Those sound like pollution concerns to me. Am I wrong? You don't say anything about how it is worse for you if I burn 28 gallons of gas instead of 21. What is worse for you is if I pump out 6 units of pollution instead of one, correct?

Why are we arguing about miles per gallon when all that matters is pollution per mile?

-Biscuits

Well as has been pointed out before, Oil is a very valuable source of all sorts of raw materials used for all sorts of industrial and consumer products (like raw materials for plastics, dyes & paints to name a few), that are not easy to get from other sources currently.

If you take more oil from the ground to burn it in your SUV, then you have "wasted" more of our collective resource of valuable petrochemical feedstock - whether that oil comes from US reserves or some terrorist run oil well in the Middle East has little bearing on the matter.

So, yes not wasting valuable oil is important to us all. And its especially to not waste the high quality oils that we use to run our cars on as these have the compounds in them that are most valuable and they are a finite resource.
Oil is pretty much like coal, it comes in varying quality and the best quality coals are very valuable and are in short supply, relative to the vast quantities of lower quality (and sulphur laden) coal out there.

Yes, the pollution from a SUV is currently a major problem and so is using oil to run inefficient petrol engines - regardless of the levels of pollution emitted from doing so.

When hybrid and fuel cell cars and power sources are available, they will be able to extract far more of the energy directly out of the oil than the current big banger air-breathing internal combustion engine in your SUV does now.

And it will do this while reducing pollution and wastage.

So by not wasting the oil now we:

(a) keep a valuable and scarce resource in reserve

(b) don't have to deal with the pollutants that burning it would generate - and dealing with those pollutants takes more energy again.

and

(c) and your country is less likely to be held to ransom by future Oil Shocks.

And eventually when we collectively don't need oil, we can chose whether or not to let the factions in the Middle East fight it out "to the death" in the deserts of the Middle East without having to care much one way or the other about the outcome.

I suppose I get the sense (perhaps wrongly) that you think only utilitarian criteria should be used in assessing a purchase

Well, I'd say that I'm coming across as I am, because most people aren't putting enough emphasis on utilitarian criteria. Sorry if I have come across so abrasively

If it helps, my decision was also affected by coolness. After I chose that I wanted a minivan, it was between the Nissan Quest and the Odyssey. Due to several reasons (terrifying handling, shoddy build quality, the fact that it's a Nissan), I went with the Odyssey. I think I was only thinking about the Quest because I hadn't driven an Odyssey yet (they were too popular at the time). I picked it because it drove beautifully, was the first minivan to not look either boxy or bubbly, had power sliding doors, and a nav system. Of course, people have to ride in one to discover all but one of those "cool" factors

I'll end my involvement with this paraphrase from a GTA3 radio commercial:
"I'm a marketing exec. I live alone and drive to work on the highway. So of course I need a car that seats 12 and is equiped to drive across arctic tundra." Ah, the Zaibutsu Monstrosity

Umm.. 'Give up'.. so all SUV owners should have their vehicles turned into scrap metal and purchase new cars?

Well yes, unless you want them to be destroyed for you, like the PETA people and fur coats.

Sure, I'd love for the PETA people to be destroyed.

So you're calling for people to go out and destroy other people's SUVs? (I assume that incldues all trucks too, or do you only care about SUVs?)

In reply to:

---

Umm.. 'Give up'.. so all SUV owners should have their vehicles turned into scrap metal and purchase new cars?

---

Long term yes.

Short term, no.

Things you can do as a current SUV owner are:

1. Don't buy another SUV to replace the one you've got - keep the one you've got and make sure its kept well tuned and maintained and when it needs replacing consider buying a vehicle (yes, even, if you must, another SUV) provided thats it more fuel efficient and documented as less polluting than the one you've got.
If you need a second.third vehicle, don't get a second SUV, get a car or minivan or whatever suits its roll as the second/third car and use it in place of the SUV more often.

2. Contact GM or whomever made your SUV and tell them you won't buy another SUV until its made at as fuel efficient as most cars and proven to be no less safe than a car - and don't just take the dealers word for it, check out the rollover figures on the NHRTA rollover tests and actual track safety test results for yourself.

