Good Time or Good Gas Mileage?
Now that gasoline prices have come to inhabit a new strata, I don’t enjoy driving fast and making good time like I use to. Now I think about how every time I step down on the gas pedal I am spending money. The harder I step down on the gas pedal the more money I’m spending. Consequently, I have replaced the challenge of making good time with getting good gas mileage. I now accelerate slower, drive slower, slow down more gradually, keep a closer eye on tire pressure, and drive as little as is practical. And as a result, I get as much satisfaction out of getting good gas mileage and reducing transportation costs as I used to get from making good time.
Did you know that only about 0.3% of the fuel energy used by a gasoline engine in a regular vehicle is used to move the driver? Most of the energy is wasted hauling around the big heavy vehicle, all its heavy component parts, engine idling, driveline, etc. Is that inefficient or what? (We need lighter cars!)
When I think about it, cars seem to me to be just about the cruelest joke of the contemporary world. Although they facilitate great mobility, they are nonetheless expensive (get a job so you can afford a car, fuel, insurance, repairs, maintenance, taxes just so you can drive to your job), inefficient, polluting, and present the greatest risk of meeting an untimely death. You have to actual drive them, sit in traffic, sit at stop lights, remain weary of other drivers, and look for parking spaces. And if you actually try to have fun driving, you just end up eventually getting ticketed into submission. Yet, we continue to perpetuate this 100-year-old technology with our fervent support.
I want a car that runs on electricity (or better), drives itself, is virtually maintenance free, has non-puncture-able tires (or no tires), the safety of a NASCAR, and an infrastructure to drive it on that allows it to travel without stops at speeds in excess of 200mph. Is that too much to ask?
Well, we’ll see what happens with the future of cars. The good thing about high gas prices is that they are forcing innovation, investment, and they are making the public demand greater efficiency. The high fuel cost problem isn’t a greedy oil company problem (oil countries with nationalized oil are greedier), it is a Peak Cheap Oil problem and the sooner we face that reality, instead of just doing things like crying for government intervention, the better off we’ll be.
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2 Responses to “Good Time or Good Gas Mileage?”
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Have you seen this new report http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/10/24/oil.decline/ ? It’s peak oil time!
Yes……