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Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Everything I Wanted to Know About the United States, & Was Afraid to Ask
Why are cars that use less fuel still not popular in the US? What might need to happen before they become popular?
(At least it seems like most people in the US are still driving big cars, while small cars are used all over Europe and Asia)
First of all, disclaimers and explanations.
I live in the Kansas City Metro Area, which is a fairly large city, but a sprawling one. In terms of comparison, the KC Metro Area has 1.8 million residents in 5,485 square miles, for a population density of 323 people per square mile. My particular city in the Metro Area has a population density of about 2,000 people per square mile. In contrast, Los Angeles, California has 3.8 million residents in 500 square miles, for a population density of 7,600 people per square mile.
Here most people will have to drive more than a mile to the nearest grocery store. Most houses come with at least two-car garages and even most apartment complexes offer a covered parking space. Two or more cars per family is the norm. Everywhere you go there are parking lots and mostly generous-sized parking spaces (I have a two-door car, and rarely have a problem unless someone parks very badly). There is no mass transit to speak of (yes, there’s a bus system of sorts, but for me to take the bus to work I’d have to walk a half-mile, board a bus at 6:30 am, spend 3 hours on the bus with two transfers, get dropped off a mile from work, and arrive at work at about 10 am. Then I’d have to leave at 2, spend 3 ½ hours on the bus with two transfers, and get home around 6:30. I live 13 miles from my workplace. And yes, that is the most direct route possible). So my take on the car is going to be VASTLY different from someone who lives in New York City, where it might cost $50,000 to buy a parking space and mass transit is readily available.
I also drive a Mustang. This is a prime example of an American Muscle Car, one of the pillars of American car culture. I understand the love of power, the joy of hard acceleration, the terrifying prospect of turning a corner… I think Richard Hammond summed it up well: “I love muscle cars. I love the fact that they're about standing quarter miles, about racing away from the lights when the police aren't looking. They're about cowboy boots, work boots, denim jeans, dime stores, bars. I love that."
I’m not even a person who likes driving, not really. I’d rather travel by pneumatic tube and just get to where I want to go, but if I have to drive, it might as well be an enjoyable experience. And that’s why I like fast, fun cars. Except when it snows. Or rains. Or is foggy enough to make the pavement slightly damp, at which point any acceleration becomes a desperate attempt not to fishtail. But on a nice, dry, sunny day when there’s a ½ mile stretch of clear highway on-ramp in front of you, it feels awesome to put the pedal down and just GO.
Also please remember that when you say ‘the US’, you are not talking about one kind of area. There’s everything from large urban centers to places where one family occupies several square miles of very flat land to places where your driveway might be a mile of 15% grade. Things that work in more congested countries may well work in Los Angeles, but are not going to work in western Kansas or the mountains of Colorado. Some of the reasons I give will not be valid outside of the given area, which is why it’s important to remember the very big differences between the geographic areas in the US. It’s also a good perspective to realize that the United Kingdom is 94,139 square miles in total with 58,789,194 people (2001 est). Kansas is 81,815 square miles with 2,853,116 people (2010 Census). We have a lot more room to move, though not as much as, say, Wyoming, which is 97,814 square miles with only 563,626 people – larger than all of the United Kingdom, with 1/100th of the population.
That said, I would say that in certain parts of the US, more fuel efficient cars are now the norm. Places like LA and Chicago and New York, where things are close together and space is at a premium, plus there is a lot of social pressure to be much more environmentally friendly in the more polluted cities. These places the Prius seems to be the car of choice.
But for places they are definitely not…
There are several issues to address here, the first being what is meant by ‘use less fuel’. In the context of comparing the fuel economies of the cars sold in the US to the fuel economy of the cars sold outside the US there’s also the gasoline itself to consider. Top Gear once mocked the ‘watered down’ excuse for petrol sold in the US – gas sold here simply cannot produce the same MPG that a richer fuel mixture can. I tried to do some research on the topic, but couldn’t find anything specifically on the gas mixtures other than the differing percentages of ethanol. I did, however, look up the Ford Fiesta, touted here as getting up to 40 MPG, and the UK version is listed up to 51 MPG for the same car, so there is some obvious disparity there.