3. Lobby your congressman to ensure that he/she helps modify current laws to ensure that SUVs are made to comply with similar fuel efficiency laws and pollution emission laws as most cars are. And if they won't help do this, then vote for another candidate next election who will and make sure your congressmen knows this and why you're voting that way.

4. Be considerate when driving your SUV and remember it handles a lot different from the average car, and this includes "cutting some slack" for the car drivers who don't know how different to control or stop your SUV is compared to their car as they pull in front of you. Also remember that most vehicles can't see past or through you.

5. Remember that the kicking the SUV habbit is just one (but a good) way to help cut pollution long term - consider/research and implement ways of doing more than that to really help reduce long term pollution you cause by all your activities. Yes, maybe using less electricity, using the car (whatever type) less or even (shock horror) using public transport or more efficient methods - like car pooling, to travel to/from work if possible and practical in your line of work.
Yeah and maybe buy a Rio Pearl so that you can take your music with you when travelling in other modes of transport :-))

I have a feeling that if SUV's were suddenly all replaced by smaller cars, then the little USA bar on that graph showing how much oil we consume would only come down a fraction of a millimeter, if that. The difference between mpg on cars and SUV's isn't really THAT great. And I don't think it would impact the oil consumption too much. let me do the math. (and somebody please double check it)

I'll use Biscuitjam's figures: that there are 16 million SUV's out of 200 million vehicles. They average 21 mpg, as opposed to the car's average of 28. Let's say the average auto is driven 10,000 miles/year.

16,000,000 x 10,000 = 160,000,000,000 miles/year
160,000,000,000 / 21 = approximately 7.6 billion gallons/year

So SUV's use about 7.6 billion gallons of gas in 1 year. If those SUV's got 28 mpg then...

160,000,000,000 / 28 = approximately 5.7 billion gallons/year

So then they'd only use 5.7 billion gallons of gas in one year instead of 7.6. That is a difference of 1.9 billion gallons of gas. According to discover.com, typically 19 gallons of gasoline can be produced from 1 barrel of oil. So...

1,900,000,000 / 19 = 100,000,000

So 100 million barrels of oil would be saved each year if all SUV's in the US got 28 mpg instead of 21. That sounds like a lot. It sounds like a lot until you look at that graph that someone posted above and see that the US uses 300 million barrels a day.

EDIT: I actually meant 900 million barrels a day, but that seems to be incorrect. see my next two posts. It should be more like 20 million/day.

Yes, maybe using less electricity, using the car (whatever type) less or even (shock horror) using public transport or more efficient methods - like car pooling, to travel to/from work if possible and practical in your line of work.

Of course we as a country haven't exactly done a good job providing transit service. I bought my house expecting to change jobs but knowing it was a one bus ride to my office. That was only just over 7 years ago. Service has been cut considerably in that time. It takes about an hour for me to walk to the bus and then ride it to my office, assuming it leaves on time. That's non-rush, I never go inbound during rush, or outbound if avoidable.

Since I'm at the end of the line I get a seat inbound. If I go outbound often I don't get a seat until more than 2/3 of the way home. That means that it's not really more productive than driving, because it takes longer and I don't get to work anyhow. If I had it to do over again, I'd get a house close to work, but I don't want to move. Moving sucks.

There's a "maglev" proposal which is supposed to pass nearby on the way to downtown Pittsburgh, but it will stop neither close to here nor to my office, which is closer to me by several miles than downtown. There is a transit expressway which is actually being extended further out from the city right now, but the bus which ran from near here to the exit from that expressway which is near my office was discontinued in 1989 or so. So basically, because I don't work downtown, but instead in the area that is the 3rd largest transit trip generator in the state, or was last I checked (Center City Philadelphia, Downtown Pittsburgh, Oakland, in that order) I stand basically not a chance of seeing service improvements any time soon, and instead the service runs infrequently during non-rush, and more frequently but not "frequent" during rush. I seriously want a real transit system. I'm still hoping to pull off a 6 month sabbatical in Stockholm next year, at least in small part because their transit system (though the subway now shuts down overnight) is useful.

