New Scientist reports a pretty amazing set of statistics in “US vehicle efficiency hardly changed since Model T “:
“The average fuel efficiency of the US vehicle fleet has risen by just 3 miles per gallon since the days of the Ford Model T, and has barely shifted at all since 1991.”
“Those are the conclusions reached by Michael Sivak and Omer Tsimhoni at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor. They analyzed the fuel efficiency of the entire US vehicle fleet of cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses from 1923 to 2006.”
“They found that from 1923 to 1935 fuel efficiency hovered around 14 mpg (5.95 km/l), but then fell gradually to a nadir of only 11.9 mpg (5.08 km/l) in 1973. By 1991, however, the efficiency of the total fleet had risen by 42 per cent on 1973 levels to 16.9 mpg (7.18 km/l), a compound annual rate of 2 per cent.”
“Progress has stalled since then, though, despite growing environmental concerns. From 1991 to 2006 the average efficiency improved by only 1.8 per cent to 17.2 mpg (7.31 km/l).”
After all the good intentions of politicians and environmentalists, all the legislation, all the regulation, for all those years – one has to wonder if a simpler solution might have made more of an impact on fuel economy. If instead of micromanaging the auto industry with mandates, congress had instead tried taxing petroleum to account for the “economic externalities” of our fossil fuel addiction, consumers might have placed some value on efficiency and we wouldn’t have squandered a precious resource while despoiling our environment. And we perhaps wouldn’t have lost the American auto industry to competitors who recognized the value of both efficiency and competitive enterprise.
Hi Fred:
NICE!!
So the question becomes, is it by accident or design..??..
The obvious stares us in the face everyday…
Anything that can not be given a column on a spreadsheet has dropped away in our world.
Ethics, morality and doing the right thing are my 3 favorites. EVERYONE, E V E R Y O N E!! complains that all that is meaningful has been left behind, but all those things have nothing to do with money, at least directly.. or to put it in accounting terms, “soft costs”… which are never really looked at, or more importantly acted upon.
We got what we paid for and payed is what we got. Nothing will change until the system is changed.
So, no surprises there…..
…..Bill
Fred,
I noticed an ad by Intel in the WSJ the other day, it read:
“Each transistor in an Intel 45-nanometer processor uses 1/7000th the power of those in our first processors from 1971. If fuel efficiency had improved at the same rate, today’s cars would get nearly 100,000 miles per gallon”
I’m not sure the comparison is entirely fair, but it does highlight how far behind we are as compared to other technologies.
-Jason
Shocking article. And great comment by Jason.
It would be interesting to see the trajectory of mpg rates from 1973 to 1980 before the rise of trucker SUVs. Would mpg efficiency improvements been higher in ’80 than ’91?
Had we maintained our oil crisis sparked conservation efforts, and not changed course in the 80s, where would mpg be today?
In 1978, I purchased my first new car and got about 49 MPG–a VW diesel Rabbit. My most recent purchase–a Prius hybrid–gets slightly less MPG on average. It is indeed a disappointing lack of progress and vision.
Hi David:
You should not find it disappointing. The “D” word does not really fit here. If a freshman high school soccer player is out on the field and is trying his hardest to get a field goal. He is running hard, sets himself up for the kick, gives the ball a real hard whack but it just misses because of a fluke bounce… that is disappointing. He tried his best and the rules of the game are such that it allows for and targets goals as the intended end of the process. The Goals are in fact the “GOAL” of the game.
Capitalism is the game and money the tool that we have aligned our world to.
Everyone makes more money selling big, heavy, fuel inefficient vehicles than high tech light materials engineered, electric efficient vehicles.
Where is the column on the corporate balance sheet that says we made 1 billion dollars in cash flow keeping the air and water clean this year or doing the right thing for our planet.
The system is designed for nails. The tool is the hammer. You cannot pound in screws even though they are stronger and better for the end result.