So comparing our fuel economy to those of other countries isn’t really a fair comparison.
However, if the question is more along the lines of why someone would by an F-150 instead of a Prius, here’s my two cents:
Discounting those people who need less fuel-efficient cars for their livelihood (surveyors, construction workers, farmers, etc – people who genuinely need to haul things you couldn’t stuff into a Smart Car) there are several reasons people don’t opt for the more fuel efficient cars.
I’m going to try to break these down into categories, but there’s a lot to cover on the topic…
Hybrid vs Non-Hybrid: why isn’t this a no-brainer?
With plenty of hybrid cars on the market, why would anyone buy an all-fuel model? They even have hybrid SUVs now! But are they really all they’re cracked up to be? Some people say no…
1. Probably the biggest problem: they aren’t really economical.
This one is changing, as there are a few car companies that now charge much closer to the same for their hybrid versions as they do for the all-gas versions (they’re now only $5,000-$9,000 more), though there’s still battery life to consider (for instance, my car is 13 years old and I would most likely have needed a second set of batteries by now, at a cost of up to $7,000). But let’s take for example the Prius, the one really fuel efficient hybrid out there.
If I wanted a small four-door hatchback, I could shell out $24,000 for a Prius (starting price) or $13,000 for a Ford Fiesta (again, base price). This gives you approximately the same amount of car for passengers and hauling groceries, etc. The Fiesta gets 40 MPG, but the Prius can supposedly get up to 60 MPG (there are some issues with the MPG claims, especially on hybrids, but we’ll go with the provided numbers).
The average American driver travels about 20,000 miles per year. I, personally, put about 9,000 miles per year on my car, so the numbers are even more extreme in my case. Therefore, the Prius driver will consume 333 gallons of fuel and the Fiesta driver will use 500 gallons (in my very uneconomical Mustang I use about 400 gallons – in the Fiesta I would use a mere 225, and only 150 in the Prius). At the current price of gas (I stopped just today to get some – it was $3.79 in my neck of the woods) that’s $1263 for the Prius driver and $1895 for the Fiesta driver. That’s a difference of $632 per year (I would only save $285 per year).
Currently, it would take 17 YEARS (38 years for me!) to recoup the extra $11,000 (that’s not including ANY finance charges, it’s assuming you paid cash or got 0% financing) it cost to buy the Prius. Yes, that is assuming the price of gas is relatively stable, but it also assumes the batteries in the Prius will last 17 years (or that the Prius would last 38 years for me…).
In the US there are no taxes on low fuel efficiency vehicles and very little incentive to opt for a more expensive, more fuel efficient hybrid.
Also, as I was passed on the way home today by a Prius weaving in and out of traffic and generally driving like a maniac, it reminded me that a really fuel-efficient car does very little if you drive it inefficiently. I spent a year driving my Dad’s Corvette, which had the ‘instant MPG’ function. You could get anywhere from 35 MPG (steady highway driving) to 2 MPG (hard acceleration). I averaged 26-28, all in-town driving. Accelerate reasonably, shift sooner, and generally drive like a little old lady and you can eeek a lot more MPGs out of most cars. In the example of the crazy Prius driver, I would bet me driving a Fiesta would actually be more fuel efficient that their Prius the way they were driving.
2. Are they really that much more environmentally friendly?
Yes, they save fuel, but the batteries are not the most environmentally friendly thing – from the mining of the nickel to the problem of disposing/recycling batteries. Plus, is it more environmentally friendly to scrap a perfectly good working older (less fuel efficient) car for a brand new hybrid? Probably not. So it comes down to which is more important: reducing fuel use or reducing environmental impact, and while they are related, they are not the same issue.
Another issue we have in the Midwest is that they are not nearly as fuel efficient as they claim (even being driven reasonably). They are not particularly fuel efficient on the highways, and the gas engine runs constantly when it’s very cold and if you use the air conditioning. This means you’re using a gasoline engine to move a car that is MUCH heavier than its all-fuel counterpart. So living someplace where things are spread out and it gets very hot and very cold, it’s not going to be as fuel efficient as it would be if you lived in a temperate close-packed city. This then increases the amount of time it takes to recoup the extra investment in the hybrid.
