Archive for December, 2008
Some Modest Suggestions for the Auto Industry
Pat Murphy from Community Solutions offers some realistic (and therefore highly unacceptable!) suggestions:
The nation needs fuel efficient cars but we don’t need engineering departments and managers who are not able to build them. It just may not be possible psychologically for American car companies to make the shift away from the SUV. One solution is to buy the designs or manufacturing rights from Honda and Toyota and begin manufacturing high quality Japanese cars in volume in this country…
We are in an emergency situation now and car companies should be required to operate as if this is the case. One way to hunker down is to stop building new models every year. … Even today, Detroit does not design and build a new engine or new transmission each year for every model. Most of a new “model” consists of cosmetic body changes – unnecessary except for styling. If we replace 20 mpg SUVs with 45 mpg Toyota Prius’ and Honda Insights we will use far less material and labor.
What would we do then with the excess capacity of workers and production plants? I suggest they should begin building buses. Mass transit is needed and that can be provided most rapidly by buses. Currently U.S. cars and light trucks (SUVs) use 60% of transportation fuel – buses use less than 1% (.7%). One Greyhound bus takes an average of 34 cars off the road, and achieves 184 passenger miles per gallon of fuel.
How quickly could we do this? GM began building the CCKW, the first version of the so called “deuce and a half” military truck in 1941. The company produced 43,000 CCKWs in 1941, and ramped up to 111,000 in 1942 and 131,000 in 1943. Could all the extra capacity plants in the U.S. deliver 100,000 buses per year after ramping up? Does this mean we could take 3.4 million SUVs off the road each year? Now that’s progress!
We can also lower the speed limit immediately. On October 28, 1942, a War Speed Limit of 35 mph was set. In the first energy crisis of the 1970s the nation adopted a 55 mph speed limit which had the added benefits of significantly reducing deaths from automobile accidents. The fact that we have not already slowed down in response to the current crisis is a reflection of our “fast is best” cultural outlook since that time.
There is much more in the essay on expanding bus service and the bus vs. rail debate for re-tooling the North American transportation infrastructure. See: http://www.communitysolution.org/blog/?p=5 for full text and comments.
Personally I’d support reintroducing the car that we bought used, and then owned and drove for 17 years: The Toyota Tercel. Having recently shopped for a new sub-compact, I believe that there is nothing on the market today that can compare with a 20-year-old Tercel for reliable basic transportation and cargo – Comparatively, the Toyota Yaris is a finicky high-tech toy. In the end, we settled on a Kia Rio hatchback, but a ‘built-this-year’ 20 year old Tercel with some minor efficiency and pollution upgrades would have won hands down if such were available.