Crushing Blows: EV1 is Behind Us So Who is Crushing Cars Now?

This is one of those eerie times when I feel the silence before that moment when lack of knowledge becomes full knowledge and those who find out the truth cannot go back (and I won't be able to take back what I am getting ready to say).

Its kinda like the answer to: "Do storks really bring babies?" only I am answering the neighbor's kid.

Cars get crushed every day but not just in the junk yards where wrecked and unrepairable cars go to die.

Which cars are getting crushed?
Some cars are squeaky clean, have leather seats, full navigation systems, V6's or V8 engines with far less than 30,000 miles on them. They still have that new car smell and in some cases, will still have bits of protective film covering the interior parts. For the most part they could never be considered damaged except for the odd scratch or ding that comes from brushing against the car or pulling a suitcase out of the trunk. Most of them are so new that they are not even on the dealers' lots yet so they are considered pre-production vehicles but are made pretty much the way subsequent ones will be made. Later ones are just made faster.

Who is crushing this lost tribe of cars?
Their makers. The automotive manufacturers, foreign and domestic.

What was their crime?
They were review cars for journalists, film cars for advertising placement in big budget movies and television shows and sometimes were just lenders to high profile (and sometimes B-list) celebrities. Sometimes they only sat on an auto show floor for the public to crawl in and out of. They were part of the marketing engine.

Why are they being crushed?
To tell you the truth, not by the choice of the manufacturers. No creator likes to see their offspring, their pride and joy, the result of years of hard work reduced to an over-sized smashed can. Some of these cars are such special editions that they have features and packages that will never be seen in combination again and could be valued at an extremely high price (if they even could be sold). But they have to crush them. The government requires that they destroy them. These cars are usually off the same production line that the cars come from for safety tests and so are licensed to the manufacturer but the title is not transferable. You cannot legally register one of these cars even if the manufacturer sold it in a charity auction. A rogue auto employee couldn't even hide one in their garage forever; the government checks up on these things!

The cars are not even allowed to be dismantled so that parts like seats and stereos can be reused because the government knows that eventually someone would build their own car out of refuse. Mind you, perfectly good, often high end refuse.

I am not pointing fingers at any manufacturer in particular because they are all held to the same standards. Maybe this will make some of them uncomfortable that I am even telling you this and I want to reinforce to them that, on this point, I am on your side. What would be better for brand building than to see rare editions turn up in auctions like vintage rare edition cars can and sell for ridiculously cool prices?

And to those of us who have driven these cars: I feel guilty and sad when I see my time end with one of these cars destined to be destroyed. Sometimes I wonder if I have played a part in a wasteful destruction. What I do know is that the manufacturers don't like it either. It is an unspoken death because their hands are tied.

"When did this start?" "Is their a solution?" "Can I write to my congressman?"

All that I know is that at a time when the car makers are being criticized for wasteful behavior it is makes sense to sometimes look further than the actions and try to get to the reason. There are always blatant examples within every company (automotive and non-automotive related) where waste can be highlighted in the media. It is sometimes the unspoken waste resulting from an industry held to standardized practices for safety and the environment directly by the government and the manufacturer swallowing, taking their lump and trying to move ahead that should be reported.

Most of this government regulation stems from emissions and safety concerns but to such a degree that one European luxury manufacturer will not import its very saleable models because they are handmade and the government wants a dozen or so to crash. These regulations also are the reason that a lot of American manufacturers do not sell their best models in the US.

RIP all of the 2009 cars conceived by artists, executed by engineers and have now gone to meet their maker.

XOO,Michelle

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Is there a cost to going green?

A rebel with a cause
While toiling online one day, I stumbled upon an interesting eco-story. The venerable General Motors EV1 had popped up in the news but with a much different angle to its ordinary “greenliness”.

The story I came across was about an EV1 that had sold for $465,000. GM had stipulated in their EV1 leases that all cars be returned to them, with all but a few destroyed. This particular car has apparently escaped the crusher.