3. They’re not as powerful.
Yeah, the ‘zoom’ factor isn’t based on anything but the need for speed, but it’s a valid ‘reason’ (in terms of explaining why) people don’t want to give up their higher horsepower engines. And there are certainly parts of the US where car culture is everything – from NASCAR to drag races, speed is something we like. (I need to point out here that while I am turning into a bit of a Petrolhead, I do not like or understand the allure of NASCAR. “Hey, look, Bob, they’re turning left again!” This is not to say I do not understand that it does, indeed, take skill to drive a car at 150 mph mere inches from the wall and other cars.)
But, you say, the Tesla is more zoomy than any gasoline car! Why not go electric?
Electric Cars! They are here, why aren’t they all people are buying?
The wave of the future! Electric cars! Why aren’t we all over this? I think the biggest reason is that they require a lot of us to fundamentally change the way we drive. They don’t go far enough, and they take too long to charge. Plus, they’re really expensive.
1. Again, Probably the biggest one: they aren’t really economical.
It all comes down to money. The Nissan Leaf costs $38,000. Even after incentives, you still shell out over $30,000 for a pretty small car – say, the size of a Ford Fiesta. Which only costs $13,000. Using the numbers given in the hybrid comparison, spending $1895 a year on fuel it’ll take you 9 years to recoup the cost of the car – and that does NOT include what you’ll pay to charge it, which is a ‘fuel’ cost of a sort.
And, again, it’s not like we pay a yearly tax if we have a non-fuel efficient car, so… Not an economically good choice, at least not until the cars get cheaper and there’s a cheap, clean, and quick way of charging them.
2. Range: I can’t get there from here!
This probably isn’t as much of an issue in an urban area, but where things are 40-50 miles away it becomes an issue. Sure, under ideal conditions the Leaf will get 100 miles on a charge. IDEAL conditions (see: our weather). And after that, it takes some time to charge. And I have to have a place to plug it in. Why on earth would I pay so much more for a car that is so inconvenient?
This summer I took a road trip through Kansas – there were small towns easily 60-80 miles from the next small town, and easily 200+ miles from the nearest large city (say, for a hospital). In these places it’s not just impractical, but impossible.
Until charging stations are everywhere and cars can charge faster (Top Gear noted it would take 3 days to drive to the top of Scotland in an electric car!) this is a very urban-only option, and only then if you never plan on taking a road trip, which is very much a part of Midwestern US culture.
3. Is it really ‘greener’?
More fuel efficient, yes. Greener? That’s debatable, especially until the whole battery issues and charging issues are sorted out (Top Gear asked a guest where the power came from to charge the car, and he replied ‘the plug’ – it’s easy to forget that electricity has to come from somewhere. They also estimated it would take 16 hours to fully charge an electric car from a personal-sized wind turbine).
Okay, we get it, you want fuel cars, so why not the much more efficient diesel? It’s cleaner than the old diesel and is widely used in Europe.
Diesel Fuel! Why is it so unpopular?
So Top Gear calls it Satan’s Fuel and hates diesel, but is it all bad? Sure, old diesel engines were smelly and loud and foul, but they’re better now, right? So what if there are only a few gas stations (mostly near highways) that sell diesel fuel, and it’s more expensive than low-octane regular fuel…
1. Bad reputation is everything
Diesel cars got a bad rap a long time ago, were phased out, and while they are trying to make a comeback (VW has a diesel car they’ve been pimping on Mythbusters), it’s just not happening. Diesel is the fuel of trucks, and it’s not available everywhere, and they just don’t sell many diesel cars here. Perhaps they aren’t the loud, obnoxious things of the past, but no one is bothering to really try to change our perceptions.
Fine, fine, but can’t you at least get a reasonable gasoline powered car? What’s up with all the SUVs?
Okay, so what’s with all the big cars? Why not just buy a Smart Car? Why do you have to drive a Hummer to work every day, when all you do is commute on nice, smooth city streets?
