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March 30, 2006
Mileage Requirements Are A Joke
By: Rowan Wolf
Bush announced that he is requiring a fuel efficiency increase for light trucks and SUVs by 2011. The increase is optimistically expected to save roughly 10% consumption. Why is this not a big deal? Well, because instead of improving efficiency over the last twenty years, US auto makers have been improving power. According to Matthew Wald in the NY Times, "Automakers Use New Technology to Beef Up Muscle, Not Mileage." According to Wald:
If 2005 model vehicles, with their better technology, had the performance and size of those in 1987, they would use only 80 percent of the gasoline they do today, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That alone would get the country nearly halfway to the goal President Bush set in his State of the Union address: to cut American oil consumption enough to nearly eliminate the need to import from the Middle East.
So consumption could be 20% lower by now if improvements tweaked for power had instead been used for efficiency. Now the new requirements say "give me half that efficiency in the next 5 years." But even the dedicated move toward hybrid technologies is not being dedicated to fuel efficiency for large vehicles. Like advances of the past twenty years, it is being used to boost power. That's right, the electric motor is being used as a booster motor?
Now one has to wonder how much power to large vehicles and luxury vehicles need? Most SUVs never see a dirt road - they are pure street vehicles. How much power does it take to sit in a traffic jam - which seems to be where most driving occurs? How much "zip" does one need to merge into slow traffic, or cross a city street? Does it make a difference if you can accelerate from 0-60 in six seconds when you almost never have the opportunity to need that type of acceleration?
Consumers have paid for power and eaten the cost of fuel. Power that they almost never get the opportunity to use, but higher fuel costs that they get to pay even if merging into 10 mph traffic on the highway, or cruising at 25 mph to the grocery store. That isn't even to mention that these larger and heavier vehicles are a significant injury threat to lighter vehicles on the road.
So please, give us 10% increased efficiency in 5 years - if you can somehow manage it. The cost is anticipated to be $200 a vehicle. I think that is probably a break even point of about 2 months at current fuel costs. Of course, they could look at backing up some of those power improvements over the last 20 years to get that 20% gain, and add the 10% on top of that which would give us a 30% efficiency increase. And they could likely do it by 2008 or2009 which would be even better. But then we wouldn't want to push them too hard. They might actually have to hire back all of the auto workers that are losing their jobs. The terrible result of that is that it might give the economy a boost as well.
So don't be wowed by this big advance - an "advance" that has been ignored for the last 20 years.
Posted by Rowan at March 30, 2006 9:01 AM Category: Peak Oil
Comments
All need to check out this week's Time Magazine. Global Warming topics take up half of the issue and provide some very disturbing information. I think that the impact is still a bit sugar coated, but that is just my opinion.
Posted by: Shawna at March 30, 2006 10:46 AM
The other night my husband and I went to dinner. We drove my Jetta and I was complaining about the incredible increase in what I now pay to fill up my tank, over $30 most of the time, but my Jetta gets excellent gas mileage.
We pulled into the restaurant parking lot right next to a HUGE, monstrous, ridiculous Hummer, all shiny chrome and looing like a house on wheels. Out of the Hummer emerged a young couple that I would venture use their Hummer for status far more than they do for any kind of off-road experience. An upscale couple probably in their late 20's, dripping with evidence of their investment in the game of status, and out of the vast cavernous hole of a Hummer they unloaded their tiny, twin, very petite little toddlers. Good thing they had a condo on wheels to accomodate the bulk of those little 16-month olds!
But it isn't just this couple. Every day I see a particular demography, usually upscale males or females, usually grasping a cell phone, usually wanting to make a statement to the world, hey I've got a lot of money, AND I get out in the wilderness at least once a year ... and when I do, I've got this baby to manuever me through the mud parking lot of our groomed campground. Sheesh!
It's one thing when your livelihood depends on pulling trailers or hauling around heavy equipment, then I can justify a need for bulk and/or power, but for the sake of status, I think it's just pathetic. I wish there was some kind of effective way of conveying to the masses that wasting natural resources is hardly an intelligent way to gain some kind of veneer of success.
Posted by: Pamela at April 2, 2006 12:40 PM