so many raindrops." Someone *really* tried to tell me that once. I was amazed.

Bike Bubba said...

Yeah, but the "mpg" estimate doesn't exactly tell us anything good about his high speed commute. As you ably point out, units are pretty important here.

Anonymous said...

I'd be even more impressed to find out if he actually forked over his own hard earned cash to buy the thing. My guess is he probably had it comped to him by somebody; maybe someone in the DNC.

kingdavid

Johnny Roosh said...

Going 100 MPH in a Prius is like riding a moped...its fun until your friends see you.