Today’s NY Times article covers the Toyota Prius and other hybrids. Sure, it’s a feel good symbol of saving the environment. But are you really making a difference by driving one? The author isn’t so sure.
The more time you spend looking at the economics of the hybrids, the less comfortable you get.
The most important reason is a government policy that, amazingly enough, seems almost intended to undercut the benefits of efficient cars. In 1978, Congress set a minimum corporate average fuel economy, known as CAFE, for all carmakers. Today, the minimum average for cars is 27.5 miles a gallon. (For S.U.V.’s and other light trucks, it is 21.6.)
You can guess what this means for hybrids. Each one becomes a free pass for its manufacturer to sell a few extra gas guzzlers. For now, this is less true for Toyota’s cars, because they’re above the mileage requirement. But Toyota’s trucks and the American automakers are right near the limits. So every Toyota Highlander hybrid S.U.V. begets a hulking Lexus S.U.V., and every Ford Escape — the hybrid S.U.V. that Kermit the Frog hawked during the Super Bowl — makes room for a Lincoln Navigator, which gets all of 12 miles a gallon. Instead of simply saving gas when you buy a hybrid, you’re giving somebody else the right to use it.
He then goes on to quote an economist who explains how much more of a difference you can make with fuel consumption by getting a guy who might buy a Hummer to drive an Cadillac SRX instead, which is pretty interesting.
Jonathan Skinner, an economist at Dartmouth, has a nice way of thinking about this. Forget about the 250 gallons of gas that a Prius saves relative to a Corolla. An S.U.V. that gets 16 miles a gallon, like the Cadillac SRX, uses almost 600 fewer gallons annually than an 11-mile-a-gallon Hummer H2, because small differences add up when gas is being burned so quickly. It’s the person deciding between those two vehicles who needs some extra incentives.
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