If you’re the lead foot in your family — or if you’re just annoyed by the lead-footed driver in your family — you’ll enjoy this video about saving gas. It’s cute, and makes a good point.

This little ditty won the video contest sponsored by the Drive Smarter Challenge, a campaign by the Alliance to Save Energy, with support from many other energy-focused groups. It’s timely, as we prepare to hit the roads for the holidays.

Notice in the piece that how you drive can be a big factor when it comes to maximizing your gas mileage.

(For more about the Challenge, see our story.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The Cash for Clunkers program, which ended this week, may have been more environmentally friendly than originally thought. The concern among environmentalists was that by tossing away old cars and buying news ones, the program encouraged a throw-away society mentality — something Americans are often accused of.

The Sierra Club, says the organization’s policy analyst Jesse Prentice-Dunn, initially had concerns that the bill was weak.

“Now, looking at the final stats,” he says, “consumers did buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. One thing that was very encouraging, was that more than 84 percent traded in trucks and other gas guzzlers; and 59 percent purchased cars.”

They may not have purchased hybrids, says Prentice-Dunn — the Prius was No. 7 on the list of cars purchased. However, the fact that they bought more fuel-efficient cars was important. The Sierra Club, he says, was encouraged by consumers’ choices.

The Cash for Clunkers program made a point, says Prentice-Dunn. “It’s time for national discussion on fuel economy. [The program] helped move us forward on curbing global warming.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation said that under the CARS program — in which consumers traded in outdated vehicles for cash rebates on new car purchases — dealers submitted 690,114 sales totaling $2.88 billion, just shy of the plan’s $3 billion budget.

The biggest industry beneficiaries were Japanese automakers Toyota, Honda and Nissan, which accounted for 41 percent of the new vehicle sales, according to the Associated Press.

That outpaced Detroit automakers General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, which had a share of nearly 39 percent. Toyota Motor Corp. led the industry with 19.4 percent of new sales, followed by General Motors Co. with 17.6 percent and Ford Motor Co. with 14.4 percent, the AP reported.

The Toyota Corolla was the most popular new vehicle purchased under the program. The Honda Civic, Toyota Camry and Ford Focus held the next three top spots. All four are built in the United States.

“This program has been a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump-starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “At the same time, we’ve been able to take old, polluting cars off the road and help consumers purchase fuel efficient vehicles.”

The Cash for Clunkers program, as the Sierra Club’s website points out, put the consumer in the driver’s seat to make the best choice. To help with this decision, the site provided readers with advice on making a selection as well as charts to help buyers calculate their savings.

President Barack Obama signed the Clunkers bill, officially named the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Program, in June. The progam was wildly embraced by consumers when it began in July, and ran out of money in just one week. A second infusion of cash put it back in business in August.

Under the program owners of gas-guzzling cars could trade them in for a $3,500 to $4,500 voucher toward a new and more energy-efficient car. The gas guzzlers had to meet certain age requirements and get 18 miles or less to the gallon.

NPR reported on the program’s merits in a broadcast earlier this week, stating that questions still remain about the program’s effect on the environment. The broadcast quoted Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law, as saying the program was wonderful for the economy, but had only a “middling success for greenhouse gas emissions.” In order to make a large impact, says Gerrard, the government should have demanded a greater mileage differential between the required difference in mileage for old and new vehicles.

Prentice Dunn says he agrees that there should have been more stringent fuel economy considerations in the original CARS legislation. “The Sierra Club endorsed competing proposals in both the House and Senate,” he says. “However, over the duration of the Cash for Clunkers program, we’ve seen that consumers have valued fuel economy and indeed traded in clunkers in favor of more efficient vehicles. Would this be the first policy to turn to in an effort to solve climate change? No. However, because of consumer’s decisions, this program has stimulated auto sales, taken gas-guzzling SUVs off the road and replaced them with more efficient cars and importantly, put the benefits of efficient vehicles and reducing oil dependence and global warmings in water cooler and kitchen table conversations across the country.”

Rae Tyson with the US DOT believes the program was a win-win situation. “You get vehicles off the road that use more fuel and at the same time you send the old ones to salvage yards that can recycle the car parts.”

“The engine is destroyed,” says Tyson, “but then we give salvage yards time to recycle as much of the vehicle as possible. Aluminum, for instance, may end up as the metal of a soft drink can. The only parts that can’t be recycled are shredded and crushed. “The vehicle’s end products do not end up in the landfill, says Tyson.

The Sierra Club’s Prentice-Dunn notes that the law is clear. “The car dealers have to show proof that they have disabled the engines — [the part of the vehicle] which has us addicted to oil. Then car dealers have 180 days to recycle the parts, remove mercury and sell the rest as scrap.”

Prentice-Dunn says he’s impressed with  the Department of Transportation, which “has had to do the bulk of the heaving lifting in a short time frame” to put Cash for Clunkers into effect.