This lone rebel got me thinking. One thing that has always baffled me about the move to green technology, particularly in cars, is the economic and environmental impact of the science itself. To get more specifice, what about all those batteries?

Batteries are everywhere but to whose benefit?
There’s a palatable push by the pro-green movement to pressure the world’s automakers to build hybrid and all-electric cars, in spite of the fact that the technology is still in its infancy. Battery technology has evolved but not to the point of futuristic unlimited charges.

But because of that, a battery is thought of as disposable, tossed away when its no longer useful.

Whether it be hybrid or electric, automakers are dropping hundreds of pounds of batteries into cars, all in the name of being green and attracting the newly formed green buyer.

What of the batteries? Is there a guarantee that the vehicle’s power source won’t land up in the city dump?

The economic impact brings its own price. Hybrid and electric cars carry a premium. And, particularly with hybrids, the dollars you save by not buying gas does not offset the systems initial cost or the cost to replace it. Pocketbooks are having a say more than ever regarding vehicle purchases and scrimp is its middle name.

Batteries as a commodity
Can batteries be considered a commodity, not unlike oil? A battery isn’t made up of too many parts but the most important in today’s eco-friendly car battery is lithium.

Toyota’s Prius uses nickel-metal hydride batteries. Recent improvements with lithium-ion cells means some of the new hybrid and plug-in electric cars will use this technology.

Lithium carbonate, which is extracted from dried salt ponds, is processed to make lithium. South America and China possess the most abundant sources of lithium. Is the supply limited? Hard to tell, but as demand goes up, so will the price. Sound familiar?

There’s been much debate surrounding petroleum’s global impact. Is there any impact to the environment from all these batteries? Are all nickel-metal hydride and lithium batteries recycled?

An integral part of being green is reducing your use of petroleum and the products created from it. I suspect it’s going to take many small solutions to replace the only one we’ve ever had.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Andy Mrozinskiy

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Looking Forward to Carbon Again

A bit ago I wrote about high-performance carbon, the tuner culture and how carbon could change how cars are being made.

As a big fan of the eccentric & genius Buckminster Fuller I was intrigued by the idea of buckypaper in an article about how this new material could change the way that cars, airplanes and more could be revolutionized. Buckypaper is described as "10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite".

IT IS 50,000 TIMES THINNER THAN A HUMAN HAIR!

This train of thought ( and a conversation with a friend) lead me to the Airstream of my dreams by good ol' Bucky: the Dynomax.

Buckypaper is not just a tribute to the great designer, Buckminster Fuller.
It is actually referential to buckminsterfullerene (an alltrope...you don't really want a science lesson today, do you?).

Point is, designing a car that isn't based on a combustion engine is one thing. The entire floor and structure will change- and can be changed- and that changes the way the designers aesthetically address the shape of cars. Those hybrids,though, are based on structures that are made of traditional materials that are heavy and enable protective qualities to the entire unit.
They are just a traditional car where the engine, like interstitial windshield wipers, have been tweaked. They are only half of the new product.

A new exterior concept combined with a re-designed drive train (that includes alternative energy concepts, ya'll) would really give new definition to environmentally friendly autos.

What carbon, better yet, Buckypaper does is change the way the entire production line functions, how balance, stance, speed, efficiencies and aesthetics are addressed. This is the place that science and design will really make a marked change in the way that we perceive automobile design.

Just take the Dynomax: it was so sleekly designed that Bucky Fuller claimed it would go 120 mph easily but there is no documentation that it ever went over 90 miles an hour without the rear end lifting off the ground.In this case Bucky was just using a stock Ford V-8 engine with a (oh those dreamer artists!) new
exterior- half of a new product.

Interestingly the name of the engineer, brilliant as he may be, who developed the hybrid engine that's being replicated over and over again by all of the manufacturers, is not rolling off the tip of the tongue of neither gear heads nor the consumers. It will be that perfect combination of designer and engineer and artist that will change the way we perceive cars forever.

