U.S. Passenger Vehicle Fleet Dirtier After 2008 Recession

MTorrice writes The 2008 recession hammered the U.S. auto industry, driving down sales of 2009 models to levels 35% lower than those before the economic slump. A new study has found that because sales of new vehicles slowed, the average age of the U.S. fleet climbed more than expected, increasing the rate of air pollutants released by the fleet.

In 2013, the researchers studied the emissions of more than 68,000 vehicles on the roads in three cities—Los Angeles, Denver, and Tulsa. They calculated the amount of pollution released per kilogram of fuel burned for the 2013 fleet and compared the rates to those that would have occurred if the 2013 fleet had the same age distribution as the prerecession fleet. For the three cities, carbon monoxide emissions were greater by 17 to 29%, hydrocarbons by 9 to 14%, nitrogen oxide emissions by 27 to 30%, and ammonia by 7 to 16%.

Comments

Requirements didn't change though

[TWX]

Vehicles are emission-tested based on specifications determined for their model-year of manufacture. In emissions-testing areas, those vehicles still have to meet those requirements for at least 25 years post-manufacture, sometimes they must meet them, PERIOD. We emissions-test everything 1967+ that was not exempt at manufacture.

Even if they're dirtier than they were when brand-new, they're still within-spec.

Only part of the equation

[ebrandsberg]

The question is if replacing the fleet would have triggered production based pollution that offset any gains. Making new cars isn't a pollution free activity after all. The net result may have been a reduction in worldwide pollution instead.

Re:Only part of the equation

[drinkypoo]

We talked about this back during the debunking of the CNW report that claimed that a Hummer and a Prius had a similar environmental footprint, har dee har har. What the report showed is that you can still lie (badly) with statistics if you are willing to be a dumbass. But what we dug up is that production of the average vehicle only consumes about 1/4 to 1/3 of its lifetime energy production. In order to make the Prius come out even with a Hummer, it had to fail around 100,000 miles and you had to barely drive the Hummer every year, but it had to make it to 300,000 without major maintenance. But even for a passenger vehicle, you can achieve a useful improvement in energy consumption with a feasible improvement in energy efficiency even before taking account of the downstream effects of that car purchase. Typically you sell the old car, and then someone else lets go of theirs when they buy it, and eventually somewhere down the line a really crap car hits the scrap heap and everyone wins.

Unfortunately, that's actually kind of unlikely in passenger cars even though it's possible, because people want pissed-off cars and the trend is to continue to offer more and more horsepower, although these days the mileage is not going straight into the toilet so I guess that's some kind of improvement. However, just 1 or 2 mpg improvement on a commercial vehicle that sees 500,000 miles or an OTR truck which might conceivably see millions (and most of them in the single digits) is going to make a significant difference, so the improvements are especially meaningful in fleet vehicles.

Dirtier than a hypothetical, not an actual

[michaelmalak]

From the actual abstract:

Using fleet fractions from previous data sets, we estimated age-adjusted mean emissions increases for the 2013 fleet to be 17–29% higher for carbon monoxide, 9–14% higher for hydrocarbons, 27–30% higher for nitric oxide, and 7–16% higher for ammonia emissions than if historical fleet turnover rates had prevailed.

The article shows that the actual 2013 fleet is dirtier than the hypothetical 2013 fleet where the age distribution matches the 2007 fleet age distribution.

It does not show that the actual 2013 fleet is dirtier than the actual 2007 fleet. It's a question not addressed by this study, but I would be surprised if actual 2013 was dirtier than actual 2007.

On a per-mile basis, probably

[Enry]

But from a raw amount, the price of gas dropped since fewer people were driving to work, and fewer goods were being shipped, so I'd have to guess that the total number of miles driven during that time dropped as well. The per-mile amount of pollutants that went out may have been higher, but the total amount that went out may have been far less than a few years before.

One reason for that might be

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of replacing a vehicle today.

When manufacturers are offering 72 and 84 month financing on a car it might indicate the prices are a tad out of line with the income of the buying public. My 13 year old pickup still runs well and is in pretty good shape rust wise (one spot on the drivers door). The kicker is, it's paid for. A repair now and then is nothing compared to the $30k+ cost of replacing it.

