How to Find Vehicles That Do Less Damage

Hey Mr. Green,

I drive a Honda Civic coupe, but I am incredibly active outdoors and it’s somewhat difficult to fit all the stuff for my treks into such a small vehicle. Are there any larger vehicles that aren't terribly hurtful to the environment? I also need something that can handle rough dirt roads.

--Dan in Genola, Utah

If you're thinking SUV, some of the hybrid SUVs like Ford’s Escape or Mazda’s Tribute would give you decent gas mileage, though some other hybrids are no easier on the environment than many gas-guzzling conventional SUVs. If space is more of a concern to you than ability to survive on gnarly roads, you might consider some conventional station wagons, too. Audi and Volkswagen have models that get 42 mpg on the highway and 30 mpg in the city. Also, keep in mind that, unlike other vehicles, hybrids usually get better mileage in the city than on the highway, so a hybrid may be a good choice for people who have to do a lot of city driving. For example, the Ford Escape hybrid two-wheel-drive SUV gets 36 mpg in the city and 31 on the road, while Toyota's Highlander hybrid gets 27 mpg in the city and 25 on the highway

You can compare all vehicles of the major manufacturers by going to the EPA's fuel-economy site (sorry, Mr. Green can’t do your homework for you). When you click on any manufacturer, you see the available choices. Another click takes you right to mpg ratings, air pollution scores, and even estimated fuel costs for cars made in recent years, plus mpg ratings going all the way back to 1984, if you’re considering a used model.

Finally, remember that speeding and lousy maintenance can cause any car, no matter how efficient, to burn a whole lot more fuel than it should. So stay under the speed limit and keep your tires properly inflated. For more thorough advice on saving gas, visit the Federal Trade Commission and Natural Resources Canada’s sites. Your tax dollars at work.

Accounting for All That Goes Into a Hybrid Car

Hey Mr. Green,

Does your analysis of hybrid cars’ energy use account for all the fuels used in shipping cars and parts to different countries, making the batteries, and so on?

--Branden in Austin, Texas

Yes, the analyses I consulted, such as those from Argonne National Laboratory, include "upstream" and "downstream" inputs to the manufacture, distribution, and disposal, or to use another weary metaphor, “cradle-to-grave inputs.”

Shipping by sea is nowhere near the energy drain some anti-globalist and locavore zealots claim. The amount of energy required even to send a car halfway around the world only amounts to only a tiny fraction of what it’s gonna burn on the road! A huge ship can move more than ton of material 1,000 miles on only a gallon of fuel. The international shipping average is estimated around 422 miles per ton per gallon, and that’s a fairly conservative number because it includes less efficient ships that may well use more fuel that those hauling cars. Like it or not, this is a major reason why multinationals can afford to be multinationals.

Right here on terra firma is where we burn the bulk of our fossil fuel. In fact, of all the cargo shipped by sea, about a third is oil itself, almost all of which is burned by us clueless land-lubbers. People who harp about the evils of long-distance shipping might just be projecting their own local energy waste onto “distant ships sailing into the mist,” as Bob Dylan pictured them in his astoundingly allusive and complex “Jokerman.”

A typical semi truck with a 30-ton load burns about six to eight times more fuel per ton-mile than the biggest cargo ships, but that’s nothing compared to air freight, which can guzzle from 30 to 100 times more fuel per ton-mile as a large ship. Also, a lot of the fuel used in ships, known as "bunker fuel," is actually recycled oil, though this isn’t nearly as environmentally friendly as it sounds. This fuel is, as you can imagine, quite dirty, so the real problem with ships is less energy use than toxic emissions of sulfur, nitrogen oxides, lung-clogging microparticulates, and other pollutants. This is why the International Maritime Organization has begun to take steps to force ships to clean up their emissions near U.S. and Canadian coasts – thanks in large part to a long campaign by our friends at Friends of the Earth.