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Honda Insight: Ahead of its time

I have been watching sale prices on used Honda Insight's lately. There appears to have been a real resurgence of interest in these small fuel-efficient hybrids. Well, perhaps it’s unfair to say “resurgence” since they didn’t exactly set the world on fire with sales when they were new. I would attribute this to Honda being a bit too far ahead of its time and now that the entire automotive landscape in the U.S. has suddenly started to look surprisingly like Europe they are becoming quite hot commodities.

For those of you not familiar with this model, it was a real technology tour de force for Honda, combining their hybrid Integrated Motor Assist with an ultra-efficient and light-weight two-seat vehicle. It was also the first hybrid-electric vehicle available in the U.S. and was rated at 70 mpg highway by the DOT standards at the time. Honda stopped selling them in 2006 after poor sales. Forbes reported near the end of the model’s availability that in some months Honda only sold 8 Insight's in the United States. Yes, 8!

I reviewed one when new and was pretty astounded. The driving experience reminded me of the old Honda CRX, especially the HF model. It was light, nimble, surprisingly roomy for a tiny two-seater, and with the manual transmission it was fun to drive. I thought it was awesome, but to be fair I was also a fan of the GM EV1, so I was a bit biased.

The Insight cost a bit over $20,000 when new and if this Craigslist posting is to be believed, they are now selling for nearly the same prices used. There’s also this eBay listing for another Insight with low miles asking for over $25,000.

It appears that Honda may have pulled the car from the market just a bit too early.

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Compressed Natural Gas Cars: It Ain't Easy Being Green

This recent listing on Craigslist for a used Honda Civic GX, a rare model that only runs on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), sparked Miss Motor Mouth to ask me for some more information. What’s with CNG cars? Are they clean? What are the advantages or disadvantages? Where does one purchase fuel for them?

Most of us are familiar with CNG vehicles primarily in mass-transit use, such as shuttle buses at airports or city buses. The low emissions of CNG vehicles (think about it, this is the same stuff many of us cook with inside our homes) allows them to meet the tough PZEV emissions levels make them good choices for mass-transit operations concerned with their fleet emissions. Fuel cost is also low… reportedly about half the cost of gasoline per mile. Natural gas is also plentiful here in the U.S. so CNG use potentially reduces reliance on imported fuel. There are definitely some exciting upsides to CNG. Fleet use also eliminates many of the challenges associated with the fuel that affects individual drivers.

Those CNG buses are often easily identifiable because of the large auxiliary gas tanks on their roofs. This is needed because CNG has a substantial disadvantage relative to gasoline in terms of energy density. It takes over 126 cubic feet of natural gas to provide the same energy equivalent (measured in BTUs) as one gallon of gasoline. So, while the fuel costs a lot less you simply cannot carry as much of it at a time so range is limited in a regular-sized vehicle. In the case of the new 2009 Civic GX, according to Honda one can carry the energy equivalent of 8 gallons of gasoline (compared to 13.2 gallons for a normal Civic sedan) but this is with an enlarged high-compression tank that reduces cargo capacity to 6 cubic feet (half of the regular Civic sedan’s 12 cu. Ft. trunk capacity). With a combined EPA fuel efficiency of 26 mpg, this provides a driving range of a bit over 200 miles.

Buses equipped with auxiliary tanks can make up for much of the range deficiency. Fleets also provide their own refueling stations since they can utilize a central location for maintenance every night. However, public refueling for CNG cars is limited. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are only 109 public CNG refueling stations in the state of California… the state with the most developed infrastructure. The state of New York offers 28 such stations, for comparison. To make matters worse, these aren’t exactly gas stations on convenient street corners or right off the freeway exit. They tend to be available because they also serve those aforementioned fleets, so drivers need to visit airports, municipal maintenance lots, or the local energy company’s headquarters.