Irwin Dawid, a member of the Sierra Club’s California Air Quality Committee, acknowledges that while some environmentalists dismissed the program because of its lack of improvements on vehicle efficiency, the program did succeed on two levels.

“Not only did the motorist purchase a more efficient vehicle, but guzzlers were literally being scrapped. While many parts can be pulled for resale, the engine and the drive train go to the shredder, along with the rest of the clunker that is recycled. More importantly, from an air quality perspective, the gains are more substantial than the energy savings as new vehicles, including SUVs and trucks, are far cleaner than older models because of the advanced emission technology.”

Perhaps Cash for Clunkers was not green enough for everyone. Yet it did bring fuel economy to the forefront of a needed national conversation.

Copyright © 2009 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Desperate automobile dealers are slashing sticker prices, passing on rebates and offering zero percent financing to move metal, making this a good time to buy a new car. And the good times are about to get better thanks to the federal “Cash for Clunkers” program kicking off later this month.

The Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) signed into law last month is designed to help car makers and the environment by providing vouchers of $3,500 to $4,500 toward the purchase of a new vehicle in exchange for a gas-guzzling clunker. The program essentially inflates the trade-in value of older cars and trucks, providing drivers an incentive to go ahead and buy a new, more fuel-efficient rig right now.

Add the CARS voucher to existing tax credits and the generosity of Uncle Sam goes a long ways to paying for a new hybrid or clean-burning diesel vehicle.

Uncle Sam’s definition of a clunker is pretty specific, however. To qualify for a voucher your car must:

• have been manufactured in 1984 or later;
• have a combined city/highway fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon or less;
• be drivable;
• be owned and insured by you for at least a year.

The new vehicle can’t cost more than $45,000. If the car gets at least 22 mpg (combined city and highway mpg) the voucher is worth $3,500. If the new car gets 10 mpg better than the clunker you’re trading in the voucher is worth $4,500.

The bar is lower for new SUVs, vans and light-duty pickup trucks. The program offers $3,500 if the new vehicle gets at least 18 mpg combined and that is 2 mpg better than the old SUV, van or pickup. If the new vehicle gets 5 mpg better than the old, the voucher is $4,500.

The government voucher is paid directly to the dealer – your old car will be crushed.

The voucher is your down payment, so the program is useful to you only if the trade-in value of your vehicle is less than that of the voucher. Automobile shopping websites such as Edmonds and Kelly Blue Book have compiled lists of clunkers that are likely good candidates for the program.

The math is pretty simple when it comes to gauging the program’s benefits for car buyers. It’s less so when trying to estimate the environmental benefits.

“The fuel economy requirements are so lax in the final version that it’s hard to say with confidence that there will be net environmental benefits,” said Therese Langer, Transportation Program Director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

How do cars pollute? In two main ways, through inefficient mileage (guzzling a gallon of gas every eight or 10 or 14 miles) and through tailpipe emissions.

There’s the pollution associated with manufacturing, also, but to keep it simple let’s stick with emissions and mileage. Obviously, both affect the air. Think of mileage as a measure of your car’s pollution volume over time – if a gallon of gas doesn’t take you very far, you have to burn a lot more gas — and emissions as the chemistry of that pollution; if the mix is particularly noxious, your car will be a bigger offender than one with better tailpipe controls.

So if you want to buy the cleanest car you can — in the price range you need — you’ll look at both factors. Fortunately, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already done this work, assigning a  “greenhouse gas” score to most models. Find it at the EPA’s Green Vehicles website.

The EPA’s “greenhouse gas” score considers how much a vehicle contributes to global warming via its full lifecycle emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (NO2), and hydroflurocarbons (HFCs). The rating is mainly a function of a car’s gas mileage, but the analysis also looks at the fuel a car uses (gasoline, natural gas, diesel, ethanol) to factor in emissions.

Cars are given a score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest (the Prius solos at this rating) and 5 being not so hot (the Lincoln Town Car) and 3 (the GMC Sierra 15 gasoline model) being about as low as it goes. (The Sierra 15 jumps to a 6 on ethanol though.)

At the same site, the EPA chart also breaks out a column that considers just regulated tailpipe emissions — which doesn’t capture all the greenhouse gases and considers some outputs that aren’t greenhouse gases — giving each model an “air pollution score” as well. A diesel, say, might not score as well on this scale as it would on the greenhouse gas scale.

Interested in seeing just the EPA’s gas mileage ratings? Look to fueleconomy.gov, courtesy of the Department of Energy.

When Rachel Ray chooses a saute pan, cooks take note.

So American car shoppers, here’s the equivalent: Sokolis Group, a fuel management and consulting company, has selected the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid to be its company car.

Sokolis, which advises building and trucking companies and even AAA on how to conserve on fuel costs, chose the Fusion because it is “the best car in its class,” said Glen Sokolis, president of the company, based in Warrington, Penn.

And, as a bonus, the new hybrid-version Fusion’s American made. (By the American company that seems least wobbly.)