1. You need that SUV for those challenging 1% grades!
Okay, no, you don’t need an SUV on the streets of Los Angeles. Or, honestly, on the streets of Kansas City. But Wyoming? Colorado? Montana? Yes, there are places there that you definitely need the clearance and four-wheel drive capability of an SUV, especially in the winter. Fine, you say, so buy a hybrid SUV. But then we’re back to the fact that a hybrid SUV (we’re looking at the Escape, here) costs $9,000 more and gets 34 mpg as opposed to 28 mpg (best case scenarios). And it would take the average driver 19 years to recoup that cost in fuel savings. So if you do need the SUV (and not everyone does, but some do) why would you spend more on the hybrid?
Personal example: on my last road trip through Kansas there were places I wanted to visit and couldn’t, because the roads were too rough for a regular car – we did manage one dirt road that was terrifyingly slippery and rough, I wouldn’t want to have tried any of the ones listed as ‘nearly impassable’ by regular cars!
2. Safety
Okay, so why don’t all city people buy a Fiesta instead of a big SUV? The most common reason is that they don’t feel safe. And I can see why. The ‘norm’ in the US, at least in the Midwest, are trucks and SUVs. If you’re zooming down the highway at 75 mph, it’s not very comfortable to be sandwiched between vehicles that are twice as tall and weigh three times as much as you do (remember, force = mass x acceleration!). I’ve seen Smart Cars on the highway, and I always think ‘those people are BRAVE’. Not only are most of the cars larger, but they have to contend with pickup trucks, SUVs, and plenty of real trucks (many with two trailers!).
Most people I know who drive an SUV say they like being up high, and able to see things. I drive a Mustang, so… I don’t really see their point. But I do feel much safer with the massive hood and lots of steel that surround me. I know the Smart Car gets a high safety rating, but… I can’t get past the fact that getting smacked into at 75 MPH would be a lot less traumatic in a car that weighed a few thousand pounds more that the Smart. Kick a pebble, then kick a boulder, and you’ll see what I mean. I’d rather be the boulder.
3. I need the space!
This one I don’t completely understand, but people will swear they can’t fit what they need into a smaller car. My car is useless for pretty much everything but going pretty fast in a straight line, and has a trunk opening the size of a breadbox, and yet I’ve managed to cram a ton of crap in it. Frankly, I would be terrified of what I’d end up with stashed in my car if I had that much room, but okay. I can see their point with the Smart Car, which, in the brochure under ‘storage space’ listed ‘glovebox’. I… need a little more space than that, and it is just a two-seater, impractical for anyone with children or even dogs.
Finally, let’s be honest. Americans are not the smallest people. I’m not just talking about being obese, either. My husband is 6’4” and there are a lot of small cars that are very uncomfortable for him. I’m only 5’2”, so I don’t really have a problem, but I can see where he’s coming from. I would not want to have to cram myself down into a small car and end up with a permanent crick in my neck, or have my knees up around my ears. And, yes, we had tested several of the smaller cars, when we were replacing my Sentra, and even a lot of the not-tiny cars (Corolla, Sentra, etc) were too small. Even the Mustang is not particularly comfortable for him.
Fine. What about hydrogen, Miss Smarty-Pants? What bad can you say about that? Other than the fact that the technology is so expensive right now you can’t actually buy a Honda Clarity, and have to lease one and the only place you can get Hydrogen Fuel is in California?
Well, nothing. That really is all there is too it. Hydrogen cars do not fundamentally change the way we drive, are clean-burning and seriously reduce our dependence on oil. They are perfect, apart from the fact that they are incredibly expensive and not available everywhere.
You know the joke about the two most common elements in the universe? Hydrogen and Stupidity. It seems, in this case, they’re working against each other. People are so focused on the impractical (electric cars) and the stop-gap measures (hybrids, which only slightly reduce our consumption) that they’re overlooking a viable solution. If we can get the price down, and change over gasoline stations to hydrogen stations, everyone wins. We get our long drives and road trips, the environment gets fewer emissions and a lower dependency on oil.
I’m sure I haven’t covered everything. I honestly didn’t realize how much there is to say on the topic, and I could probably go on for quite some time, adding, revising, tweaking… but I’m already at 3,500 words and have probably bored you to tears.