Like electric cars, however, there is an alternative… home fueling. If you have gas coming into your home the cleverly-named Phill home CNG fueling station can be installed, allowing one to use this existing pipeline. However, again like electric cars this isn’t a fast process. Phill’s manufacturer says it takes about 4 hours to refill the gas used for about 50 miles of driving at an average of 30 mpg. That’s 2.4 hours per gallon equivalent, or in other words, that Honda GX will take 19.2 hours to fill from empty. This makes recharging a Tesla look like a NASCAR pit stop.
Phill also costs about $4,000 not including between $1,500 and $2,000 for installation… quickly wiping out the savings realized from the cheaper fuel and some available tax credits. Then again, in California you do get to drive in the HOV lane.

Steve Haas

Ed. note~ A 2009 Honda Civic GX listed on Craigslist with further information about CNG cars.

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Greening of Car Manufacturing and more About PZEV

So you have a cell phone plan and you go over minutes every month for years but the phone company never charges you...sounds like a dream come true, right?

Well, that will never happen and that kind of monitoring has a reason! It costs them (mostly man hours) to maintain their systems. The way the government is monitoring the environment is kind of the same way.

Car manufacturing is not environmentally friendly usually although Ford and Subaru are reaching in the right direction. Add to all of that the federal and state governments monitoring carbon emissions from not only the activities of the car manufacturing process but also the environmental effect that their cars cause.

In an effort to reduce emissions dramatically the State of California created a new category for Partial Zero Emission Vehicles based on an agreement between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the manufacturers who sell cars in California. What CARB would have really loved to have done is passed a mandate that a growing percentage of vehicles being produced were Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEVs) but that would occur at a huge cost to the automotive manufacturers because it would require huge advances very quickly in systems such as hydrogen or electric fuel cells. I think that we all know that the recent fuel crunch and the current economy is having drastic reprecussions to the auto manufacturers sales.

By current PZEV standards, the cars are required to have a 15 year/15,000 mile warranty on emission-control components, have zero evaporative emissions on its fuel system and fall under the SULEV category. These cars are only available in the 5 "clean car states" California, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, or Vermont and will soon be available in Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington. All of these states have adopted California's pollution control rules.

Some other facts about PZEV:

• It has been said that a PZEV driving through Los Angeles County during times of high smog actually releases cleaner air out of its exhaust than it took into its system because it literally cleans the air.
• In the 15 year warrantied life of a PZEV emission sytem, it will emit less harmfull emissions than if you spilled a pint of gasoline on the pavement once. (see the picture of a gas spill at NASCAR- QUICK make another PZEV!!)
  
• There is a rumor about the amount of low carbon monoxide emissions from PZEVs but because this one is potentially dangerous and I do not have the facts, I am not going to publish it for now.

I wrote in my other details about PZEV in an article specifically about the Ford Focus PZEV yesterday and these emissions controls are pretty incredible and welcome in our smoggy city of Los Angeles.

Michelle Naranjo

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Ford is Becoming a Big PZEV Dispenser

It is always interesting to hear different manufacturer representatives talk about their green efforts which are sometimes major advances, occasionally gestures of good intentions and every so often admitting that they would like to jump on the green bandwagon are making changes as fast as their corporate machinery will allow. The economy and the recent erratic fuel prices have hit all of them creating an unpredictable future for all sales and impacting their ability to invest in new and emerging trends and technologies.

In the case of Ford, their sales are being hit by an economic downturn that, at this rate, could result in an annualized rate of sales down by 5 million units in 2008. But, that said, Ford is a big part of the numbers that show half of all new cars that were sold in June 2008 were 4 cylinder cars and even though that trend may change as the year progresses, Ford has rallied and responded to the downturn, just like every other manufacturer has, by doing a Big Re-think of their model.

One of their solutions which does a double whammy on their issues is bringing in an improved Focus model that is much closer in quality and style to their European issued Focus. That meets the customer demand for more high quality, less expensive & fuel efficient cars that do not feel like the old school metal lunch boxes known as the America Focus. The second point that this covers is a much needed environmentally friendly response to other manufacturers' solutions by offering the 2009 Focus with Partial Zero Emissions. These types of cars are commonly referred to as PZEVs.

