February 28, 2004

Mindsets changing?

Posted by Scott at 06:54 AM

MPG - SUV's aside, it looks like there may be some progress towards considering fuel efficiency when buying a vehicle. In Thursday's Slate magazine was an article, "Hummer vs. Prius: The surprising winner in the war for America's auto soul".

“ ... in recent months the Hummer has bogged down. Combined year-over-year sales of the H1 and H2 have fallen for the past five months. ... Business Week reported there are 68 days worth of Hummers in inventory, and that GM has throttled back its 2004 sales forecast from 40,000 to 30,000. ... When you compare the fortunes of the Hummer to those of its opposite—Toyota's hybrid Prius, which can get upwards of 50 miles per gallon—it looks like the market may be shifting. ... For the 2004 model year, Toyota initially boosted production 50 percent to 36,000. But demand has been strong enough that production has already been increased to 47,000. And that's still not enough. My Toyota dealer doesn't have a Prius on the lot and says that interested purchasers must put down a deposit today and wait six months. By contrast, my local Hummer dealer has several on the lot.

Those who buy Hummers and Priuses are symbolic, marginal buyers. But economists will tell you that behavior at the margins can influence entire markets. In the summer of 2002, the marginal buyers were pushing hard for the gas guzzlers. Today, more people are clamoring for fuel-efficient cars. Could the sales figures, small as they are, signal a movement that American car buyers are becoming more eager to demonstrate conspicuous virtue? It could be.”

While I'm hardly an environmentalist, efficiency always appeals to my engineering nature. I'm hoping that this demand causes more car designs to consider more radical design changes -- such as Honda and Toyota's gas electric hybrid engines -- in pursuit of greater efficiency. Few things would aggravate the power in the Middle East as much as if we cut our demand.

On a few occasions I've joked with co-workers about a new metric: person-miles per gallon. We often praise/stigmatize vehicles based on miles per gallon, and rightly so. I think we should consider how many people that vehicle typically carries. For example, a Toyota Prius or a Honda Civic Hybrid may get between 45 and 50 miles per gallon. But it typically is a commuter car carrying one, maybe two people. If two people are riding, we have between 90 and 100 person-miles per gallon. Admirable, especially for the commuters. Consider the minivans of Alyssa and Tom or Michelle and I. Our Honda Odyssey gets about 20 miles per gallon. Often, though, our van is hauling 6 or 7 people in it. That between 120 and 140 person-miles per gallon. With that perspective, the typical minivan doesn't seem like such a gas guzzler, especially considering how often I see just a single occupant in a Hummer.

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