A couple weeks ago I beat up electric automobiles for being overpriced and unpractical due to their short driving ranges and cripplingly long charge times. This week I present a saner approach to substantial energy and emissions reductions.
The electric car is the equivalent of installing renewable energy sources before making conventional systems and technologies as efficient as possible in buildings. Like buildings, we can cost effectively cut personal transportation energy consumption substantially, without sacrificing anything with readily available technologies – rather than pouring gobs of money into technologies that are just five years away from prime time; like they have been for the past 30 years.
Automobiles have gotten much more efficient over the past 20-30 years. However, the miles per gallon have hardly budged. Automobiles have grown continuously larger and more powerful. The modern Honda Civic, for example, is much larger and probably heavier than the “larger” Accord from 30 years ago. The modern version is most likely much more powerful as well.
Public enemy number one on this front is the explosion of the sport utility vehicle, which sort of peaked out just before hurricane Katrina, after which the $3-4 and upward gasoline prices caught peoples’ attention. SUV buyers can be split into two groups: the family haulers and the egocentric. A small group of SUV owners actually need it for regularly poor driving conditions (snow for instance) and/or towing. Maybe we need to make SUV owners pariahs akin to smokers. We’ll have parking lots, ramps, and garages that ban SUVs. Or maybe we put scales where you pay the parking attendant and pay a tonnage penalty for overweight vehicles. Or we could make the entrance to these spaces so small that only a Porsche 911 size car will fit through the gate. Speaking of Porsche and SUVs, the Cayenne was an awful development. How about LEED points for a SUV-free workforce? I’m not so much in favor of these things although the LEED thing is intriguing.
I have been a big advocate of gas-electric hybrids since the beginning, especially for city driving applications where brakes are applied 40 times per mile. My question though is, why do they make so many of them so goofy looking – like the Prius and the Insight. Other models include hybrid versions of the common all-gasoline vehicles like the Civic, Camry, and Cadillac Escalade (which is a joke). How about some sporty smaller cars like the Celica, 240 SX, Prelude, and Integra? Unfortunately these reasonably-priced snappy fun-to-drive models are all defunct.
As a kid, I remember the late 1970s / early 1980s and the cars of the times. When I was first old enough to drive, my older brother was nice enough to lend me his relatively new 1979 Mercury Cougar. Look at that behemoth. It had rear wheel drive and handled like crap. The closest I ever came to an accident was driving this thing down a slushy road when I wandered out of the track. Think of going down a waterslide trying to stop by digging in your fingernails. The next year the thing was downsized by 50%. The gas mileage probably doubled. BTW, I don’t know why they put that woman on there. The car is already hideous enough. The last thing it needs is a supermodel next to it to make it look even worse.
Another blow to petroleum consumption could be dealt with the Diesel engine. All else equal, the Diesel engine is substantially more efficient than the gasoline (Otto) engine. Why? It has a higher compression ratio, which generates a higher combustion temperature. Like steam-driven power plants, efficiency is limited mostly by the highest temperature relatively cheap steel can withstand.
Later, after ditching the Cougar and suffering through three years with a 1983 Ford Mustang, I purchased a 1984 Ford Escort Diesel. The Focus is the descendant of the Escort. In fact, I think the big pitch for the Escort (gas version) was its fuel economy. Most people I’ve talked to regarding the Diesel version are amazed to know there was such a thing. Yes – 48 miles per gallon – 1984 – 27 years ago in car terms. We don’t need rocket science or even some mythical magical battery. We just need somebody with a brain promoting sane solutions to saving personal transportation energy.
Diesels faded from the American auto-makers’ lineups of cars for whatever reason. General Motors somehow took a gasoline engine and turned it into a Diesel engine for its first shot at Diesel engines for light vehicles. This was about 1982. I remember driving my brother-in-law’s Diesel Silverado pickup truck and pulling a trailer. It would literally take ¾ of a mile on flat terrain with no wind to get up to 55 mph. It was the most pathetic excuse for a truck I had ever experienced.
I believe Volkswagen has offered diesel vehicles since way back. To demonstrate how a sane approach to efficient transportation makes the insane look stupid, consider the Diesel versions of the VW Golf, Jetta, and Jetta wagon are rated at about 42 mpg, highway. The tiny tin can lawnmower on wheels, the “Smart Car,” is rated at a pathetic 41 mpg. You don’t even have room for an extra pair of shoes in one of those things. They haul groceries as long as it is limited to Ramen noodles and canned tuna.
So how about these qualities to easily get to 60 mpg with virtually no sacrifice in performance, convenience, or ego:
- Shrink cars back to where they were in the late 1980s with a proportional shrunken engine
- Diesel engines
- Hybrids
- Styling that that doesn’t scream “I am a snooty college professor and I am better than you”.
These vehicles would result in SUBSTANTIALLY LESS EMISSIONS than a $40,000, 40 mile per charge ELECTRIC VEHICLE. If you are thinking, “but we can power electric vehicles with windmills”, it doesn’t work that way. Windmills and other renewable energy will always be fully utilized. The incremental increase (or decrease) in electric consumption will come from conventional sources regardless of how you want to pretend you’re charging your batteries with a windmill. In other words, electric cars will be charged with coal, natural gas, or nuclear power.