What is interesting is that this feature of having a zero evaporative emissions from the fuel system costs the manufacturer, Ford, in this case, and extra $1200 on top of normal manufacturing costs to produce but the cost to the consumer is only $200 on top of the normal cost of a Focus.

Are they going to start giving cars away at or below their cost? Well, not exactly but because they are being required in some stated to produce these kinds of PZEVs, they also have to sell them successfully which means they have to take a bit of a loss to incentivize consumers to choose PZEV instead of a regular emissions vehicle.

So instead of keeping an older car that might get good gas mileage but is terrible for the environment, you can buy for under$16,000 a better quality, safer car that will produce less emissions during 5 round trip drives from Los Angeles to San Franciso than your gas powered lawn mower will emit in one hour of use.

The times, they are a changin'.

Michelle Naranjo

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Electric Porsche: A Classic Gone Green

Check out a great eBay listing: eBay Listing

Electric vehicle conversions have been around for a long time but I can't recall ever seeing one of a clean low mileage narrow-bodied Porsche 911. This 1973 911T appears to be a long-abandoned project, the owner claiming he undertook the adventure after his car failed to pass a smog check. Of interest for those attempting their own conversion is his link to his project details. It's an interesting read in its own right.

As he realizes now, perhaps a Porsche 911 isn't the best candidate for an electric conversion. There is probably a reason that cars like VW Rabbits tend to be popular for projects like this. Besides being cheap to buy those square lines and ample storage space for batteries make them easier projects. I won't even mention the recent price trends for early Porsche 911s… with engines of course.

On the other hand, with over 30 bids from 11 unique bidders (and over 6,400 page views) in only the first couple of days of the auction, there appears to be a lot of interest in this car. It would be interesting to see if the interest is in the clean rust-free 911 body shell or in completing this environmentally conscious project? In any case, the idea of a fun sports car that runs on electricity alone has been around longer than Tesla.

Steve Haas

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Drive a Classic Car and Save the World?

Rising fuel prices have made Americans more interested in learning about their environmental impact. While driving a new hybrid-electric car can create a certain smug satisfaction, others are quick to point out that there is an awful lot of energy used to manufacture new cars and transport them around the world to your local dealer. Recycling household waste is good, but what about cars? The ideal low-carbon vehicle would be a fuel-efficient classic, no? Well, Dave Kinney at Cars That Matter has developed a list of fuel-sipping classic cars that is a great thought starter.

As a classic car nut, I've owned a few of these (Spitfire 1500, MGB... two of them actually, which just proves that I'm a masochist, and an older Porsche 911 which is strangely left off of this list but averaged in the mid 20's for me).

I think this list is extremely interesting and also points out just how far our cars have come over the past 30 years. While the average economy of the U.S. car fleet hasn't gone up noticeably in the past 20 years, this is more due to the bigger share of trucks and SUVs in the mix. Individual cars are more fuel efficient, faster, cleaner and more comfortable than they ever were. Case in point from this list is the aforementioned MGB. While certainly a jaunty little British sports car, that 24 mpg average (pretty good in 1965) came from a car that weighed about 1,900 lbs, produced roughly 100 hp, and lacked features like three-point seat belts not to mention airbags, crush zones, ABS brakes, air conditioning, an FM radio, and an engine that could go more than two weeks without having to check things like dashpot oil levels (there's your quiz automotive for the day). Later MGBs gained modern seat belts and probably even offered some conveniences like 8-track players and ugly padded safety dashboards but also lost about 35% of their horsepower to emissions controls. In comparison, a modern Corvette offers safety levels unimaginable in 1980, every modern convenience, and 435 hp while averaging roughly the same fuel economy as that MGB. To make the comparison even more clear, in 1977 the Corvette offered 165 hp and averaged about 12 mpg!