Finally, to the hybrid-cars battery controversy. There’s been some substantial clouds of blog-fog from chronic hybrid dissers, in which the claim is that it takes more energy to get the nickel for a hybrid’s batteries than a Hummer would burn in its entire supersize life. As I’ve noted, if this were the case, hybrid manufacturers couldn’t even afford the batteries, let alone the whole bleepin’ car, since the Hummer would burn more than $15,000 worth of gas at today’s prices before it hit 100,000 miles. The nickel used to make the batteries is mostly recycled, which requires far less energy than would be needed if it had to be mined and smelted anew.

Carpools vs. Crotch Rockets

Hey Mr. Green,

Do two people in a car produce fewer total emissions per person than one rider on a motorcycle?

--Jason in South Pasadena, California

Motorcycles, being much smaller than cars, can burn way less fuel, and therefore can emit less carbon dioxide. But not all crotch rockets are created equal, so two folks in a car could easily produce less CO2 than one motorcycle rider, depending on the bike's engine size. Honda's 1,832-cubic-centimeter Gold Wing, for instance, gets only an estimated 36 miles per gallon, while its little 108-cc Elite scooter buzzes along at 107 mpg.

Smaller models of many other brands also burn way less fuel than their big brothers.
Pollution-wise, however, many motorcycles are nowhere near as clean as cars, because they are allowed to emit higher levels of such pollutants as nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons. Even under the EPA's latest standards, a bike can legally gurgle out almost 20 times as much hydrocarbon as a midsize car, while some older bikes can produce 90 times as much. So, if solo commuters would get social and carpool, autos could handily beat many motorcycles.

That said, it's a shame so many Americans, unlike Europeans, still regard motorcycles not as modest, low-impact transportation, but instead as macho lifestyle statements--like Star Motorcycle's 1,700-cc VMAX, advertised as an "iconic beast" and the "ultimate muscle bike." That's the sort of hog the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson rode with Hell's Angel Sonny Barger at a velocity rivaling that achieved when they blasted Thompson's ashes out of a cannon at his funeral.

So motorcycles have an identity crisis similar to that of bicycles: Just as pedal-powered two-wheelers have yet to be fully liberated from the realm of recreational toys and taken seriously as transportation, motorcycles need to go beyond noise and testosterone to play a bigger role as earth-friendly transport.

Firing Up the MPG Battle Again

Hey Mr. Green,

Can you drive a stake into the persistent myth that hybrid cars are bad from a cradle-to-grave carbon footprint perspective? I am tired of someone (who is mechanically inclined and has much more time on his hands than me) going on about the MPG of his 1993 Mustang.

--Russell in Framingham, Massachusetts

I've pounded a stake into the heart of this myth on a half-dozen occasions, sometimes with acerbic wit or by way of a two-fisted feminist theory (scroll down to Feb. 21, 2008). I've corrected its contrarian faithful such as George Will and his disciples, and I've addressed the topic in my book and other venues. But it's time to swing away again, because the myth persists to slither free from its stake.

Roughly 25 percent of the hybrid car's lifetime cradle-to-grave energy use goes into manufacturing it. According to the EPA, the 2010 Prius gets 51 miles per gallon in the city and 48 on the highway, while the most efficient 1993 Mustang (a five-speed stick shift) gets 19 in the city and 27 on the highway. Let's say that the driving is evenly split between city and highway. So the Mustang averages 23 mpg, while the Prius gets 49.5.

If your friend continues to have the time to tinker with, adore, and extol his Mustang for another 150,000 miles, he'll burn 6,522 gallons of gas. The Prius will burn 3,030 gallons in the same 150,000 miles. But since about 25 percent of this amount will have been used to make the Prius, it will actually burn the equivalent of 3,788 gallons, or 2,734 fewer gallons than the Mustang. So the 'Stang will emit about 26 tons more carbon than the Prius over those miles, not to mention a lot more air pollutants like ozone, nitrogen oxide, and assorted hydrocarbons.