…..Bill
While as Jason suggests, the analogy he provides may not be perfect, the clear progress in industries like semiconducters, computers and software has been truly remarkable relative to progress in industries like autos and utilities. We should try to understand why some industries do so very well in improving quality and efficiency while others generally stagnate for decades.
In my mind, the difference relates to Bill’s point about clear goals, though I suspect in a completely different way than he intends it.
In unregulated industries like software, semiconductors and computers, the goals of the system are set by the manufacturers themselves based essentially on one thing – satisfying their customers and the customer demands in the marketplace.
In Intel’s case – the customer demand was clear for decades: smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy efficient, more reliable chips. That combination of customer driven goals which both Intel and other chip makers have aggressively pursued, has created the remarkable revolution in computers, telecommunications, and intelligent systems of all kinds and provided us all with the benefits of an information rich society.
Autos and utilities have had heavy regulatory demands of well intentioned consumer protection and environmental policy, which has kept both industries isolated from clear market signals, while effectively protecting entrenched players and solutions of the status quo while stifling progress and innovation. Despite their good intentions, such regulatory policies have delivered what Jo describes as the shocking results of the Sivak and Tsimhoni study.
The lack of progress and vision David points out is not only due to a lack of vision from the car companies themselves, but even more so to a lack of vision from policy makers who feel that their role is to micromanage whole industries. If they really want to reach the environmental policy goals we have all been discussing for decades, the best way to do that is to use the tax system to put a real cost on the “economic externalities” of our fossil fuel addiction and then get themselves out of the way of innovation.
The surge in purchases of fuel efficient vehicles a year ago when gas was over $4.00 a gallon was far more effective in achieving the goals of environmental policy than decades of CAFE and emission standards.
Perhaps some day we may actually learn as a society from real world experience like that market response to clear oil price signals and the phenomenal success of examples like Jason points out.
I hope that isn’t too optimistic and idealistic a goal.
Fred
Hi Fred:
When I started reading your post, I knew it was you before I even got down to your name..LOL!!!
I do not disagree with anything you suggest… there is just an underlying difference, perhaps, in what you perceive as the root problem vs a problem when compared to my thoughts.
All that you suggest in telecom is correct.
All that you suggest in the auto ind. is correct.
But what you don’t mention is that the customer driven telcom goals in no intrinsic/fundamental way threaten sales/cash flow for either the telcom industry or any other directly related large, power heavy business. In fact, pursuing those goals only puts more gold in everyone’s basket who had/has vested financial clout.
But on the other hand, lets look at the host auto ind. and its oil bureaucracy symbiont. Every single “reduce energy move”, by definition, reduces the product that the oil companies are in business to sell in the first place!! In fact all of RE and energy conservation, by definition, forces this on all conventional energy corporations!! THINK ABOUT IT!! ITS NOT HARD STUFF!!
This is the iron core reason why RE and EC have fair’ed so poorly. Its really quite simple.
When the goals of 1- Capitalism and “2- doing the right or smart thing” line up, it happens. Loose number two and it still happens… but loose number one and forget it… not going to happen.. and there is the point that I TRY to make in all relevant posts, that the root system is the problem and you are pissing in the wind if you do not recognize that truth as the beginning of any solution that will have even a small chance of succeeding….
…..Bill
PS: $4 a gallon is definitely more fair/better than “cash for clunkers”
Fred, you’re right on that significantly increasing the tax on oil would be a great first step. Political suicide, but boy wouldn’t it be nice to see in our lifetime?
Jason
It doesn’t have to be political suicide.
If Congress committed that 100% of all oil tax revenues were to be used to offset payroll taxes in a revenue neutral manner, that oil tax would both stimulate job creation, leave more money in people’s pay checks and reduce pollution and waste of petroleum. A zero cost economic stimulus and environmental solution is something most voters would support.
We need some politicians that are willing to step outside of the same old failing paradigms of what is possible.
Fred