This isn't really surprising at all

[enjar]

My wife and I were both laid off within a week of each other during the tech bubble bursting in 2001. That was a real wake-up call to do things differently with respect to money and spending. She was lucky and got another job two weeks after being laid off, it took me seven months. During that time, we really cut back on a lot of stuff and really started watching the money coming in and out. When the economy was on the mend and our positions seemed pretty secure, we replaced our old cars when new ones -- mine in 2002 and hers in 2007. I'm still driving the 2002 (it just clicked over 200K miles) and hers is still ticking along fine at 120K. Both vehicles have a few cosmetic problems (scrapes, dents, etc -- general aging, nothing horrible), but are still reliable and have been fully paid off for years. We have cash in the bank to procure replacements when they need to be replaced. As long as they are reliable and safe, there's no real compelling reason to get new ones. Even when we have to sink some money into a repair (maintenance doesn't really count -- you'd have to do that on a newer vehicle, too), the money spent on repair is generally far less than the X number of months since we had to repair something if we had a car payment. I'm also reasonably handy so I can do a lot of the work myself, which keeps the cost down -- when the windshield washer motor went out recently, I was able to replace it for under $20, no paying a mechanic $80/hr plus $20 for the part. I do turn big jobs over to the mechanic (like the timing belt), but routine stuff I can do.

When the car starts having serious trouble (e.g. electrical faults, won't start reliably, etc), a major component goes (e.g. engine/transmission) or if it becomes unsafe to drive (corrosion -- we live in the rust belt, although rust isn't nearly as bad as it used to be), we'll get a replacement. But until then I'm fine putting money away and letting it work for me and driving the thing as far as I can without having to spend the money on a replacement.

So we soldier on with our 13 year old car and 8 year old car, that would have been rust bucket jalopies when I was a kid, but due to better technology they are still quite viable as reliable transportation.

Re:This isn't really surprising at all

[Jason Levine]

We're doing the same with our cars. I got my new car in 2009 when my old car (a 1999 model IIRC) began having major problems. My wife's minivan we purchased before our first son was born in 2003. Both of our cars are paid off now and we're "basking" in not having car payments. (Where "basking" really means the money gets drained out of our bank accounts in other directions like home repairs.)

My father questioned why we wouldn't just replace our cars with newer models. He seems to think any car over 3 years old needs to be traded in for a new model otherwise you don't get the best trade-in value. I'm more of the philosophy that I use my car as much as I can before getting a new one. Yes, we might lose out on a couple thousand in trade-in, but every month without car payments is a month we don't have to pay around $300 on a car loan. A few of these months more than makes up for no trade-in.

Externality--tax it!

[Ichijo]

This is why we should keep the gas tax even after implementing a mileage fee. In fact, the cost of dirty air is up to $1,600 per person annually in medical costs and lost work days. Shouldn't the polluters pay those costs?

Re:Externality--tax it!

[Ichijo]

Drivers don't expect anything on the sidewalk to enter a crosswalk at the speed of a bicycle, so the only safe way to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk is to dismount at every intersection. This just isn't very practical for transportation.

On roads where speed limits are high, bike lanes are more practical.

On streets where speed limits are low, bicyclists can almost keep up with traffic, so bike lanes aren't so necessary.

Re:Externality--tax it!

[VanessaE]

Better a well-maintained coal plant emitting scrubbed gasses than a thousand poorly-maintained gasoline cars belching out exhaust fumes with little more than a catalytic converter to help out.

Predicted... repeatedly.

[Karmashock]

The idiots enviromental activists don't seem to grasp that caring about the environment is directly proportional to wealth. Look at poor countries and tell me how many of them give a dam about the environment? Exactly.

So going on a crusade against the evil capitalist corporations that actually keep us from being that dirt poor... accomplishes what? Ironically it makes us all pollute more because we stop caring about the environment as we start having issues feeding ourselves.

Rule ONE of EFFECTIVE environmental activsism:
DO NOT make the host society poorer in the process. Violations of this rule will result in instant proportional decreases in everyone caring about the environment. Anyone that doesn't already grasp this clearly doesn't pay any of their own bills. Which makes everything clear since most environmental activists tend to be teenagers or trust fund kids.