Of course, your buddy could lower his carbon footprint to a sub-Prius level simply by carpooling, in the event that he ever attains full-time employment.

Planes or Trains: Which is Greener?

Hey Mr. Green,

What of the recent claim that trains can be as hard on the environment as airplanes?

--Mark in Richmond, California

Yes, they "can," but remember that the operative word is "can," not "are," because not all trains are created equal. Some best planes environmentally, and some don't. But a bad rap on trains may be spreading because of some rather superficial interpretations of recent transit research. So let's try to get the facts straight before right-wing pundits start whipping up anti-train sentiment by twisting the truth -- like they already have been by dissing everything from hybrid cars to fluorescent bulbs to bicycles.

So it all depends on the kind of train, what type of infrastructure is built to support it, where it's located, what kind of energy it runs on, and how many passengers ride. It seems fairly obvious that if a train has few riders, it may well be burning more fuel per "passenger mile" and spewing out more pollution per mile than a packed airplane. Conversely, it may emit less per passenger if it's jam-packed.

But comparing methods of travel gets a lot more complicated when you go beyond engine energy and look at the total environmental impact of everything from obtaining all the raw materials needed to manufacture everything involved, and to build and maintain roads, rails, and airports. Such variables were recently analyzed in an astonishing doctoral dissertation by Mikhail V. Chester at the University of California, Berkeley. No wonder this document and an article by Chester and his dissertation director Arpad Horvath have attracted attention to the train/plane question. What these guys do is go way beyond comparing energy use and greenhouse gases from vehicles themselves, and look at the energy and pollutants (like sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and carbon monoxide) generated by processes from the entire life cycle of planes, trains, and cars and the infrastructures that support them. Chester even researches the impact of maintaining insurance on the various modes of motion!

What we get from this comprehensive life cycle analysis is what's indicated above. For example, the San Francisco Bay Area's electric train-transit system known as BART is responsible for substantially less carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions per passenger mile than any plane. But Boston's Green Line light rail is responsible for slightly more carbon dioxide than midsize and large aircraft, but way less nitrous oxide. Yet it almost bumps the top of the chart on sulfur dioxide emissions. If Boston were less dependent on fossil fuels, the numbers would look very different. In fact, as these researchers point out, all comparisons can change drastically if energy sources, technologies, and demographics change.

You'll notice that I mentioned they also compare cars to other modes of transportation. Because of this, it seems to me that people who dwell on the train/plane issue have got the whole thing upside down. In almost every category, planes and trains are far better for the environment than individual passenger vehicles. San Francisco's BART accounts for less than half as much carbon dioxide per passenger mile as an SUV.  But remember, we're talking "per passenger mile" throughout. If more people only had the good sense and social grace to carpool, motor vehicles would be far less ruinous.

All this should warn us not to use data perversely. A comparison of San Francisco's commuter train with a large jet doesn't mean all that much, because nobody is flying on the morning commute, though Steve Jobs once reportedly used a helicopter. But the fact that a commuter train, whether Boston's or San Francisco's is so much better than a car, makes it the best option for such areas. What's most useful about this kind of research is that it helps us view a system holistically. Yes, that a train might not be the ideal solution, and, yes, it could be a boondoggle in the name of environment if it doesn’t have enough riders or requires intense construction efforts or is too dependent on fossil-fuel energy.

Finally, there's your basic geography. Long commutes and trips to the mall from oversized houses out in the sprawl create environmental dilemmas no matter what the mode of transportation. After all, New York City's carbon footprint is only a third of the national average, thanks to its compactness, transit system, and apartments that average half the size of new houses in the suburbs. A ban on building in the middle of nowhere might be more important than the transportation we choose to get to and from it.

Cruise Ships: The Straight Scoop

Hey Mr. Green,

We've had friends cruise to Alaska and others who have traveled the Caribbean. I've got unconfirmed suspicions that these vessels are no more than floating garbage disposals and toilets. What are the practices and legal requirements of these cruise lines when it comes to disposing of onboard waste?