(At least it seems like most people in the US are still driving big cars, while small cars are used all over Europe and Asia)
First of all, disclaimers and explanations.
I live in the Kansas City Metro Area, which is a fairly large city, but a sprawling one. In terms of comparison, the KC Metro Area has 1.8 million residents in 5,485 square miles, for a population density of 323 people per square mile. My particular city in the Metro Area has a population density of about 2,000 people per square mile. In contrast, Los Angeles, California has 3.8 million residents in 500 square miles, for a population density of 7,600 people per square mile.
Here most people will have to drive more than a mile to the nearest grocery store. Most houses come with at least two-car garages and even most apartment complexes offer a covered parking space. Two or more cars per family is the norm. Everywhere you go there are parking lots and mostly generous-sized parking spaces (I have a two-door car, and rarely have a problem unless someone parks very badly). There is no mass transit to speak of (yes, there’s a bus system of sorts, but for me to take the bus to work I’d have to walk a half-mile, board a bus at 6:30 am, spend 3 hours on the bus with two transfers, get dropped off a mile from work, and arrive at work at about 10 am. Then I’d have to leave at 2, spend 3 ½ hours on the bus with two transfers, and get home around 6:30. I live 13 miles from my workplace. And yes, that is the most direct route possible). So my take on the car is going to be VASTLY different from someone who lives in New York City, where it might cost $50,000 to buy a parking space and mass transit is readily available.
I also drive a Mustang. This is a prime example of an American Muscle Car, one of the pillars of American car culture. I understand the love of power, the joy of hard acceleration, the terrifying prospect of turning a corner… I think Richard Hammond summed it up well: “I love muscle cars. I love the fact that they're about standing quarter miles, about racing away from the lights when the police aren't looking. They're about cowboy boots, work boots, denim jeans, dime stores, bars. I love that."
I’m not even a person who likes driving, not really. I’d rather travel by pneumatic tube and just get to where I want to go, but if I have to drive, it might as well be an enjoyable experience. And that’s why I like fast, fun cars. Except when it snows. Or rains. Or is foggy enough to make the pavement slightly damp, at which point any acceleration becomes a desperate attempt not to fishtail. But on a nice, dry, sunny day when there’s a ½ mile stretch of clear highway on-ramp in front of you, it feels awesome to put the pedal down and just GO.
Also please remember that when you say ‘the US’, you are not talking about one kind of area. There’s everything from large urban centers to places where one family occupies several square miles of very flat land to places where your driveway might be a mile of 15% grade. Things that work in more congested countries may well work in Los Angeles, but are not going to work in western Kansas or the mountains of Colorado. Some of the reasons I give will not be valid outside of the given area, which is why it’s important to remember the very big differences between the geographic areas in the US. It’s also a good perspective to realize that the United Kingdom is 94,139 square miles in total with 58,789,194 people (2001 est). Kansas is 81,815 square miles with 2,853,116 people (2010 Census). We have a lot more room to move, though not as much as, say, Wyoming, which is 97,814 square miles with only 563,626 people – larger than all of the United Kingdom, with 1/100th of the population.
That said, I would say that in certain parts of the US, more fuel efficient cars are now the norm. Places like LA and Chicago and New York, where things are close together and space is at a premium, plus there is a lot of social pressure to be much more environmentally friendly in the more polluted cities. These places the Prius seems to be the car of choice.
But for places they are definitely not…
There are several issues to address here, the first being what is meant by ‘use less fuel’. In the context of comparing the fuel economies of the cars sold in the US to the fuel economy of the cars sold outside the US there’s also the gasoline itself to consider. Top Gear once mocked the ‘watered down’ excuse for petrol sold in the US – gas sold here simply cannot produce the same MPG that a richer fuel mixture can. I tried to do some research on the topic, but couldn’t find anything specifically on the gas mixtures other than the differing percentages of ethanol. I did, however, look up the Ford Fiesta, touted here as getting up to 40 MPG, and the UK version is listed up to 51 MPG for the same car, so there is some obvious disparity there.
So comparing our fuel economy to those of other countries isn’t really a fair comparison.