Of course, I would point out that while a modern compact car is likely objectively superior in every way to that classic, there is something to be said for the idea of running errands in a romantic red Alfa Romeo Spider (24 mpg according to Cars That Matter).

In the vein of used sports cars that get decent mileage, I would suggest expanding this list forward a few years. 1989 (as a 1990 model year) brought the return of the classic roadster in the form of the Mazda Miata (well, to be fair, one could still buy an Alfa Romeo Spider in the U.S. at the time, but Mazda redefined the idea with modern reliability and lower cost). A 1.6 Liter Miata (1990-1994) easily gets 28 mpg and can be found used for just a few thousand dollars in good shape. Other interesting sports cars from that era include the Honda CRX and the Toyota MR2. So, you can have fun in a car that may become a future collectible, get acceptable fuel economy, and still gloat about the fact that you are driving a recycled car.

Steve Haas

~editor's note: Steve will be at Pebble Beach this weekend in the eBay booth where he will be assisting with the charity car auctions as his role as President of the AMerican Concours Association.

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Subaru: What Makes Them More Green Than You Would Think

Be patient with me for minute here and I am going to explain how Subaru's Travis Pastrana winning the 2008 X-Games Rally Race helps Subaru be a legit environmentally friendly auto manufacturer without having a single alternative energy car in the marketplace.

A bit ago I wrote about Travis Pastrana's film, 199 Lives in Subaru's Love Letter to Travis Pastrana and directly on the heels of his victory this week, I went to hear Tim Mahoney, VP of Subaru America's marketing division at a Motor Press Guild event. Mahoney's talk gave me a lot to think about and the one thing that really struck me was that Subaru is actually more green for three reasons (and these are my reasons, not Mahoney's):

1. Subaru's manufacturing plant in Indiana is 20 years environmentally conscious and is an industry example of how factories can co-exist with nature and communities. Among its accomplishments is that the plant recycles 99.3% of excess/leftover steel, plastic, wood, paper, glass, and other materials. The remaining 0.7% is shipped to the city of Indianapolis and incinerated to help generate steam and includes a wildlife habitat on site.
   
2. Something ridiculous like 90% of Subarus sold in the last 15 years are still on the road. It is completely normal for a Subaru to last 300,000 miles or more. And, Subaru owners are loyal: they will drive them until they can't go anymore and then get a new one meaning that over a lifetime, owners will own a minimum number of cars. That means that these are not disposable cars that increase nasty manufacturing waste.
   
3. Travis Pastrana may use a lot of fuel in his races but by endoring such a highly energetic young personality, Subaru has made a wise choice because Pastrana fans tend to be the young, outdoorsy, athletic and loyal customers that will make great converts to the Subaru way of life: manufacture clean and manufacture less.

Mahoney also mentioned that Subaru Japan will be working closely with Daihatsu in Japan on alternative energy cars but frankly, I find it refreshing to see that they are not jumping on the band wagon of throwing a hybrid or diesel engine in every model without knowing the full implications of a quick sale vs. unproven and questionable technologies.

Here is an example of 2 great used Subarus with a lot of life and pep left in them.

Michelle Naranjo

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Are Hybrids Really That Green? Jay Leno Thinks "Not So Much"

A few months ago I had a casual breakfast with the extremely nice, forward thinking and innovative guys from Spin-LA and we were discussing the state of the auto industry in light of the move to become more green. That conversation sparked a dialog with now many others about whether hybrid technology is in fact as exciting as some of us thought that it was a few years ago.

Unfortunately these moments where I think I am having a "dialog" are sometimes too challenging to hybrid fans and I have, erm, upset them on occasion. For example, practically every person who is referred in this article about hybrids retaining their value got cross with my questions about if their hybrid investments were actually worth the environmental impact that the manufacturing actually costs.