This is not to say that I don't care about the environment or don't think we should do something to protect it. HOWEVER, if you fuck up the economy in the process get ready for everyone to start giving you just as much attention on the issues as the Chinese government. That is, at best you'll be humored/patronized while the people actually making real choices will quietly and systematically ignore everything you've said.

Re:Predicted... repeatedly.

[Karmashock]

Your rule 2 is only relevant if rule 1 is broken. If they don't impoverish their host society then they can drive around in limos all they like. it is only when they drive around in limos while making everyone else poor that there is a problem.

Older cars reduce pollution

[Geoffrey.landis]

Exactly.
Manufacturing a car produces a significant amount of pollution. If the recession means that fewer cars were sold, and instead the existing cars were used longer, this would reduce pollution.
Unless this effect is accounted for, the headline here is meaningless.

from www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Environment/E_Overview/E_Overview2.htm:
"Historian Mark Foster has estimated that “fully one-third of the total environmental damage caused by automobiles occurred before they were sold and driven.” He cited a study that estimated that fabricating one car produced 29 tons of waste and 1,207 million cubic yards of polluted air. Extracting iron ore, bauxite, petroleum, copper, lead, and a variety of other raw materials to process steel, aluminum, plastics, glass, rubber, and other products necessary to construct automobiles consumes limited resources, uses great amounts of energy, and has serious environmental repercussions."

see also:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...

Re:Older cars reduce pollution

[vux984]

Manufacturing a car produces a significant amount of pollution

But it doesn't produce it downtown L.A.

Unless this effect is accounted for, the headline here is meaningless.

Not if your interested in the air quality in downtown L.A.

L.A. is dirtier right now than it otherwise would have been without a recession. That's not meaningless.

Total pollution footprints are interesting in their own right but they aren't the only conversation worth having.

Trading off clean cars and costs

[steveha]

If you really want cleaner air, the best thing to do would be to get as many old cars off the road as possible, so that people will be driving new cars. The new cars are so much cleaner than the old cars, it's amazing.

With the above in mind, I don't think the government should tighten up emissions standards even more. All the easy gains are gone, and now it takes engineering and expense to make cars pollute even less, which means that cars will be more expensive. If the government forces all the cars to be cleaner, all the cars get more expensive so it's fair as far as car makers go; but making new cars more expensive means people are more likely to keep driving dirty old cars.

There is a good discussion here: http://keithhennessey.com/2009/05/19/understanding-the-presidents-cafe-announcement/

Thus, while it may seem counter-intuitive, I believe the best way to get the air cleaner is to leave the standards right where they are and try to get the cost of a new car to drift downward.

The new cars are much safer than the really old cars also, so getting more people into new cars will also save more lives than making the crash standards tougher.

I think that within 20 to 30 years, the majority of vehicles will be electric anyway, and emissions will be very much reduced. (The reason I think that: improved solar technology and new storage technologies will bring down the cost of electricity; and battery costs will come down, especially due to the Tesla "giga-factory". I know I'd be happy with an electric vehicle, and rent a gas vehicle for my occasional long road trip.)

Re:Trading off clean cars and costs

[Ichijo]

...making new cars more expensive means people are more likely to keep driving dirty old cars.

It also makes them more likely to ride bicycles, buses and trains, and to walk or telecommute.

Buying a newer car doesn't make any sense.

[morgauxo]

Sorry but that's just how it is going to be. Buying a newer car doesn't make any sense. They are far too expensive and they lose their value far too quickly. Even with occasional repairs for an older car and gas being expensive a new car is still just a money sucking black hole.

If you are worried about the price of gas just buy a smaller old car. If you are worried about the environment you probably shouldn't be thinking about a new car anyway.

The materials and parts are mined and built in separate places all over the planet. Your car probably has probably traveled more miles right off the factory line than it will in the first 10 years it is driven. Pollution was generated all along it's path. So.. if you are worried about the environment keep driving the jalopy and give some of the savings to an environmentally friendly charity.

Cash for clunkers was nothing but a thinly veiled donation to the auto industry.