However, if the question is more along the lines of why someone would by an F-150 instead of a Prius, here’s my two cents:
Discounting those people who need less fuel-efficient cars for their livelihood (surveyors, construction workers, farmers, etc – people who genuinely need to haul things you couldn’t stuff into a Smart Car) there are several reasons people don’t opt for the more fuel efficient cars.
I’m going to try to break these down into categories, but there’s a lot to cover on the topic…
Hybrid vs Non-Hybrid: why isn’t this a no-brainer?
With plenty of hybrid cars on the market, why would anyone buy an all-fuel model? They even have hybrid SUVs now! But are they really all they’re cracked up to be? Some people say no…
1. Probably the biggest problem: they aren’t really economical.
This one is changing, as there are a few car companies that now charge much closer to the same for their hybrid versions as they do for the all-gas versions (they’re now only $5,000-$9,000 more), though there’s still battery life to consider (for instance, my car is 13 years old and I would most likely have needed a second set of batteries by now, at a cost of up to $7,000). But let’s take for example the Prius, the one really fuel efficient hybrid out there.
If I wanted a small four-door hatchback, I could shell out $24,000 for a Prius (starting price) or $13,000 for a Ford Fiesta (again, base price). This gives you approximately the same amount of car for passengers and hauling groceries, etc. The Fiesta gets 40 MPG, but the Prius can supposedly get up to 60 MPG (there are some issues with the MPG claims, especially on hybrids, but we’ll go with the provided numbers).
The average American driver travels about 20,000 miles per year. I, personally, put about 9,000 miles per year on my car, so the numbers are even more extreme in my case. Therefore, the Prius driver will consume 333 gallons of fuel and the Fiesta driver will use 500 gallons (in my very uneconomical Mustang I use about 400 gallons – in the Fiesta I would use a mere 225, and only 150 in the Prius). At the current price of gas (I stopped just today to get some – it was $3.79 in my neck of the woods) that’s $1263 for the Prius driver and $1895 for the Fiesta driver. That’s a difference of $632 per year (I would only save $285 per year).
Currently, it would take 17 YEARS (38 years for me!) to recoup the extra $11,000 (that’s not including ANY finance charges, it’s assuming you paid cash or got 0% financing) it cost to buy the Prius. Yes, that is assuming the price of gas is relatively stable, but it also assumes the batteries in the Prius will last 17 years (or that the Prius would last 38 years for me…).
In the US there are no taxes on low fuel efficiency vehicles and very little incentive to opt for a more expensive, more fuel efficient hybrid.
Also, as I was passed on the way home today by a Prius weaving in and out of traffic and generally driving like a maniac, it reminded me that a really fuel-efficient car does very little if you drive it inefficiently. I spent a year driving my Dad’s Corvette, which had the ‘instant MPG’ function. You could get anywhere from 35 MPG (steady highway driving) to 2 MPG (hard acceleration). I averaged 26-28, all in-town driving. Accelerate reasonably, shift sooner, and generally drive like a little old lady and you can eeek a lot more MPGs out of most cars. In the example of the crazy Prius driver, I would bet me driving a Fiesta would actually be more fuel efficient that their Prius the way they were driving.
2. Are they really that much more environmentally friendly?
Yes, they save fuel, but the batteries are not the most environmentally friendly thing – from the mining of the nickel to the problem of disposing/recycling batteries. Plus, is it more environmentally friendly to scrap a perfectly good working older (less fuel efficient) car for a brand new hybrid? Probably not. So it comes down to which is more important: reducing fuel use or reducing environmental impact, and while they are related, they are not the same issue.
Another issue we have in the Midwest is that they are not nearly as fuel efficient as they claim (even being driven reasonably). They are not particularly fuel efficient on the highways, and the gas engine runs constantly when it’s very cold and if you use the air conditioning. This means you’re using a gasoline engine to move a car that is MUCH heavier than its all-fuel counterpart. So living someplace where things are spread out and it gets very hot and very cold, it’s not going to be as fuel efficient as it would be if you lived in a temperate close-packed city. This then increases the amount of time it takes to recoup the extra investment in the hybrid.
