We have all driven through affluent neighborhoods with driveways full of new cars. In some areas, a car older than three years stigmatizes the owner. In many cases, it’s easy to identify family status by car count. Two cars in a driveway indicate a young or empty-nest family. Four cars point to two children at home – likely a high school senior who received his or her first car in anticipation of graduation and a second child visiting from college.
Americans are obsessed with cars. For Americans, cars symbolize money, style, romance, sex and freedom. They embody the American spirit and national ego in shiny paint and steel.
That’s not to say other countries don’t have their own relationships with the automobile. But in terms of sheer numbers—according to a 2006 Department of Transportation report there are about 251 million registered passenger vehicles in the United States—the U.S. is far and away the largest consumer of automotive technology. On average, Americans keep their new cars for less time than citizens of any other country.
TATA, an Indian conglomerate has begun manufacturing the NANO. It is a minimalist automobile priced around $2,500. These cars are targeted to less-developed countries and enable people to live their version of the American dream or join us in the unfolding American nightmare.
For those of us interested in preserving the environment, a recent study revealed a startling fact. The carbon footprint used to build a new automobile is greater than driving an outdated SUV for a period of at least 10 years. The results included the pollution savings even on more-efficient new vehicles.
The main component of a car is steel. Steel for American cars originates from some domestic but also many global sources. The world’s major steel producers are China, South Korea and Japan and these countries have minimal natural resources. Accordingly, raw materials for steel production are shipped from sources halfway around the world in quantities of hundreds of million tons. Ships used for transportation burn a lot of fuel.
The main component of steel is iron ore. The ferrous material is leeched from the ore using an enormous amount of fresh water and energy. The steel-making process produces vast amounts of pollution while at the same time requires a huge amount of energy normally supplied by coal.
Plastics, another major component of automobiles, are petroleum-based. Car computers may contain trace amounts of heavy metals, while the process of converting natural rubber to tires spews an abundant amount of toxic gases into the atmosphere.
At a dire time for our domestic car manufacturers, I have to question if America needs to produce a surplus of new cars each year? Perhaps our efforts might be better spent partnering with low-cost producers in Third World Countries offering sustainable alternatives to manufacturing at full bore?
Since we have confused consumerism with capitalism, should we continue to entice buyers with zero percent financing, teaser leases and other schemes to make cars affordable to people who can’t afford them or those who have no need for a new vehicle?
Would the $50 billion dollars being targeted for the Big Three American car companies be better spent on light rail or other public transportation options?
We are destroying our environment by mining raw materials and producing new cars in an already saturated domestic market while the automobile is proliferating worldwide. At some juncture this will cause another acute fuel shortage or higher prices at the pump.
The energy saved by producing fewer vehicles will easily compensate for the poor mileage standards of older cars remaining on the road. This does not indicate that more efficient vehicles need to be brought to the market, just not in excess amounts or as immediate replacements.
At the confluence of environmental sensibility, political maneuvering and exacerbating economic circumstances, we can only hope that practicality will return to the American consumer and that Washington will look two decades down the road instead of just peeking around the corner.
Tags: Car Sense
December 6, 2008 at 1:30 am |
Good stuff-
There are pretty intense changes in US energy (especially driving) habits. One exciting result is that we are consuming more than 5% less oil in ‘08 and thus carbon emissions are poised to fall 2.5% this year. See details at:
http://setenergy.org/2008/11/13/a-banner-year-for-us-climate-research-sees-sharp-emissions-drop/
And if you find the SET daily blog on major energy and climate developments at http://www.setenergy.org , please consider adding it to your blogroll.
Onwards to sustainability,
Dennis
December 6, 2008 at 2:15 am |
Dennis,
The oil consumption has been greatly reduced along with carbon emissons for 2008. This has been a result of less miles driven because of fuel prices. As fuel prices have been in steady decline, it will be interesting to see if mileage and consumption goes back up. One benefit of our poor economy is that truck traffic will be greatly reduced.
Any radical changes in America’s driving habits will only happen with either high fuel prices or more efficicent cars or both. It is a paradox that many politicans that are sensitive to the environment are also the ones that are proponents of cheap gasoline.
Regards,
Lou
December 6, 2008 at 3:06 am |
We sorely need a new vision for transportation in this country – especially as we near reauthorization of the transportation funding bill in 2010. Wired magazine has suggested that the best person for a secretary of transportation should be a mayor: R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis.
Here’s what Wired’s Dave Demerjian had to say:
“That said, the best guy for the job may well be R.T. Rybak, the forward-thinking mayor of Minneapolis. He’s made sensible and sustainable transportation policy a hallmark of his tenure. His Access Minneapolis transportation plan calls for bringing streetcars back to the city, building a robust pedestrian network, increasing transit access and capacity and making city streets more bike-friendly. When the Minneapolis bridge collapsed, he insisted that its replacement have the capacity to support light rail. His progressive transportation policies have nearly doubled the number of cyclists and, more impressive, made downtown Minneapolis one of the few urban areas to return to the population levels it saw before the flight to the suburbs that followed World War II. His is exactly the kind of proactive, big-picture thinking we need if we are to address our nation’s infrastructure problems and begin moving us toward smarter growth.”
As others have said, it’s not the long distance driving that’s killing us it’s the mile-long trips to school, market and the dry cleaners that could be done by walking, biking, taking a street car or a local shuttle bus. It was nice to see Rick Waggoner taking a little car trip from MI to DC.