--Ron in Newport Beach, California

Cruise ships can indeed dump a lot of foul and dangerous stuff in our oceans. An imposing, mansion-esque boat packing 3,000 passengers can harbor a mess in its bowels reminiscent of that bubbling swamp in Dante’s Inferno. Essentially a floating town (it takes more than a village), a cruise ship can generate more than 200,000 gallons of human sewage and a million gallons of graywater per week, not to mention thousands of gallons of oily bilge water and other toxic materials. Going into specific rules and regulations would land us in an arcane discussion of allowable parts per milliliter of fecal coliform bacteria, the operation of Type II marine sanitation devices, and details as perplexing as the Big D’s theology itself (our medieval poet is making a comeback as a noted hip-hop moralist.)

So here’s the basic deal: cruise ships are allowed to dump raw sewage whenever they’re more than 3 nautical miles offshore. Within 3 miles, they can dump treated sewage, but how well-treated is a dirty little question, since in these dumpings, the EPA has found concentrations of coliform bacteria as much as 10,000 times higher than the allowable max for sewage. Cruise effluent can pollute beaches, harm marine animals, and even cause dead zones. When the ships get 25 miles out, they can simply dump or incinerate many types of garbage, and they can also dump the ash of the trash.

These are some of the reasons why Friends of the Earth filed a petition with the EPA to tighten up the 30-year-old regulations of the Clean Water Act, and is strongly backing  the Clean Cruise Ship Act, soon to be introduced in the Senate by Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and in the House by Sam Farr (D-Calif.) To support this move to clean up shores and oceans, click here.

The proposal will seek a ban on sewage and oily bilge closer than 12 miles from shore, as well as strict treatment standards and stronger reporting requirements for wastewater treatment. Alaska’s rules are much stricter than the outdated federal requirements, so FOE envisions something resembling that state’s policy to become a national requirement for our coasts.

Despite the problems, you don’t need to avoid a cruise—if you can afford a cruise—because some lines are cleaning up their act, thanks to pressure from environmentalists. According a report card issued by Friends of the Earth, the cleanest cruise lines are Holland America and Norwegian Cruise Lines. Both bagged an “A” for their sewage-treatment practices and a “B” and “B-” overall respectively, whereas the worst were Royal Caribbean, which got a “D” on sewage and an “F” overall, and Disney Cruise Line, which flunked with an “F” on sewage and an “F” overall.

For far more detailed information about this issue, and about other ocean-protection topics, you are invited to contact Friends of the Earth ocean defender Marcie Keever.

Are Hybrids Worth It?

Hey Mr. Green,
 
I'm shopping for a used car and am seriously considering a used hybrid, such as a Civic or Prius. Friends have warned me that hybrid batteries wear out and are very expensive to replace. So what is the expected life of a used hybrid battery and what do new hybrid batteries cost? I emailed the same question to the Car Talk guys, but their auto-response said they get 500 emails a day, so they are unlikely to be able to respond.

-- Dale Wright in Tacoma, Washington

I’m honored to fill in for the worthy Car Talk guys, and relish another opportunity to refute those chronic hybrid-dissers who keep busy contriving anti-hybrid arguments. Even if you did have replace the battery, you’d still probably come out money ahead with the hybrid.

The expected battery life, according to Toyota, is at least 100,000 miles or 8 years for the first-generation Prius models. To back this up, the batteries of the first-generation Priuses are covered by warranty for this mileage and time period, and both companies report a very low failure rate even for batteries past their warranty period.

In some states (your neighboring Oregon and California, plus Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, batteries of second-generation Priuses (2004 to 2008) are covered for 150,000 miles or 10 years. So if you buy a used hybrid, be sure you have the warranty because if the battery croaked before reaching these miles or age, you shouldn't have to pay to replace it. The Honda battery life expectancy and warranties are the same.

