At low speeds with the inline-5, there is sufficient punch to handle the cut and thrust of city driving. But when faced with freeway merging and inclines, the 2009 Hummer H3T grows winded, a result of its insufficient power for the vehicle’s 4,900 pounds and bricklike aerodynamic efficiency. The H3T Alpha fares better. Throttle response is crisper with the V8 and it pulls harder through the midrange, but again, due to the considerable mass at hand, it’s not the massive transformation one might expect.

Even though the H3T’s longer wheelbase makes it less maneuverable on trails than the regular H3, it’s still basically unstoppable when equipped with the Adventure Package. With 9.5 inches of ground clearance, loads of wheel travel, aggressive approach and departure angles, oversized all-terrain tires and standard skid plates, the H3T can pretty much go anywhere without taking damage. Given this off-road capability, the H3T performs admirably on pavement, with decent stability at speed. The ride is surprisingly smooth and belies the H3′s tough-truck nature. But we would still advise you to steer clear of the H3T if you never intend to take it off the beaten path.

While GM tries to keep itself in business, it’s also trying to launch a new set of hybrid pickupsfor the 2009 model year. Soon, GM will be letting journalists–including the car review experts at TheCarConnection.com–to drive the 2009 Chevrolet SilveradoHybrid.

GM says the new Hybridedition of the full-size pickup truck will be 40 percent more fuel-efficient in city fuel economy and 25 percent better in highway mileage.

The Silverado Hybrid will come in the four-door Crew Cab body, in either rear- or four-wheel drive. Outfitted with a 6.0-liter V-8 engine and GM’s version of the two-modehybrid system shared with the Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid, the Silverado Hybrid will be capable of 500 miles of driving range. It will also be able to run on electric power alone, gasoline power alone or a combination of the two. GM’s Silverado Hybridpickup will also have cylinder deactivation technology, which turns off half the V-8′s cylinders to save fuel when it’s running under light engine loads. Chevrolet’s sister brand GMC will also get a hybrid version of their Sierra pickup.

Dual front and curtain airbags and stability control will be standard on the SilveradoHybrid. Minor aerodynamic tweaks help the Hybrid’s fuel economy; its battery pack is located behind the rear seats.

TheCarConnection.com will be driving the new Silverado Hybrid this month, with a full review yet to come. Stay tuned–in the meantime, find out more about the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado here at ChevyTruckReports.com, including extensive photos and pricing information.

As a fixed cost of car ownership, automobile insurance currently competes for financial resources with car payments, registration fees, and property taxes. If we were to make insurance a per-mile cost of driving, however, operating costs, which now are dominated by gasoline, would approximately double. Why make such a change? Two reasons are obvious: to enhance affordability and to reduce externalization of accident costs. A third and less obvious reason is suggested by the fact that this change would reduce annual ownership cost by several hundred to several thousand dollars for all drivers and cause operating cost to increase by a similar range in amount. We will see, however, that the insurance increase in operating cost for most drivers would either be greater or less but not the same as the insurance decrease in their ownership cost. An important political question is which groups would spend more for insurance and which would spend less than they do now.

A more fundamental question, however, is which system—fixed cost or operating cost—can more accurately measure and charge for the risk of driving an automobile. Economists generally agree that insurance cost pressure should provide individuals with incentives to control accident risk (Williamson et al., 1967, Vickrey, 1968, Calabresi, 1970). We will consider how well the current system provides this risk control function and whether a change to per-mile charges would do a better job.

Insurance  would be changed to an operating cost if mandated by a one-sentence amendment to insurance rate regulation law, introduced but not enacted several years ago in Pennsylvania (Butler, 1993a, National Organization for Women, 1998) and proposed in other states. The amendment would require companies to convert their price unit—and thus their cost unit—from dollars per vehicle year to cents per vehicle mile. But what would this change mean for women? This question is especially relevant since the system now in use has been defended for several decades as a benefit to women and used to justify resistance to any civil rights measure to prohibit pricing by driver sex (recently by Brown, 1995, but see also Butler, 1995). As a lower mileage group, women might on average spend less for auto insurance, but insurers argue that price classes are already tied to the annual mileage of cars and also to women’s lower accident involvement and better driving records.

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