After I got job #2 I started driving to Oakland when I don't work from home. When I go back to having one job, I will probably go back to taking the bus every day and wasting twice as much time going back and forth as I do driving.

There may be hope. Pennsylvania will probably get a former executive director of the body which operates Pittsburgh's transit system as the next Secretary of Transportation, But I'll probably have a Pearl long before I'll have a commute short enough to want to use it on.

Looking at those graphs again, it looks like the 1st one and the 3rd one say different things. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it looks like the first one is saying North America uses 20 million barrels a day, and the 2nd graph is saying the US uses almost 900 million barrels per day.

OK, the first graph is in barrels and the 2nd one is in gallons. duh.


So SUV's getting 28 mpg instead of 21 mpg would save us 100 million barrels of oil per year, or about 5 days worth of oil (if all my figures are correct). That is more than I expected.

Don't forget that 12.5 million SUVs are made each year - of the 50 million vehicles made (and presumably sold), 25% are SUVs.
so, the 16 million SUVs on the road is probably on the low side by 50% too low.

I think I saw figures mentioned earlier of 67 million "light trucks" of which SUVs are in that category, so lets assume given 15 years of SUV sales, that only half of the 67 million light trucks are SUVs, that makes your 16 million SUVs double to 32 million or more SUVs on the road.

Now that effectively doubles your "improvement" of 5 days of oil saved a year to 10 days a year if every SUV did 28MPG.

And when every SUV is able to do 40MPG like a lot of modern non-hybrid cars available now, then you're talking nearly a 3 fold improvement on those figures again (40-21 = 19 MPG better per gallon which is nearly 3 times your 7MPG improvementfrom your original figures of 7MPG better = 5 days worth of oil saved]

And when the Hybrid SUVs come out, with 50-70 or more MPG then you're really getting somewhere.

At that level you're talking about a situation where the US would be close to or past not having to import oil to meet its oil usage requirements.

I don't dispute this, but am curious to know how it happens. A gallon of gasoline weighs a bit over six pounds. It seems like a stretch to generate 20 pounds of CO2 (along with all the nitrogen oxide, all the hydrogen compounds, and the considerable weight of water) from that six pounds of gasoline.

Ah, but only the 'C' (one carbon atom) in CO2 comes from the fuel. The 'O2' (two oxygen atoms) come from the atmosphere. As a carbon atom only weighs 3/4 as much as an oxygen atom, only 3/(3+4+4) or 3/11 of the mass of CO2 produced, comes from the fuel. So 20lb of CO2 comes from 3/11 *20 or 5.45lb of carbon.

And gasoline is mostly (by weight) carbon: I'm not sure which hydrocarbons gasoline contains but let's assume it's mainly octane, C8H18. Hydrogen atoms only weigh 1/12 as much as carbon atoms, so they only make up 18/(18+12*8) or 18/114 or 3/19 of the weight of octane -- the carbon makes up the other 16/19. So 6lb of gasoline contains 16/19 * 6 or 5.05lb of carbon -- that's not quite enough to produce 20lb of CO2, but it's pretty close, and you did say a gallon was "a bit over" six pounds.

As for the rest, a similar calculation shows that the hydrogen (the other 0.95lb of the 6lb) produces nine times its own weight of water vapour (H2O, in which the oxygen atom weighs sixteen times as much as either of the hydrogen atoms) or 8.53lb of water. Nitrous oxide isn't produced from the fuel at all: the heat of the reaction causes a small amount of atmospheric nitrogen to combine with atmospheric oxygen.

Peter

As soon as something better comes along

Actually you are right. I could be driving something other than an SUV but I don't like the alternatives. As far as mother earth is concerned, my voting record and advocacy for the environment is something I'm proud of. I'm outspoken about many issues concerning pollution and the destruction it's amassed, I'm very angry at the way our government is dismantling the environmental protections that have slowly been built in recent years. I have great and grave concerns for our future. My only disagreement is the targetting of SUVs and SUV drivers as the "evildoers" of our society. SUV and their drivers are being targetted by religious groups, vandals, governemt agencies and others as a scapegoat IMO while SO many other groups of rampant pollutors go unnoticed by the people and press. Most of the energy to educate is being lauched against SUVs. I think the owners factories, strip mines, lubmer companies, etc are sitting back and having a good laugh because there is no focus on them. I get the feeling that campaigning against SUVs allows people to feel like they are doing their part for our environment/future while frankly SUVs are a drop in the bucket of the problems we face.