Toyota says that its recommended price for a a battery pack for a first-generation Prius is $2,299, while the price or the battery pack for the second-generation cars (2004 to 2008 models) is $2,588. That's the battery price itself; the individual dealer’s markup and charges for labor will of course add to this. So you’re looking at something around $3,000 to $3,500 if the hybrid has exceeded the warranty limits. Honda has similar prices for the Civic.

A lot of money, yes, but, if you drive the Prius sensibly, you should get around 45 miles per gallon. So, that means you get 20 mpg more than the all-too-typical 25. If you drive 10,000 miles per year, you'd save 188 gallons per year, or $564 at $3 per gallon. So in five or six years (or sooner, if gas prices go up drastically, as they occasionally do), your fuel savings would cover the cost of battery replacement.

Of course, I don't recommend that everybody rush out and buy a Prius. It depends on what you can afford and what the car costs. As I've said before, some folks might be better off buying a cheaper car with lower mpg, and investing the extra cash in other energy-saving measures, like insulation, solar panels, a new furnace, and so on.

What to Look for When Car-Shopping Besides MPG?

Hey Mr. Green,

While I very much appreciate your cash for clunkers calculator, I very much doubt I can afford a new car even with a clunker rebate. So I'm shopping for a moderately priced used car. I want high mileage, but also reasonable safety and reliability. I plan to look at back issues of Consumer Reports to try to estimate miles per gallon of various models I'm considering. Is there anything besides MPG that I should consider to keep my carbon footprint low as possible? Anything else I need to look for?  Any pertinent websites you can direct me to?

-- Dale, location undisclosed

The most helpful website for MPG of cars both new and used is the EPA’s economy.gov. Go there and click on “find and compare cars.” Your tax dollars at work. (Better check soon, before some yahoos at a town meeting howl “socialism” loud enough to get the site shut down.)

There are indeed huge considerations regarding your carbon footprint besides MPG. The biggest single one is if you really even need to own a car. More and more folks are actually getting along fine without one, with membership in a car-share service, taking cabs and mass transit, or biking.

Besides reducing their carbon footprint, they are saving a lot of money, because costs of owning and operating a car dwarf the cost of the gas it needs. Add to the gas the price of maintenance, insurance, licensing, financing, and, alas, depreciation, it takes a whopping total $9,641 to own and drive a medium-size sedan 15,000 miles per year, according to AAA. Less than a fourth of this cost is for gasoline. The rest is overhead. For comparisons of different-size cars, click here.

Finally, if you do buy a car, try to think about the bigger financial picture. Don’t simply compare cars’  MPG, but their prices too, and considering your entire energy-consumption portfolio If you have enough money to buy, say, a $15,000 car that gets 35 MPG and a $5,000 model that gets 25 MPG, you might be able to reduce your energy and carbon footprint a lot more by purchasing the cheaper model and spending the extra $10,000 on other energy-conserving measures, which could be anything from a new heating system to investing in a renewable-energy company.  

Thoroughly Exhausted by Smog Test

Hey Mr. Green,

I just waited in line at the DMV to get my car's emissions tested. It took about 20 minutes. Plus, the closest inspection site was 15 miles from my house. As we sat there idle and idling, I wondered whether it wouldn't be better for the air just to eliminate the emissions inspections. Now that most cars are relatively cleaner than they were back in the '70s, how many polluting cars do these inspections take off the road each year, compared to the impact of having every car in the state drive to an inspection station and sit idling for 20 minutes?

–Allen in Potomac, Maryland

First, I hope you weren’t idling while you were in the line, and that you are referring to the idling that was done while the car was being tested. As I’ve noted before, idling is a no-no.

I haven’t been able to determine the national total flunked clunkers taken off the road because of smog tests, but it’s clearly substantial. In California, for example, from 2000 to 2003, more than 20,000 vehicles that failed tests were officially retired in buyback programs. The actual number taken off the road had to have been far greater, because this figure only represents owners who actually bothered to go through the rather bureaucratic buyback process.

