My friend from Santa Cruz, concerned about global warming as I am, asked for advice yesterday about the car purchase she needs to make.
It happens my husband Thor did lots of research recently about whether to buy a Prius or a Honda Civic hybrid. We chose the Honda, for reasons given here, but we use even our hybrid sparingly, between my carpool and Thor now bicycling to work. (He takes the bus to work in the non-summer months.)
I’m surprised sometimes by the trivial (to me, at least) concerns some people have about cars. For instance, a downside I’ve heard about the Honda Civic hybrid that we own is its noisiness on the highway. Larger vehicles (think SUV’s) are evidently quieter at high speeds, due to lots of soundproofing materials, which add heavy bulk, which use more gas to haul around. In truth, my carpool pals and I hear each other just fine in the Honda: banter, news exchange and joking go unchecked.
Safety concerns, on the other hand, I always see as valid and not trivial. While large vehicles like SUV’s are statistically safer than smaller cars in accidents, the bigger overall determinants of auto safety in my understanding are driving speed (slower is much safer, besides conserving gas and carbon emissions) and number of miles driven in the first place (the fewer miles you travel in a car, the less chance of any accidents, period). I heard on public radio that sales of SUV’s are down by 40%, it appears because owners feel financially unsafe at the prospect of filling them with gas.
I think that hybrids and electric cars are the only cars that have a future , given the carbon-constrained nature of our current and future world. The electricity component of hybrid cars — the battery — is the one that can be supplied by renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal. The gasoline component is the one that is a fossil fuel and can’t be redeemed by renewable energy. Burning fossil fuels is what drives global warming, and what I urge all of us to take direct responsibility for reducing.
Do you feel like you care, but are too busy to do anything differently than you’re doing? Here is a time-management technique that has helped me in living a happy, relatively low-carbon life.
Ahh, a topic for the engineer in me.
I agree that we will eventually go away from gasoline cars. It’s just that a lot of development needs to be done before this happens.
Technology has a ways to go before electric cars go prime time. The batteries take too long to charge, are expensive, and are an environmental problem in and of themselves. That’s not to say it won’t happen, it just won’t happen tomorrow.
The biggest issue is the charge time. It’s fine for most daily drivers. It falls short if you are going longer distances. This is an area where technology needs to catch up.
Also, the electricity is mostly derived from coal and natural gas. None of this is renewable or good for the environment. Wind, solar, and nuclear are more environmentally friendly but heavily opposed by environmental groups. This is especially true for wind and nuclear. Solar is space intensive, dependent on weather, and expensive.
Rethinking the Entitlement of Travel // Jul 1, 2008 at 7:01 am
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