“We feel that by getting behind Ford’s great American name and great car, we’re presenting our own little stimulus package to help the American economy,” Sokolis said in a press release on the subject.

Sokolis Group provides “outsourced fuel management services to businesses large and small across the country that need help buying and managing their fuel costs.”

The Ford Fusion hybrid, reportedly rated at 41 mpg, which Sokolis noted is “the highest fuel economy of any midsize sedan.”

“That’s more than 700 miles on a tank of gas-and it can run on E85 ethanol as well as regular gasoline.”

Ford spokesman Bob Cyran noted that the Fusion was doing well among Ford’s line up even before the 2010 Fusion Hybrid was formulated and that it has received strong reviews from Car and Driver, which rated it ahead of the Toyota Camry Hybrid, the Nissan Altima Hybrid and the Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid.

“To have a fuel efficiency expert choose the Fusion hybrid is further confirmation of its attributes,” he added.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Last summer, we reported on an effort by professors at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business to get the world to change the way it thinks about automotive fuel efficiency: Ranking cars in terms of miles per gallon, they explained, is much less helpful when it comes to making green choices than ranking the gallons required to drive a set number of miles.

At the time, professors Richard Larrick and Jack Soll were wishing automakers would start adding this rating to the vehicle stats on every car model they sell. Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t happened — so the scholars have taken matters into their own hands, developing an online tool set to help car shoppers do that work on their own.

The site offers three approaches to “gallons per mile” evaluation. Users can a) see a list of all new 2009 car models, ranked against each other, b) pick two, three, or four models and compare their efficiency side-by-side, or c) input a miles-per-gallon figure themselves. The last option might be the most useful, allowing owners to get a read on the cars they already drive (or might buy used), no matter how old they are.

While the logical basis for moving from MPG to GPM can be tricky to explain in a sentence or two — see this blog entitled “The Miles Per Gallon Illusion” for an in-depth but layman-friendly introduction — the researchers give their online calculator an easy hook by emphasizing the dollars involved in each efficiency leap. It may be hard to gauge how big a deal a certain amount of carbon emissions represents, they effectively say, but everybody can appreciate saving $1,200 in gas a year.

“This kind of calculator is exactly what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or Consumer Reports needs to adopt to help people think straight about fuel efficiency,” says Richard Larrick, who surely knows it would take an act of Congress (literally) to make automakers themselves post such data on window stickers.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

While automakers and garage-based inventors work on replacing the car as we know it, a scientist at Temple University claims to have found a way of squeezing more out of the ones we already own with a process tongue-twistingly dubbed electrorheology.

A team led by professor Rongjia Tao implemented the principle for a small device that creates a strong electric field to make auto fuel less viscous; that allows much smaller fuel droplets to be injected into the engine for combustion. As the authors explain in the introduction to their paper: “Because combustion starts at the interface between fuel and air and most harmful emissions are coming from incomplete burning, reducing the size of fuel droplets would increase the total surface area to start burning, leading to a cleaner and more efficient engine.”

While other strategies exist for reducing the size of fuel droplets, the researchers say they don’t yet exist in forms usable in unmodified vehicles. Tao’s team’s innovation, on the other hand, “could be easily applied on current engines to improve their efficiency” — by up to an impressive 20% in a diesel-based experiment, according to this summary in Science Daily:

“Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel [economy] from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost, and a 12-15 percent gain in city driving.”

While the device is still being modified and tested, Temple has already licensed the technology to California-based Save The World Air, Inc., which plans to use it in diesel trucks.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Saturday marked the end of a tour hoping to convince Americans that hydrogen-fueled cars are not as far away from practicality as we might think.

The Hydrogen Road Tour ‘08 was an explicit (if partial) answer to the lament “what does it matter if I can buy a hydrogen car, if I can’t get fuel for it?”: Starting in Portland, Maine and ending in Los Angeles, the varied cars in this caravan covered the continent while running entirely on hydrogen.

We call it a “partial” answer because there’s something of a cheat involved: While the vehicles visited some permanent refueling stations along the route, there are stretches where none exist and drivers had to rely on mobile units being sent out specifically for them — not a luxury most everyday drivers can afford. One such unit, provided by Linde, seems to have been sent on the tour solely to refuel BMW’s entry, its Hydrogen Series 7.

Other companies participating ranged from the expected Japanese automakers to General Motors. The nature of stops along the tour varied: Some were invite-only affairs, while others not only welcomed public spectators but offered them the chance to take short spins behind the wheel.

Organized by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy, and other groups, the event was a P.R. opportunity to make the public aware that the “non-polluting cars of tomorrow,” as U.S. Deputy Secretary Thomas Barrett described them, are already on the roads around us: As the D.O.T.’s
Paul Brubaker notes, six U.S. transit agencies are already using hydrogen-powered buses; car dealers in California already lease hydrogen vehicles, and demonstration programs around the country have let hundreds of folks test the cars, which are nearly net-zero carbon-wise. They emit nothing but water.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media