Five Percent: Conserve Energy

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…)

Sometimes it’s easy to see that your tires need more air, but it’s far from obvious in many cases. We recently noticed a drop in mileage in Theresa’s car, and I was ready to chalk it up to different gasoline composition in winter that reduces mileage. But I noticed one of Theresa’s car’s tires was noticeably low, so we filled it up. As it turned out, all the tires were under-inflated, even the ones that looked fine.

Then, one cold day I noticed a tire symbol on my dashboard. I thought it was the below-freezing warning light, but I read the manual, and it turned out my car was telling me my tire pressure was low. I have no idea how it knows that, but it was right (I believe my Prius is smarter than I am), so I pumped up my tires.

So check your tire pressure. Both cars are getting significantly better mileage after this simple effort!

Cold weather is a cause of lower tire pressure (and other other things that reduce mileage). (more…)

Over the last few days I have heard several times about a new Roadster car made by a new car company, Tesla Motors. The car sounds fantastic: it looks great, accelerates like a bat out of hell (0 to 60 in 4 seconds) and has zero emissions because it’s all electric. It also costs about $80K, so not the car for the rest of us … yet. But it sure is interesting, because it is dramatically new, and on the market.

I read Mark Morford’s column in SFGate and he has a very funny piece today on this car. As always, he rants (he’s not a big fan of Bush, for example), and raves (about the car) and, well hell, read the column — it’s hysterically funny. It’s nice to read this column for me because sometimes I feel like I rant and rave a little here. The main difference, I think, is that Morford is funny, whereas I am mostly just a downer. This is also probably why he gets paid.

So, here’s my minor little point about his column to burst the bubble: (more…)

We have been frustrated several times recently hearing people say things about hybrids, like “they aren’t good for highway driving”. I think this is due to the fact that the EPA estimates for the Prius are higher in the city than the highway, which is unusual.

So, just to be clear, the fact that the Prius is rated at 55 Highway, 60 City should not lead you to conclude that it is “not good for the highway”. It’s not true. It was confusing, for example, to Click and Clack who perpetuated this growing myth (more…)

We drove back from Cape Cod today after a long weekend. There sure are a lot of large vehicles on the road … and hardly any small or efficient ones. Repeatedly, we observed trucks of the class Expedition/Yukon/Suburban/Tahoe carrying a single person. Compared to the average mileage, these behemoths do poorly: where average is ~25 MPG highway, they get about 1/2 of average. Our Prius today arrived from our trip in our driveway reporting average mileage of 48.2 MPG, which is about 2x better than average, so about 4x better than the big truck SUVs.

I hear people saying the Prius is small. They need room for … something. I am not sure what. (more…)

In their radio show May 28th, the “Car Talk” hosts let me down. I felt compelled to write them this letter:

Boys (if I may address you formally),

I nearly lost control resulting from my hands being off the steering wheel as I listened to your show last week. You were counseling a woman on buying a car for her husband, and systematically ruled out a hybrid, in particular the Prius because it’s highway mileage was not as good as city. How can you look at yourselves in the mirror? (more…)

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…)

It’s hard to change your behavior if your are not aware of the impact of your actions. This is true on a large scale and on a small scale.
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There are numerous tax incentives and rebate programs for using less energy — see the link on this article. The most immediate one is for those of us who purchased hybrid vehicles in 2005 (and earlier); depending on the vehicle, you can take a deduction of up to $2,000 off your income, even if you don’t itemize deductions. Depending on your tax bracket, this could reduce your tax bill by about 1/3 of this amount (around $660) this year.

And procrastinators rejoice — in 2006 the energy bill includes a tax credit for hybrids — up to $3,600. (more…)

We have a Toyota Prius. It is an incredible car and really does get great gas mileage (50+ MPG). So we have ordered another to replace my Toyota Camry, which is a V6 model, and gets maybe 25 MPG. So, from an energy standpoint it’s an obvious win, right?

Not so fast.

Sadly, my Camry will not disappear — I will sell it to someone who will continue to use it. And since my commute is so short I am putting less than 8,000 miles per year on the car now. So I’ll be driving my new Prius 8,000 miles per year at 50MPG, but will my Camry buyer be a more typical driver, driving 14,000 mile per year? (more…)