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Why Fuel Efficiency Advances Haven't Translated To Better Gas Mileage
greenrainbow tips an article about a research paper from an MIT economist that attempts to explain why technological advances in fuel efficiency haven't led to substantially better gas mileage for the average driver. Quoting:
"Thus if Americans today were driving cars of the same size and power that were typical in 1980, the country’s fleet of autos would have jumped from an average of about 23 miles per gallon (mpg) to roughly 37 mpg, well above the current average of around 27 mpg. Instead, Knittel says, 'Most of that technological progress has gone into [compensating for] weight and horsepower.' ... Indeed, Knittel asserts, given consumer preferences in autos, larger changes in fleet-wide gas mileage will occur only when policies change, too. 'It’s the policymakers’ responsibility to create a structure that leads to these technologies being put toward fuel economy,' he says. Among environmental policy analysts, the notion of a surcharge on fuel is widely supported. 'I think 98 percent of economists would say that we need higher gas taxes,' Knittel says."
The increase in gas prices hasn't drastically changed what vehicles we buy. Many of those that really would rather buy more efficient vehicles can't afford them, and are stuck with older ones, so the economists would just be hurting the poor.
As consumers shouldn't we choose what vehicle economies we use? Where I live, SUVs are all over. But, it makes more sense. Adverse conditions favor SUVs. An economist, you would think, would say people buy what they want.
The article links to the peer-reviewed, pay-walled version of the paper.
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/knittel/papers/steroids_latest.pdf the following is the version author put up on his website
He should ask some economists. If we wanted to optional travel, gas taxes would help. But our whole nation's economy depends on motor vehicle travel to move goods. Raising gas taxes would significantly increase the cost of all goods and possibly bump us toward recession. It happens every time gas prices spike due to factors outside our control. So maybe the number of economists wouldn't be 98% after all.
While the SUV revolution is more than a little bit to blame for today's lackluster fuel numbers, the article fails to point out collision safety as a factor in the modern design of cars. It's not just the trucks and SUV's that are bringing the average down -- compact cars these days are still way heavier than they used to be, with much worse visibility, largely as a result of increasingly stringent crash standards.
Cars these days have to be able to protect you in a 60 mph (30 + 30) corner collision, with rollover, even if you aren't wearing a seatbelt. The result is bigger, heavier frames, and thick pillars that prevent you from seeing pedestrians. As a result, cars are heavier, and their engines have to be more powerful to compensate.
The 2012 Impreza gets 30% better gas mileage than the 2011.
Read the article, but CVT, lighter body, electric steering - 36MPG for an AWD vehicle is nicely impressive.
Technology, it does good things.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is a well known phenomenon and it's why you see such incredible fleet efficiency in Seattle compared with most of the rest of the country. Simply put between taxes and oil company gouging we pay more for our gas than they do in most of the rest of the country.
It's been known since the 19th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Simply put if you don't tax the fuel sufficient to make up for the cost reduction you tend to get more fuel being consumed rather than less. There are limits to it, you're not going to suddenly start commuting 1000mi a day simply because of cheap gas, but it's less likely that you'll work close to home than if the gas was really expensive.
What a load of tripe.
The average weight of cars has been increasing because crash survival standards have been becoming stricter, and that requires that more material be used in the car to protect the passenger compartment. This adds weight and bulk; with bulk (thicker doors, etc.) comes an overall increase in vehicle sizes, which itself adds weight AND frontal area. The frontal area increase comes with an increase in drag. Exotic materials like carbon fiber are still very expensive, so it's still aluminum and steel. And despite what legislators seem to think, you can't pass a law that increases the number of joules of energy in a gram of fuel.
It's not just American cars (so lose the anti-American screeching please). The average vehicle weight in ALL markets has been increasing. Go look up the dimensions and weights of just about any vehicle model and manufacturer regardless of market or whether the vehicle in question is sold in North America, and see how it's changed over time.
Safety costs weight and size. Weight and size cost fuel. At a given price point, you can have increased safety XOR increased fuel economy.
Choose.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
The US gets most of its oil from canada and mexico. Since oil is a commodity, of course events in the middle east effect the price, even if the US doesn't actually obtain oil from those countries.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Ok, take a deep breath. :) Relax. It's ok, really. Don't let your blood pressure go up like that. It's bad for your health!
As lots of other people have been saying, a gas tax is not to punish you, it's to compensate for externalities. Every time you drive your car, you put wear on the roads and produce pollution. Those are real costs that people other than you have to bear. And since they are bearing those costs, not you, you have no incentive to reduce them by driving less or buying a smaller vehicle. You, in turn, are bearing the cost of other people's driving, and they have no incentive to drive less either. So that's why a gas tax is a good idea. Every time you (or I, or anyone else) drive, you should pay as close as possible to the actual cost of the damage you are doing. Then you can make more rational (in the economic sense) decisions about how much to drive and what car to buy. Your decisions will reflect realistic tradeoffs between various harms and benefits.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
But it is wrong. There are cars from the 1980s that get great gas mileage. The difference is the mandated changes for safety, which has made cars heavier. It takes more steel to make a car crumple the right way. I am not saying this is a bad thing - I am a fan of living through car crashes, but that is where the major mileage decrease happened.
Gas prices are too low...so let's raise taxes? That's our knee-jerk response?
How about instead of raising taxes which will fall disproportionately on the middle class (the lower classes tend to use public transit), instead let's STOP subsidizing gas and oil exploration, remove massive subsidies, rebates, and all the frosting for our oil-lobby friends?
Raising taxes on the masses while simultaneously handing $billion$ to oil means that the primary beneficiaries are the oil companies, nobody else.
-Styopa
The link you provided cites as it source the EIA which is the very site that I linked in my post. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Nickel-and-dime me all you like, the story is still gloomy. Here's more. The US consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day -- almost a quarter of the world total. We spend roughly $522B each year on petroleum. More than half of our petroleum (58%) is imported. We send about $300B abroad each year to support this nasty habit. And the price is volatile! If the price per barrel stays at its current value which is over $100 per bbl, then we will be spending $700B and sending $400B abroad every year. That's a lot of treasure -- and I haven't factored in any costs for our wars which are arguably caused by our desire to insure oil supplies. Personally, I would like to see that $400B spent here at home.
As for my original point -- that we are sending a lot of money to some dodgy regimes -- here is some more detail. We import 5 million barrels per day from OPEC. We import 1.465 million barrels per day from Saudi Arabia alone. The average cost per barrel for crude oil is $74.71 per barrel. *Every single day*, that comes out to:
$109,450,150 USD to Saudi Arabia ($40B/yr)
$56,704,890 USD to Venezuela ($21B/yr)
$39,521,590 to Nigeria ($14B/yr)
$30,108,130 to Iraq ($11B/yr)
Iran - none (my bad).
That paltry 16% of our oil imports from the Persian Gulf means we are sending $48B (16% of imports which are 58% of total 522B) to the Persian Gulf every year.
What odd behavior. YTD 2011 50% of oil is domestic and the two largest imports come from canada and mexico (~18%). Furthermore only about ~10% comes from the middle east, the balance is africa and s. america. So apart from your priggish "correction" he remains correct in his main point.
The oil depletion allowance is not "subsidies for the oil industry", it's a perfectly just compensation for a declining asset.
That's just silly. The crash energy is absorbed in collapsing structures located between the front of the vehicle and the passenger compartment. Those structures are designed in proportion to the vehicle's weight, among other things. As I indicated in a post above, greater distance between the front and the passenger increases safety. A bigger crumple zone reduces deceleration and allows more room for a variety of protections for the passenger.
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