Yes, huge progress has been made in cutting air pollution from cars. Thanks to EPA rules, a big drop in deadly emissions occurred between 1970 and 1997, and they’re being further decreased by the implementation of new restrictions set during the Clinton administration. We can all breathe easier, literally, because the coalition of the greedy who wrecked our economy with deregulation schemes didn’t manage to kill our environmental rules—though some of their libertarian/free-market intellectual whores whipped up many specious arguments for doing precisely that.

But in wondering if the air is half-full or half-empty, keep in mind that the net reduction of auto pollution isn’t as great as may first appear. One reason, as I’ve noted before, is that we now have 115 million more cars and SUVs on the road than in 1970, and we drive them 2,400 miles farther each year, burning 40 billion more gallons of fuel in them. Therefore, many gains have been offset by the sheer increase in the number of vehicles. Yes, we succeeded in reducing dangerous small particles (soot, basically) by 75 percent, and we brought down some other nasty pollutants by more than 30 percent (though nitrogen oxide actually increased). The heftiest and certainly healthiest reduction of a serious poison came when the government flat-out banned lead additives from gasoline, which helped bring emissions from this brain-damaging heavy metal down from 220,000 tons to only 5,000 tons per year.

Finally, not only are there millions of clunkers still on the road that should be sent to recycling heaven, but even state-of-the-art pollution-control devices can and do fail, as can any technology. So all things considered, for the time being, I consider smog tests well worth the effort.

Prius or Jetta: Which is Greener?

Hey Mr. Green,

I need to buy a new vehicle soon and am deciding between a 2010 Prius and the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Diesel Sedan, which just won Green Car Journal’s Green Car of the Year award. In your opinion, which car is better for the environment?

–Jonathan in Racine, Wisconsin

If you’re looking at the 2009 models, the Prius’s total carbon dioxide emissions are 4 tons per year, compared to 6.2 for a six-speed manual VW Jetta diesel according to the EPA. These numbers assume 15,000 miles per year, 45 percent in the city, 55 on the highway. The Prius also gets a better overall air-pollution score, because there are still some problems with diesel emissions, though the Volkswagen has made great strides in solving these. 

Regarding 2010 models, the EPA has not yet listed ratings for the Jetta but puts the Prius at a combined city/highway rate 50 miles per gallon, and only 3.7 tons of carbon emissions. I hope the Jetta will come close to that. So keep an eye on the EPA ratings at this link for the latest comparison; the site also lets you recalibrate these basic numbers to your personal auto use. For example, the Prius gets better mileage in town than on the highway, whereas the Jetta does better on the highway. So if most of your driving is on the open road, the Jetta could be a better choice. To find out more about how green any vehicle is, look at the EPA’s information at this link.

Granted, there’s been a lot of buzz about the Jetta because one guy got more 58 mpg driving a Jetta around the country, and some others have beaten the EPA rating. But unless you’re one of these “hypermilers” whose driving practices are enormously prudent, you probably won’t match this.

OK, I already hear howls of protest from people who don’t trust the EPA ratings because their cars go a lot better or worse than EPA claims they should. There are even some conspiracy theorists convinced that the EPA is plotting with some car makers to bestow favorable or unfavorable ratings.  But it’s more likely that the disparities result because the drivers of several hundred million cars in this country consist of both hyper- and hypo-milers. The hypos get rotten mileage mainly because they 1) drive too fast, 2) idle their engines excessively, and 3) neglect basic maintenance, like keeping tires properly inflated. All these can make a big difference in fuel consumption. Obviously, we should all strive to be hypermilers, and there are plenty of how-to-hyper ideas online.

My own experience suggests that bad driving explains much of the failure to match EPA ratings.  I haven't owned a car in years, but I do rent them. The various vehicles I've driven over these years have usually equaled or exceeded the EPA’s ratings (when I prorate their performance to account for disgraceful speeding, they still meet the standard). Admittedly, this is not a controlled experiment, but it does suggest that the disparity between rating and reality lies not with the EPA, but with ourselves.