But I am not the only one, I swear! Jay Leno has done a at least a couple of interviews now about this very subject. Of course Jay, in his entire luckiness, is sitting on a mountain of investments other people call collector cars but the jest of his point is that many of these cars have less environmental impact thank current hybrid technologies because they are fuel efficient and their manufacturing impact has practically expired because they were made 40+ years ago.

There are all sorts of number out there that I am currently trying to sort through (statistics not being my forte) that indicate that based on the typical 3-year trade in mentality that most hybrid owner demographics practice, the production of a hybrid has more of a negative environmental impact than the typical Ford F-350 owner. These numbers are based on some of those magical numbers that constitute a carbon footprint profile and include the total number of BTUs needed to manufacture something. For example, a common hybrid on the market will take the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gas before it has a low carbon impact. Ford's pickups stay on the road an amazing number of years and pass through many owners without costing the environment any additional manufacturing impact.

John McCain even believes that we need to "leapfrog" current hybrid trends. Can we scramble fast enough to get the prize or, in light of the auto manufacturers now finally realizing that they were lazy and need to do some great R&D now for cars that will likely not be in production until post-2011, should we just wait and hold on to the cars that we have?

Not many of us would consider driving a Model T around but we do have to question whether a new car is always a necessity. Sure, older cars break but in the current economic climate, is a car payment on top of negative environmental consequences always the best idea?

XOO,M

Michelle Naranjo

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Fuel Saving Tips that Make Cents: Saving Money & Being Green

This is David Denberg, one of The Many Mouths of Mota. Today, I am posting as MotaGreen.

Monday, June 16, the national average per gallon of regular gas reached $4.08, the highest ever recorded in US history. Given rising demand trends and stagnant supply it doesn’t seem like oil prices are coming down, which means more money out of our pockets to live the same way we did a year ago. There are solutions that won’t necessarily solve America’s larger foreign oil dependency problems, but can save us as individuals some money.

Five things I did without spending more than five dollars increased my fuel efficiency from 15-30%, which translates into $0.60 to $1.20 per gallon of gas used. Not only can you save yourself money by embracing these simple steps, you’re reducing your carbon footprint. For those who don’t want to accept the general consensus of global warming, the financial savings should be enticing enough. For all you believers, what better way to say you’re doing your part than by reducing emissions of your vehicle and saving money which can be put towards other environmentally friendly improvements.

1. There is very little I love more than feeling the true power of my engine kick into action and propel me from 0-60 as fast as possible. Despite this joy, I recently changed my driving habits because this truly kills gas efficiency. I didn’t really mind when gas was $2/gallon, but those days are long gone. The realization was solidified when it cost me sixty-two dollars for a full tank that, three years ago, cost only twenty-eight dollars. Changing one’s driving habits is the single most influential factor when improving your MPG, and it’s completely free. It requires a shift in driving mentality, which isn’t always easy, but the rewards are worthwhile.
2. While in the gas station I decided to check my tire pressure and was shocked to see they had deflated considerably since my last check several months ago. Incorrect tire pressure by only 5 psi can reduce MPG by 10% and cause greater wear and tear on your tires, costing you more to drive than it should. Simple things that commonsense would suggest can increase your MPG by several gallons. Not driving with unnecessary weight in your car for example, for each 100lbs MPG goes down by 1-2 miles per gallon.
3. For highway driving, cruise control at a comfortable speed can increase efficiency an additional 1-2 miles per gallon.
4. Car companies consider aerodynamics when designing, so should you! If you have a rack on your car or some other object that obstructs wind flow you might want to consider how often you use it, and if it merits permanent placement.
5. Lastly, it is imperative that you use gas only when it’s needed! Sounds simple, but so many people leave their car running for too long, anytime you idle over 30 seconds it is using more energy than re-starting the car. In a long line at the fast food drive thru? Turn off your engine!
   

In total these steps took about 1 hour and can save you hundreds of dollars every year. There are other ways to astronomically reduce your fuel consumption, though it requires a much larger investment. For the time being, I’m happy with my increased efficiency, at virtually no cost.

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