Yeah, but 5 days is still only 1.4% of our yearly consumption. So while quadrupling that number would put like a 6% dent in the US's yearly consumption, it still isn't a whole lot. We might run out of oil a couple years earlier than we would if we got rid of SUV's (depending on how much we have left). To me personally, I'm not willing to sacrifice SUV's and big engines to conserve a small fraction of the world's oil for when we might run out and might still be dependant on it.

I'm not going to get in this quagmire of an argument about oil waste, pollution, et al. I just think that SUVs are dangerous because they:

• handle very poorly as compared to the cars that people are ``trained'' to drive
• the physics (mostly center of gravity and momentum related issues) involved in accidents means that in an accident, injuries are likely to be more common and more severe for all parties in said accident
• the fact that bumpers on SUVs are closer to being at car-seated head level than at car bumper level means that the severity of injuries for those in the car in a car v. SUV accident are likely to be greater, and
• their physical size means that they obscure traffic to those behind them, making it nearly impossible to predict shifts in traffic flow

handle very poorly as compared to the cars that people are ``trained'' to drive

I kinda fell ot of this thread recently due to the avalanche of responses, but this is one of the best points made so far. People don't drive SUV's like the trucks they are, they drive them like they're driving a car. I guess they think because they have plush interiors and DVD players, it will handle like a nice luxury car.

p = m * v, people.

Thanks, I'm glad someone agrees with me!

that isn't the fault of the SUV. That is a fault of certain drivers.

I don't remember making any argument over whose fault it is.

SUV and their drivers are being targetted by religious groups, vandals, governemt agencies and others as a scapegoat IMO while SO many other groups of rampant pollutors go unnoticed by the people and press.

There's something to that, but bemoaning it probably won't do you any good. SUVs? Well Suburbans certainly have their fans among Columbian drug lords and oil sheiks, but I think SUVs receive so much attention in the U.S. because they are positively emblematic of reckless American disregard - of our unique, neo-isolationist, business-as-usual, $1.50-a-gallon collective mindset.

Other countries have their share of the rampant polluters you cite, but only we in the U.S. (really) have the SUV. So, if you find one of those "I'm Changing the Environment..Ask Me How!" bumperstickers on your SUV, don't be tooooo shocked. Just go find your paint scraper.

Don't get the idea that I'm sort of environmental saint. I burn more than my share of oil recreationally. I have friends that drive a Suburban, but they haul search dogs up logging roads in it, so I grant them the need. Can't imagine ever driving an Excursion or Hummer, myself, though!

I know. I'm just saying.

I haven't jumped into the SUV oil quagmire because I didn't have anything smarter to say than number6 (who had a lot of smart things to say).

Bitt, as usual, puts it better than I could on a few of the things that bother me more directly about SUVs:

* handle very poorly as compared to the cars that people are ``trained'' to drive

And would continue to handle poorly if people were trained to drive SUVs

* the physics (mostly center of gravity and momentum related issues)involved in accidents means that in an accident, injuries are likely to be more common and more severe for all parties in said accident
* the fact that bumpers on SUVs are closer to being at car-seated head level than at car bumper level means that the severity of injuries for those in the car in a car v. SUV accident are likely to be greater, and

Yeah, "My Hummer is safer" ...safer for whom??

* their physical size means that they obscure traffic to those behind them, making it nearly impossible to predict shifts in traffic flow

Ugh. Leading to the "can't-beat-em-join-em" SUV debacle.

Three-four years ago I watched a Suburban crumple a Hyundai in a supermarket parking lot. The diminutive Suburban driver popped her kid in a car seat, got in, checked all her mirrors, put it in reverse, then backed into the Hyundai that had become trapped front and back in that lane and that she couldn't manage to see in her mirrors. About 5-6 cars including the Hyundai honked and honked as the collision unfolded. To no avail. Funny. Sad.

