July 10, 2009
Today’s Times reports that the new Camaro from GM is selling well. The base V-6 model gets a mediocre 22 MPG. A quote from the article sums it up for me, discussing
… Scott Wilbur, a 40-year-old elementary school principal who bought a silver V-8 Camaro in June.
Mr. Wilbur had not purchased a G.M. vehicle in a decade, and traded in his Honda Civic hybrid to buy the Camaro.
He even gave up his California-issued sticker to drive in hybrid-only carpool lanes to get behind the wheel of his new muscle car.
“I might not be as environmentally friendly, but at this point I don’t mind waiting in traffic to drive this,” he said.
To be fair, he says might buy a Volt next year (by the way, how does an elementary school Principal afford two new cars, one very expensive, in two years?).
But c’mon, folks — this is not what we need. We love our hot cars, and have for years. Do we need to define a new “hot”? In the 1980′s women with big hair were “hot” (for that matter, in the 1680s, women with big thighs were “hot”). Tail-fins were in then out. Pocket-rockets were in. Why can’t we figure out how to make a car that people love that they don’t love because of the roar of its internal combustion engine soaking up gasoline?
I see why GM needed to get bailed out, and I see GM changing their views on the way things are. I don’t see the American populace picking up the cues.
I am writing now from Europe. There are a lot of nice cars here, but very, very few are large. Perhaps that’s because gas costs 1.32 per liter, or $6.95/gallon. So people have made some very hot (or cool, or funky, or interesting) cars that also happen to be far smaller.
But perhaps more important, people have created better ways of travel that work (and are not cars).
March 8, 2009
Funding for Federal and State highway maintenance mostly comes from gas taxes today. But this started posing a problem last summer when gas prices were high and fewer people were driving, and continues now when fewer people are driving because of other economic reasons. And the average fuel efficiency of vehicles used has improved.
The problem is that less gas purchased means less revenues to maintain roads.
So both states and federal agencies are considering a new way of raising revenues, based on miles driven. Some are even adding factors like the weight of the vehicle and where the vehicle is driven to the formula. (more…)
November 21, 2008
AAA with a Conscience
I have had a Automobile Association of America (AAA) membership since I had a car, but I just switched to
BetterWorld Club — same service and price but better environmental objectives.
Have you ever read the magazine that AAA sends every month? Yeah, most of it is promoting their services, vehicle safety, insurance and all, but they also report on their legislative lobbying agenda. As far as I can see they are on the wrong side of a lot of discussions.
I am sure they are nice folks, and mean well and all, but they have a mission to advance the use of cars. Here’s a quote from a Sierra Club report:
…the organization is now a major force in pushing for more highway spending, fewer pollution controls and less money for mass transit. As investigative journalist Michael Rivlin has written, the 43-million-member-strong organization “is on the record against virtually every proposal for cutting automobile pollution.”
While that was from several years back, it’s clearly true that AAA’s direction and mine have diverged.
BetterWorld Club provides pretty much the same services, discounts, at the same cost as AAA. They offer a Hybrid discount, and they even offer roadside bicycle assistance. But instead of lobbying for automotive agendas, BetterWorld advocates for an environmental agenda. What’s not to like?
October 3, 2008
A walking school bus is a simple idea. One or two parents sign up to be drivers, routes and times are set, and every day, our kids walk along to school.
An industrious parent in my daughter’s elementary school organized ours. She found leaders and started four routes last week; I have been “driving” one. We have about 10 kids in our route, and I think the others do as well.
Of course all I care about is that it’s “green” :-) But there’s so much more.
It’s convenient for parents — they just drop their child at a stop at the appointed time and say goodbye.
It’s fun for the kids. Friends who didn’t know they lived close to each other have met. Several kids who were a little uncertain at first are having a blast.
It’s painless for the driver. (more…)
June 22, 2008
It is a wonderful thing that car manufacturers are moving to hybrid versions of their vehicles.
Like many of the incremental features introduced in cars over the years, the good ones catch on. Shoulder belts, air bags, anti-lock braking, and many others have made cars safer.
