NYT: "Me and My Hybrid"
A recent Times column by Oliver Sacks suggests an important aspect of our energy policy be to use the technology available today to reduce our dependency on oil:
In addition, I would suggest that the government could easily mandate that the vast majority of its fleet vehicles use hybrid technology. Obviously certain applications might have performance requirements that would require an exception (police cruisers come to mind), but how many city, state and federal government vehicles spend their lives doing short trips around the city, serve as passenger vehicles for road trips, deliver goods and people from one place to another? All of these needs could just as easily be met by hybrids as conventional combustion engine vehicles, and at a huge savings in gas consumption.
Consider just one source of govenment vehicles - the 190,000 strong fleet of the GSA. The GSA Fleet is required to maintain a certain percentage of specific vehicle types as alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). These are not necessarily hybrids, but can be from a wide variety of more- or less-green technologies.
The current GSA Fleet includes 30,000 AFVs, or about 16% of the total fleet. Assuming these vehicles have feul efficiencies similar to Mr. Sacks' hybrid, these AFVs produce a savings of 180,000-360,000 barrels of oil each year - in the neighborhood of 1-2 million gallons of gas. Good, but it could be much better.
Say the percentage were to creep up to just 25% of the fleet. Then we'd be looking at 285,000-570,000 barrels of oil - 2-3 million gallons of gas saved each year with no trade-off in vehicle performance or capability.
You can do the math. At 50% of its fleet, the GSA's AFVs would save .57-1.2 million barrels of oil. At 75%, it becomes .85-1.7 million barrels.
And that's just for one source of govenment automobiles, through a single agency.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, the total number of government fleet vehicles (listed as "publicly owned" in the table) at any level - city, county, state, or federal - was in the neighborhood of 1.3 million in 2003. If government on all levels were to start demanding hybrid technology, we could see savings of up to 6-12 million barrels of oil per year.
(An in-depth analysis of AFV technology in the government fleet can be found here.)
Granted, that's a good amount of oil saved, with little to no sacrifice made. But the best is yet to be considered.
If a million or so government fleet vehicles were to be replaced with hybrids, and the governments were to purchase exclusively or almost exclusively hybrid vehicles each year, the technology would go mainstream in a hurry. Last year (a good year for hybrids), hybrid sales totaled only 84,199 units in the United States. These sales are held back in part by ignorance about the technology ("Don't you need to plug it in at night?") and part by the premium a limited-demand item carries. A government investment in hybrid vehicles would (a) help convince consumers that this technology is reliable and ready for prime time; (b) cause manufacturers to ramp up production of hybrids and expand the available options in hybrid vehicles, creating lower prices and greater consumer demand; and (c) result in a much greater number of shops with expertise in maintaining and repairing a hybrid engine system.
In order for Sacks' dream of half of all American vehicles getting hybrid-style mileage to come true, the technology is going to need to hit the mainstream. Hybrids are definitely the next thing in automotives, and they will eventually become common. Why not give auto makers an incentive to hurry the hybrid future along, while cutting our dependency on oil and saving the planet in the process?
Simply using its massive purchasing power to encourage greener behavior from the automotive industry is much less coercive than the present tax incentives offered to purchasers of hybrid vehicles. Rather than yet another tax break, why not let the government simply blaze the trail, making it that much easier for individuals to follow?
It's a win-win situation.
There are some 200 million cars and light trucks on the road in the United States, and if even half of them saved as much fuel as I do now, the total savings would be huge: 50 billion or more gallons of gas a year. This is equivalent to 1.2 billion barrels of oil, about half the entire annual production of oil in the United States and a fifth of what the most reasonable estimates hold can be recovered in total from the Alaska refuge.
In addition, I would suggest that the government could easily mandate that the vast majority of its fleet vehicles use hybrid technology. Obviously certain applications might have performance requirements that would require an exception (police cruisers come to mind), but how many city, state and federal government vehicles spend their lives doing short trips around the city, serve as passenger vehicles for road trips, deliver goods and people from one place to another? All of these needs could just as easily be met by hybrids as conventional combustion engine vehicles, and at a huge savings in gas consumption.
Consider just one source of govenment vehicles - the 190,000 strong fleet of the GSA. The GSA Fleet is required to maintain a certain percentage of specific vehicle types as alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). These are not necessarily hybrids, but can be from a wide variety of more- or less-green technologies.
The current GSA Fleet includes 30,000 AFVs, or about 16% of the total fleet. Assuming these vehicles have feul efficiencies similar to Mr. Sacks' hybrid, these AFVs produce a savings of 180,000-360,000 barrels of oil each year - in the neighborhood of 1-2 million gallons of gas. Good, but it could be much better.
Say the percentage were to creep up to just 25% of the fleet. Then we'd be looking at 285,000-570,000 barrels of oil - 2-3 million gallons of gas saved each year with no trade-off in vehicle performance or capability.
You can do the math. At 50% of its fleet, the GSA's AFVs would save .57-1.2 million barrels of oil. At 75%, it becomes .85-1.7 million barrels.
And that's just for one source of govenment automobiles, through a single agency.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, the total number of government fleet vehicles (listed as "publicly owned" in the table) at any level - city, county, state, or federal - was in the neighborhood of 1.3 million in 2003. If government on all levels were to start demanding hybrid technology, we could see savings of up to 6-12 million barrels of oil per year.
(An in-depth analysis of AFV technology in the government fleet can be found here.)
Granted, that's a good amount of oil saved, with little to no sacrifice made. But the best is yet to be considered.
If a million or so government fleet vehicles were to be replaced with hybrids, and the governments were to purchase exclusively or almost exclusively hybrid vehicles each year, the technology would go mainstream in a hurry. Last year (a good year for hybrids), hybrid sales totaled only 84,199 units in the United States. These sales are held back in part by ignorance about the technology ("Don't you need to plug it in at night?") and part by the premium a limited-demand item carries. A government investment in hybrid vehicles would (a) help convince consumers that this technology is reliable and ready for prime time; (b) cause manufacturers to ramp up production of hybrids and expand the available options in hybrid vehicles, creating lower prices and greater consumer demand; and (c) result in a much greater number of shops with expertise in maintaining and repairing a hybrid engine system.
In order for Sacks' dream of half of all American vehicles getting hybrid-style mileage to come true, the technology is going to need to hit the mainstream. Hybrids are definitely the next thing in automotives, and they will eventually become common. Why not give auto makers an incentive to hurry the hybrid future along, while cutting our dependency on oil and saving the planet in the process?
Simply using its massive purchasing power to encourage greener behavior from the automotive industry is much less coercive than the present tax incentives offered to purchasers of hybrid vehicles. Rather than yet another tax break, why not let the government simply blaze the trail, making it that much easier for individuals to follow?
It's a win-win situation.
posted by Bob at
3:19 PM
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