I see the new ad for a bright yellow Hummer being driven through the city by slender, young, freckled redhead. She is just so blissed out. Me? I wanna know who I can strangle.

I see the new ad for a bright yellow Hummer being driven through the city by slender, young, freckled redhead. She is just so blissed out. Me? I wanna know who I can strangle.


Yeah. Slender, young, freckled redheads should stick to giving hummers, not driving them.

<runs for cover>

In reply to:

---

My only disagreement is the targetting of SUVs and SUV drivers as the "evildoers" of our society. SUV and their drivers are being targetted by religious groups, vandals, governemt agencies and others as a scapegoat IMO while SO many other groups of rampant pollutors go unnoticed by the people and press. Most of the energy to educate is being lauched against SUVs. I think the owners factories, strip mines, lubmer companies, etc are sitting back and having a good laugh because there is no focus on them. I get the feeling that campaigning against SUVs allows people to feel like they are doing their part for our environment/future while frankly SUVs are a drop in the bucket of the problems we face.

---

The thing is, that a large chunk of the non-renewable energy the US uses each year goes on making cars/trucks/SUVs go.

A SUV is as you point out only one of the causes of the manyfold problems that the US (and by extension, everyone else) faces with burning fossil fuels.

However the SUV it has become a very obvious and noticeable symbol for some vocal lobby groups - and some not so vocal lobby groups.

Yes, these groups may be misguided to target only SUVs, but we/they have to start somewhere in reducing CO2 emissions and other emissions, and yes, cars & SUVs are not the only sources of those, but they do represent a large chunk of what are considered by some to be "non-essential" or discretionary activities, which can be reduced or redirected without significantly harming the "GDP"/economic output of the US.

And when looking at the area of Vehicular pollution/emissions, SUVs stand head and shoulders over any other vehicle on the road in terms of that, and the numbers are at 25% and growing fast portion of new vehicle sales.

So with that said, the facts would tend to indicate that to fix a large chunk of the current vehicle pollution problem, you have to fix the SUV problem.

And to fix the SUV problem you either have to legislate to make them cleaner - something which your politicians seem unwilling to contemplate, and/or in the meantime/absense of a law change, you re-educate a significant part of the 12.5 million buyers of SUVs to know what to consider when buying one, and maybe they end up buying an alternative - a non-SUV.

That alone would make a big impact on the vehicle emissions "problem", and then you would have to move to other targets elsewhere like in industry etc.

But we are not at that point yet.

The thing is with big issues like Global Warming is that nearly everyone agrees its a problem, but no-one wants to have *their* lives/choices etc affected by the hard decisions that need to be made and implemented by all of us, they want other folks to bear the brunt first. And then you end up with a situation where nothing gets done and the problems get a lot worse, and then eventually everyone has to suffer - some more than others, the side-effects of the "solution".

So, if you don't start somewhere, you don't start at all, but having started its important to keep on changing, not just making one change and then letting it be - that will never work long term.

In reply to:

---

In reply to:

---

* their physical size means that they obscure traffic to those behind them, making it nearly impossible to predict shifts in traffic flow

---

Ugh. Leading to the "can't-beat-em-join-em" SUV debacle.

---

Yeah, but as I recall most SUVs I see around have those dark tinted windows, so even if you are stuck behind one SUV, and you're driving another SUV - and therefore at the same height more or less, you have no better view of the road ahead thanks to those dark windows...

...so the can't beat em join em soultion is not a workable one either.

And when everyone has SUVs - then what?

Which reminds me:

I was behind an Ass-tek the other day, and one thing that I can definitely say about them that's positive is that, while they're large(ish), the rear window comes pretty far down and is not tinted, so you can see through them.

In reply to:

---

So while quadrupling that number would put like a 6% dent in the US's yearly consumption, it still isn't a whole lot

---

It is if that means that the US doesn't need to import that oil from countries like the Middle East.

And if the US didn't have to get any of its oil from there then the whole Middle East can be ignored as far US foreign policy is concerned.
[well maybe except for the nukes that Israel has - but thats a different thread].

And that might save you as a tax payer some $50 billion a year from not having to keep US military personnel in the Middle East Region.

I think thats something you might want to think about/want to bring about right?