And now, many cars are available with hybrid engines. This adds to the price of the car a little (or sometimes, it seems, a lot). And a hybrid system makes the car greener, right?
Why, the Chevy Tahoe is the green car of the year if you can believe that. (It costs $11,000 more to get the “green” hybrid version, so the car can get a paltry 22 miles per gallon).
A hybrid system does not make a car “green”, it just makes a car a little less of a bad thing. (more…)
May 21, 2008
Open parking lots are a blight on the landscape. They create “heat islands”, are poor at dealing with rain and snow runoff, have lights that generate light pollution and look ugly, and are unpleasant places to be in.
One technology solution promises to change this, the Envision Solar Grove. (more…)
April 15, 2008
New York City recently failed to pass a law that would change the price of tolls based on the time of day—higher prices during busy times and lower prices off-peak.
It’s not hard to see why this well-intentioned law didn’t pass. Take a look at this article (actually a “Freakonomics” Blog Post) in the New York Times. Are your eyes glazing over? Mine were.
The thing is, this is not only something near and dear to my environmental leanings, it is the main topic that I wrote my bachelor’s thesis on in college: change the price of something based on predictable patterns of use. So it’s possible that I am slightly more willing to understand this stuff than most people.
But my eyes glazed over anyway. (more…)
November 25, 2007
The E-Z Pass electronic toll collection tag saved gasoline on our trip home this Thanksgiving. That’s my claim, and I’m sticking to it. The first way E-Z Pass saves gas is that you don’t have to bring your car to a complete stop and then accelerate back to highway speed. But based on my prior Thanksgiving driving trips I think there is a potentially much larger savings. (more…)
November 20, 2007
If you are on the road this Thanksgiving, consider this fact from the US Department of Energy: “Idling gets you 0 miles per gallon“. In fact, idling for more than 10 seconds uses more gas than turning the car off then on as needed. So if you are waiting in long lines of traffic approaching tolls, or waiting in line for fast-food, consider turning off the engine. Be safe, and don’t gun the engine (more…)
August 5, 2007
Well folks, no more hiding behind illusions. The EPA has updated the MPG estimates that all vehicles sold in the US are required to display on their sticker. The good news is that these estimates are more realistic, because they account for things like lower fuel economy in cold weather. They also account for things like air conditioner usage, higher speeds on roads (check it out: the site shows an image of an 80 MPH speed limit sign) and faster acceleration — things that have changed since the standards were introduced in, probably 1980 or so? (more…)
December 25, 2006
The “Clear Skies” Initiative and the “Healthy Forests” Act are some of the more glaring euphemisms of the Bush administration. They also worked their magic with “cut and run” and “climate change” (sometimes known as global warming). One message of the 2006 elections was that we see through some of these words (yes, just as we saw through Clinton’s lie about “that woman”).
We should stand up and call something what it is. We need not come up with over-statements, or under-statements, or mis-statements to describe something: we seem to have said that, as a nation, we are able to discern what a thing is, on its face.
Let’s call an SUV an SUV. (more…)
June 10, 2006
We went to the shopping mall today. Apparently, I need an SUV, since it’s quite clear that everyone else in Newton has one. As we drove through the parking garage, we started counting as we drove past parked vehicles. SUV, SUV, car, SUV, car, car, SUV, SUV, minivan, SUV. There were more non-cars than cars. Yes, more than half. What I want to know is (more…)
October 22, 2005
This summer, my family and I went to California for our summer vacation to see some natural beauty along the Pacific Coast Highway north of LA. We were there during the week of the natural disaster of hurricane Katerina. But we left California feeling as though we had seen a glimpse of the future. What we saw was not pretty.
First let me say that this is not a California-bashing polemic. The state has many great qualities and has taken a leadership role by using its size to force auto-makers and other industries to reduce emissions. But there’s a reason for that. (more…)
This US Government Fuel Economy site offers some interesting information about fuel economy, as well as overall emissions, which are not the same thing. While less fuel means less emissions, different engines burn more or less cleanly. Check it out.