3. They’re not as powerful.
Yeah, the ‘zoom’ factor isn’t based on anything but the need for speed, but it’s a valid ‘reason’ (in terms of explaining why) people don’t want to give up their higher horsepower engines. And there are certainly parts of the US where car culture is everything – from NASCAR to drag races, speed is something we like. (I need to point out here that while I am turning into a bit of a Petrolhead, I do not like or understand the allure of NASCAR. “Hey, look, Bob, they’re turning left again!” This is not to say I do not understand that it does, indeed, take skill to drive a car at 150 mph mere inches from the wall and other cars.)
But, you say, the Tesla is more zoomy than any gasoline car! Why not go electric?
Electric Cars! They are here, why aren’t they all people are buying?
The wave of the future! Electric cars! Why aren’t we all over this? I think the biggest reason is that they require a lot of us to fundamentally change the way we drive. They don’t go far enough, and they take too long to charge. Plus, they’re really expensive.
1. Again, Probably the biggest one: they aren’t really economical.
It all comes down to money. The Nissan Leaf costs $38,000. Even after incentives, you still shell out over $30,000 for a pretty small car – say, the size of a Ford Fiesta. Which only costs $13,000. Using the numbers given in the hybrid comparison, spending $1895 a year on fuel it’ll take you 9 years to recoup the cost of the car – and that does NOT include what you’ll pay to charge it, which is a ‘fuel’ cost of a sort.
And, again, it’s not like we pay a yearly tax if we have a non-fuel efficient car, so… Not an economically good choice, at least not until the cars get cheaper and there’s a cheap, clean, and quick way of charging them.
2. Range: I can’t get there from here!
This probably isn’t as much of an issue in an urban area, but where things are 40-50 miles away it becomes an issue. Sure, under ideal conditions the Leaf will get 100 miles on a charge. IDEAL conditions (see: our weather). And after that, it takes some time to charge. And I have to have a place to plug it in. Why on earth would I pay so much more for a car that is so inconvenient?
This summer I took a road trip through Kansas – there were small towns easily 60-80 miles from the next small town, and easily 200+ miles from the nearest large city (say, for a hospital). In these places it’s not just impractical, but impossible.
Until charging stations are everywhere and cars can charge faster (Top Gear noted it would take 3 days to drive to the top of Scotland in an electric car!) this is a very urban-only option, and only then if you never plan on taking a road trip, which is very much a part of Midwestern US culture.
3. Is it really ‘greener’?
More fuel efficient, yes. Greener? That’s debatable, especially until the whole battery issues and charging issues are sorted out (Top Gear asked a guest where the power came from to charge the car, and he replied ‘the plug’ – it’s easy to forget that electricity has to come from somewhere. They also estimated it would take 16 hours to fully charge an electric car from a personal-sized wind turbine).
Okay, we get it, you want fuel cars, so why not the much more efficient diesel? It’s cleaner than the old diesel and is widely used in Europe.
Diesel Fuel! Why is it so unpopular?
So Top Gear calls it Satan’s Fuel and hates diesel, but is it all bad? Sure, old diesel engines were smelly and loud and foul, but they’re better now, right? So what if there are only a few gas stations (mostly near highways) that sell diesel fuel, and it’s more expensive than low-octane regular fuel…
1. Bad reputation is everything
Diesel cars got a bad rap a long time ago, were phased out, and while they are trying to make a comeback (VW has a diesel car they’ve been pimping on Mythbusters), it’s just not happening. Diesel is the fuel of trucks, and it’s not available everywhere, and they just don’t sell many diesel cars here. Perhaps they aren’t the loud, obnoxious things of the past, but no one is bothering to really try to change our perceptions.
Fine, fine, but can’t you at least get a reasonable gasoline powered car? What’s up with all the SUVs?
Okay, so what’s with all the big cars? Why not just buy a Smart Car? Why do you have to drive a Hummer to work every day, when all you do is commute on nice, smooth city streets?
1. You need that SUV for those challenging 1% grades!
Okay, no, you don’t need an SUV on the streets of Los Angeles. Or, honestly, on the streets of Kansas City. But Wyoming? Colorado? Montana? Yes, there are places there that you definitely need the clearance and four-wheel drive capability of an SUV, especially in the winter. Fine, you say, so buy a hybrid SUV. But then we’re back to the fact that a hybrid SUV (we’re looking at the Escape, here) costs $9,000 more and gets 34 mpg as opposed to 28 mpg (best case scenarios). And it would take the average driver 19 years to recoup that cost in fuel savings. So if you do need the SUV (and not everyone does, but some do) why would you spend more on the hybrid?
