If (like me) you like to start your day with a dose of outrage--
outrage!-- you may enjoy this paragraph most:
Several bills floating around Congress, for instance, have proposed tax
incentives to buyers of hybrid cars, irrespective of their gas mileage.
Thus, under one failed but sure to resurface formulation, the
suburbanite who buys a hypothetical hybrid Dodge Durango that gets 14
miles per gallon instead of 12 thanks to its second, electric power
source would be entitled to a huge tax incentive, while the buyer of a
conventional, gasoline-powered Honda Civic that delivers 40 miles per
gallon on the open road gets none.
Ah! That *burning* sensation I crave sets the tone for the *whole day*.
==
Life in the Green Lane
By JAMIE LINCOLN KITMAN
Nyack, N.Y.
IF you make your way over to the Javits Convention Center for the New
York International Automobile Show — or if you've gone to any auto show
in the last year or so — you'll know that hybrid cars are the hippest
automotive fashion statement to come along in years. They've become
synonymous with the worthy goal of reducing gasoline consumption and
dependence on foreign oil and all that this means for a better
environment and more stable geopolitics.
And yet like fat-free desserts, which sound healthy but can still make
you fat, the hybrid car can make people feel as if they're doing
something good, even when they're doing nothing special at all. As
consumers and governments at every level climb onto the hybrid
bandwagon, there is the very real danger of elevating the technology at
the expense of the intended outcome — saving gas.
Few things these days say "environmentally aware consumer" so loudly as
the fuel-sipping Toyota Prius. With its two power sources — one a
gasoline-powered internal combustion engine, the other a battery-driven
electric motor — the best-selling Prius (and other hybrids sold by Honda
and Ford and due soon from several other car makers) can go further on a
gallon and emit fewer pollutants in around-town use than most
conventional automobiles because under certain circumstances they run on
battery power and consume less fuel. For this reason, federal, state and
local governments have been bending over backward to encourage the sale
of hybrids, with a bewildering array of tax breaks, traffic lanes and
parking spaces dedicated to hybrid owners.
But just because a car has so-called hybrid technology doesn't mean it's
doing more to help the environment or to reduce the country's dependence
on imported oil any more than a nonhybrid car. The truth is, it depends
on the hybrid and the nonhybrid cars you are comparing, as well as on
how you use the vehicles. There are good hybrids and bad ones.
Fuel-efficient conventional cars are often better than hybrid S.U.V.'s —
just look at how many miles per gallon the vehicle gets.
Being a professional car-tester, which is to say a person who gets asked
for unpaid car-buying advice practically every day, I know these
distinctions have already been lost on many car buyers. And I fear
they're well on their way to being lost on our governments, too.
Lately, right-minded people have been calling me and telling me they're
thinking about buying the Lexus 400H, a new hybrid S.U.V. When I tell
them that they'd get better mileage in some conventional S.U.V.'s, and
even better mileage with a passenger car, they protest, "But it's a
hybrid!" I remind them that the 21 miles per gallon I saw while driving
the Lexus is not particularly brilliant, efficiency-wise — hybrid or
not. Because the Lexus 400H is a relatively heavy car and because its
electric motor is deployed to provide speed more than efficiency, it
will never be a mileage champ.
The car that started the hybrid craze, the Toyota Prius, is lauded for
squeezing 40 or more miles out of a gallon of gas, and it really can.
But only when it's being driven around town, where its electric motor
does its best and most active work. On a cross-country excursion in a
Prius, the staff of Automobile Magazine discovered mileage plummeted on
the Interstate. In fact, the car's computer, which controls the engine
and the motor, allowing them to run together or separately, was
programmed to direct the Prius to spend most of its highway time running
on gasoline because at higher speeds the batteries quickly get
exhausted. Indeed, the gasoline engine worked so hard that we calculated
we might have used less fuel on our journey if we had been driving
Toyota's conventionally powered, similarly sized Corolla — which costs
thousands less. For the owner who does the majority of her driving on
the highway, the Prius's potential for fuel economy will never be
realized and its price premium never recovered.
For years, most of the world's big car makers have shied away from
building hybrids because while they are technologically intriguing, they
are also an inelegant engineering solution — the use of two energy
sources assures extra weight, extra complexity and extra expense (as
much as $6,000 more per car.) The hybrid car's electric battery packs
rob space from passengers and cargo and although they can be recycled,
not every owner can be counted on to do the right thing at the end of
their vehicle's service life. And an unrecycled hybrid battery pack,
which weighs more than 100 pounds, poses a major environmental hazard.
So the ideal hybrid car is one that is used in town and carefully
disposed of at the end of its days. Hybrid taxis and buses make enormous
sense. But the market knows no such distinctions. People think they want
hybrids and they'll buy them, even if a conventional car would make more
sense for their pocketbook and for the environment. The danger is that
the automakers will co-opt the hybrids' green mantle and, with the help
of a government looking to bail out its troubled friends in Detroit,
misguidedly encourage the sale of hybrids without reference to their
actual effect on oil consumption.
Several bills floating around Congress, for instance, have proposed tax
incentives to buyers of hybrid cars, irrespective of their gas mileage.
Thus, under one failed but sure to resurface formulation, the
suburbanite who buys a hypothetical hybrid Dodge Durango that gets 14
miles per gallon instead of 12 thanks to its second, electric power
source would be entitled to a huge tax incentive, while the buyer of a
conventional, gasoline-powered Honda Civic that delivers 40 miles per
gallon on the open road gets none.
And under some imaginable patchwork of state and local ordinances, the
Durango buyer might get a special parking space at the train station and
the right to use a high occupancy vehicle lane, despite appalling fuel
economy and a car full of empty seats, while the Honda driver will have
to walk to the train from a distant parking lot after braving the worst
of morning rush hour traffic on the highway just like everybody else.
Pro-hybrid laws and incentives sound nice, but they might just end up
subsidizing companies that have failed to develop truly fuel-efficient
vehicles at the expense of those that have had the foresight to design
their cars right in the first place. And they may actually punish
citizens who save fuel the old-fashioned way — by using less of it, with
smaller, lighter and more efficient cars. All the while, they'll make a
mockery of a potentially useful technology.
Jamie Lincoln Kitman is the New York bureau chief for Automobile
Magazine and a columnist for Top Gear, a British magazine.
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