December 7, 2008 at 2:16 pm |
Dear Kathy,
We have a yearly capacity to produce nearly 20 million automobiles in America. It is estimated that during reasonable economic times the demand is about 12 million cars and the Big 3 are claiming they need national production of about 17 million to make money. The difference from demand to production is done through incentives or other gimmicks but the bottom line is that we have an overcapacity and a bloated labor force. The Big 3 are obligated to pay for a certain percentage of labor whether they work or not and this provides the impetus for producing excess vehicles beyond the demand of the market.
It may well be politics as usual as any radical change to our transportation habits will require programs that will cause some near term pain, some loss of jobs and votes and only achieve the desired result many years down the road.
We need another Seward’s Folly or a Louisiana Purchase that had virtually no immediate effect but proved to be brilliant many decades afterwards. Whoever becomes the next transportation czar needs to think and behave in an apolitical context.
Regards,
Lou
December 10, 2008 at 2:31 am |
I live in Seattle and have been serving the automotive industry for ten years. An SVP of Sales and Marketing at a major auto dealer group recently said to me, regarding GM, Ford and Chrysler: “Nobody wants to buy their cars.” That company wrote down the value of its Detroit 3 dealerships to book.
This year’s new car sales rate for Q4 will be under 12 million. Next year will be the same or below and recovery back to the 16 Million + units of the last 7 years will take at least five years. All that zero percent financing and bargain leasing pulled millions of units in demand forward that the marketplace is still digesting. There is a huge oversupply of recently manufactured vehicles , relative to demand, just sitting out there.
The industry has capacity to build 20 million cars per year. At 12 million units there are the equivalent of 4 large manufactures too many. NO “transition period” is long enough to get us to 20 million and soak up all that capacity. Their promised new efficient products will take two years and will not sell in volume for at least five, if ever.
This makes propping up the highest cost producers folly. The total bill to US taxpayers, absent dramatic restructuring in the Detroit 3 cost base, will be at least $250 billion, to pay for gold plated UAW benefits and rent on way too much capacity. And it is hard to have faith that the same management can actually make it work. If the confidence was there in the business models and ability of management to execute the private sector would fund them.
Government oversight was a corrupt and costly failure with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How can it possibly work here? It can’t. And we sure will not be doing home state company Boeing any favors in its subsidy case before the WTO.
To the Congress, please do not obligate the taxpayers to the prospective plan. Prepackaged bankruptcy is the answer as it facilitates needed restructuring in these companies and gives them a 12 month or so window to effect change. Yes there will be pain – but it needs to happen for the industry to get healthy again.
David L Potts
January 12, 2009 at 2:43 pm |
From Bloomberg News 1/12/09
“Toyota plans to unveil a new Lexus hybrid tomorrow in Detroit and a restyled Prius on Jan. 12. The company will have as many as 10 U.S. hybrids on sale in the early 2010s, Miller said. Toyota’s U.S. sales unit is based in Torrance, California.
U.S. hybrid sales fell 11 percent last year to 316,013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Toyota sold 158,884 Prius hatchbacks, a 12 percent drop from a year earlier. Toyota’s share of all hybrid sales fell to 76 percent, from 78 percent.”
JC: Can anyone explain this? In a year when gasoline hit $4.25 per gallon, it would seem to me that if citizens wanted this kind of vehicle…this would have been the year. I’m of the opinion that Americans do NOT want these micro-cars. They are cute, economical and innovative, but they work best in mild climates and are much less safe. These vehicles must be charged at night. America is still not building more power plants and transmission lines. My feeling is that Americans know little or nothing about electricity. Policy makers seem to know less than the general public. What chance do we have that something reasonable will be passed? My expectations are very low as far as our congress is concerned. An even more insidious aspect of this is car manufacturers, particularly the big three, have difficulty making money on these small cars. If the feds force the “shrinking three” to manufacture these electric cars, they will doom car manufacturers.
January 12, 2009 at 9:38 pm |
Dear Joe,
For those of us of our generation we remember the oil shock of the 1970’s. At that time, GM quickly developed a diesel car with expected efficiency beyond the gasoline powered engine. I don’t see many of those cars around as they turned out to be a mechanical disaster for the consumer.
I feel we’re on the precipice of rushing in to another hasty decision as we did with ethanol. Technological advances must be done for the benefit of the consumer and not to use the consumer as a laboratory mouse to polish up technical shortfalls. I believe the marketplace in America will eventually drift to smaller cars and with different power trains. The consumer may or may not want smaller cars, but they certainly do not want to buy anything without a proven track record.
I doubt if the average person or the people in Congress have a well educated view of our power sources, our grids or the actual source of our energy. T. Boone Pickens frightened Americans espousing a $750 billion transfer of wealth to Arab nations. Crude has dropped by more than two thirds from its peak price which reduced that theoretical transfer to less than $250 billion or about the same as the last stimulus package. Of that amount, Canada and Mexico remain as the first and third recipients of that wealth. Politicians are still using the $750 billion number to frighten Americans.
We need to conserve energy and become more efficient. It took us several decades to get in to this situation and I doubt a few weeks of Congressional hearings followed by mandates will find an intelligent course of action.
We have a capacity to build nearly 20 million cars yearly in America. It is likely the demand for new cars over the next few years may only be about 13 million cars/annum If any one or all of the big three are forced to downsize or even go out of business, it may well lead to healthier companies surviving and prospering.
Regards,
Lou