Personal example: on my last road trip through Kansas there were places I wanted to visit and couldn’t, because the roads were too rough for a regular car – we did manage one dirt road that was terrifyingly slippery and rough, I wouldn’t want to have tried any of the ones listed as ‘nearly impassable’ by regular cars!
2. Safety
Okay, so why don’t all city people buy a Fiesta instead of a big SUV? The most common reason is that they don’t feel safe. And I can see why. The ‘norm’ in the US, at least in the Midwest, are trucks and SUVs. If you’re zooming down the highway at 75 mph, it’s not very comfortable to be sandwiched between vehicles that are twice as tall and weigh three times as much as you do (remember, force = mass x acceleration!). I’ve seen Smart Cars on the highway, and I always think ‘those people are BRAVE’. Not only are most of the cars larger, but they have to contend with pickup trucks, SUVs, and plenty of real trucks (many with two trailers!).
Most people I know who drive an SUV say they like being up high, and able to see things. I drive a Mustang, so… I don’t really see their point. But I do feel much safer with the massive hood and lots of steel that surround me. I know the Smart Car gets a high safety rating, but… I can’t get past the fact that getting smacked into at 75 MPH would be a lot less traumatic in a car that weighed a few thousand pounds more that the Smart. Kick a pebble, then kick a boulder, and you’ll see what I mean. I’d rather be the boulder.
3. I need the space!
This one I don’t completely understand, but people will swear they can’t fit what they need into a smaller car. My car is useless for pretty much everything but going pretty fast in a straight line, and has a trunk opening the size of a breadbox, and yet I’ve managed to cram a ton of crap in it. Frankly, I would be terrified of what I’d end up with stashed in my car if I had that much room, but okay. I can see their point with the Smart Car, which, in the brochure under ‘storage space’ listed ‘glovebox’. I… need a little more space than that, and it is just a two-seater, impractical for anyone with children or even dogs.
Finally, let’s be honest. Americans are not the smallest people. I’m not just talking about being obese, either. My husband is 6’4” and there are a lot of small cars that are very uncomfortable for him. I’m only 5’2”, so I don’t really have a problem, but I can see where he’s coming from. I would not want to have to cram myself down into a small car and end up with a permanent crick in my neck, or have my knees up around my ears. And, yes, we had tested several of the smaller cars, when we were replacing my Sentra, and even a lot of the not-tiny cars (Corolla, Sentra, etc) were too small. Even the Mustang is not particularly comfortable for him.
Fine. What about hydrogen, Miss Smarty-Pants? What bad can you say about that? Other than the fact that the technology is so expensive right now you can’t actually buy a Honda Clarity, and have to lease one and the only place you can get Hydrogen Fuel is in California?
Well, nothing. That really is all there is too it. Hydrogen cars do not fundamentally change the way we drive, are clean-burning and seriously reduce our dependence on oil. They are perfect, apart from the fact that they are incredibly expensive and not available everywhere.
You know the joke about the two most common elements in the universe? Hydrogen and Stupidity. It seems, in this case, they’re working against each other. People are so focused on the impractical (electric cars) and the stop-gap measures (hybrids, which only slightly reduce our consumption) that they’re overlooking a viable solution. If we can get the price down, and change over gasoline stations to hydrogen stations, everyone wins. We get our long drives and road trips, the environment gets fewer emissions and a lower dependency on oil.
I’m sure I haven’t covered everything. I honestly didn’t realize how much there is to say on the topic, and I could probably go on for quite some time, adding, revising, tweaking… but I’m already at 3,500 words and have probably bored you to tears.
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*waves back*
(If I'd known Missouri people would read this, I'd have put a bit in about how you need an SUV to navigate the potholes! *zing!* Sorry, that was uncalled for... ~.^)
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(*falls over laughing* Nah, nah, it's okay!!! Potholes are an improvement on my gravel roads!)