America’s inconvenient SUV boom
America’s inconvenient SUV boom by Edward Luce , Financial Times
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Gas-guzzling models are back in vogue in the US, so why should poorer nations cut emissions?
More than one in three US vehicle sales is an SUV. Though discontinued by General Motors, demand for second-hand hummers is at an 11-year high. With numbers like these, President Barack Obama will have a tough sell in Paris next week. More than all its non-binding pledges, the global warming summit is meant to begin an era of new habits. If Americans won’t change theirs, will others follow?
With the recent terrorist carnage, global leaders will already be highly distracted. Yet the Paris agenda is pressing enough. The monthly level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million earlier this year — a threshold that should set off alarm bells. It is more than 40 per cent above pre-industrial levels and rising. The largest share comes from China, which knocked the US into second place after the Great Recession of 2008. Behind the US is India, where fewer than one in 10 own a four-wheel vehicle. As much as a half of India lacks reliable access to electricity. If you look at a Google earth map of India at night, large tracts are in complete darkness. Under what circumstances could a semi candlelit democracy agree to a carbon haircut?
The short answer is bribery. At the Copenhagen summit in 2009, western nations pledged to transfer $100bn a year from 2020 to subsidise cleaner fuels in poorer countries. But these numbers are aspirational. Nor would they be enough to make a big economic dent. India alone needs to invest more than double that each year just to keep up with demand. At the current rate, it will meet most of that with new coal-fired plants supplied from its domestic lignite — perhaps the dirtiest form of the dirtiest fuel. In the US, there is both fanfare and gnashing of teeth over the “death of King Coal”. Though its share is dropping fast, coal still accounts for more than a third of US power output.
Much has been made of the fact that US carbon emissions are falling. America’s total output is lower today than it was in 2005. Partly this is because of stricter fuel efficiency standards. Some of it is also because of the slowdown caused by the Great Recession. Yet it would be wrong to infer it is doing enough. Of the major economies, America’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions are the highest and will remain so for some time.
Even if China continues to build new coal plants at its current rate, the average American pumps out three times more carbon every year than the average Chinese and more than 10 times the average Indian. Both China and India have borrowed the American idiom to proclaim their own middle-class dreams. Yet if the US version cannot be reimagined, it will be hard to persuade others to change theirs.
This is where the surge in US car sales comes in. It was common in 2009 to read about the SUV’s demise. The petrol-guzzling car was heading for that “great junkyard in the sky,” said one analyst. They were too expensive, and too politically incorrect, to survive a recession and an Obama administration. For a while, sales did fall. But in the past 18 months, they have broken all records. The tipping point was falling oil prices. Once a gallon of petrol dropped below $3 last year, consumers reverted to pre-recession tastes.
So far this year, SUV sales are up almost a fifth. Some models, such as the Jeep Cherokee, are selling at almost 33 per cent more than in 2014. With the exception of Volkswagen , which is suffering one of the largest vehicle recalls in history, nearly every major US and foreign carmaker is posting record margins. In each case, SUV and light truck sales are leading the growth. Even allowing for the fact that compact SUVs account for a rising share of the sales, and many of them are hybrids, their fuel economy is still lower than the alternatives. Meanwhile, sales of the Toyota Prius have been plummeting.
Optimists point to the changing tastes of the US millennial generation. They buy fewer cars, and travel less, than any of their predecessors. Their sense of freedom is found in the open internet rather than on the open road. Talk of “peak car” having been reached is based on their habits. Yet at some point millennials will start to have babies. It is hard to believe they will raise children in downtown hipster communities, or in their parents’ basements. That would require a fall in urban house prices, and a return of good public schools to the cities. Unless both happen, most will raise their families in the suburbs, where bikesharing just does not cut it.
Will they switch to hybrids? Unless the US imposes a far higher petrol tax, that seems unlikely. The perfect time to increase the tax is when oil prices are low. Such a step looks highly improbable in the near future. A majority of Congress opposes any curbs on fossil fuel consumption. Last week, it voted to gut Mr Obama’s modest steps to restrict carbon emissions. Little wonder that US car culture has not yet hit a peak. In India, meanwhile, it is just starting to rev up.
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A five-cent per gallon rise in fuel taxes... EVERY MONTH... for ten years would bring US fuel prices in line with EU prices.
European cars get much better fuel economy than American cars... and there's a reason.
Europeans produce one half the CO2 per capita that Americans produce. For the same reason.
I noticed not a word about fracking and how much cheaper and cleaner burning natural gas has displaced coal to some extent causing a big drop, the single biggest factor in the decline of greenhouse gases produced here. You realize that a hybrid Cadillac Escalade gets one mpg better gas mileage in city driving than a 4 cylinder Toyota Camry does.
... not a word about fracking and how much cheaper and cleaner burning natural gas has displaced coal...
Coal??? I know of no coal-fired SUVs... Well... there were a few (gazogènes) in Occupied France in the early 1940s, when no other fuel could be had. There have been attempts to use natural gas in cars but the technical headaches are not worth the modest advantages.
The subject of the seed is not, intrinsically, the cost of fuel. The subject is rising CO2 emissions, due to the popularity of over-sized cars in a context of low fuel prices. Fuel taxes are an efficient and effective means of inciting consumers to buy emissions-efficient cars, while leaving them the choice to buy a guzzler if they really, really want to.
Your mileage comparison is apples-to-oranges... If you want to compare a guzzler SUV to an efficient one, then you would have a sensible comparison. Or if you want to compare any given model in its internal-combustion / hybrid / all-electric versions. But I do not see any point in comparing different technologies from different categories: there are too many extraneous factors (weight, wind resistance, ...) for conclusions to be worthwhile.
Also: you are flat wrong. The Escalade Hybrid got 20 MPG, while the Camry gets a significantly better 25. I say the Escalade "got" because it was discontinued two years ago. Thank you for making the same point that the seed is trying to make...
We went solar this year, and I took a job that reduced my commute by about 75 minutes each way. Doing what I can.
You're absolutely right: the best way to reduce emissions from driving is... to not drive! Obviously, re-engineering cities to reduce commutes, and suchlike operations, are very long-term. But like any long-term action... its end-date is dependent above all on its start-date.
... which is dependent on accepting the necessity... which ain't happnin any time soon...
Great article, Bob! Thanks for posting it!
I'm a gearhead from w-a-a-a-y back. I started reading Car and Driver when it was still Sports Car Graphic. (I doubt anyone on NT knows what that means!)
In other words... I like cars. I love cars. Granted, my criteria for "good car" have evolved over the years, with "ease of entry and exit" taking an ever-greater portion, as my back grew older... but whatever my criteria, I'm always window-shopping. Wondering what I would buy if one of our cars suddenly died.
Living in Europe, I have come to understand -- to know -- that there is no contradiction between good fuel consumption and other criteria. A few years ago, just to make a point, Mercedes modified a Class S (that's their aircraft-carrier-sized luxury barge) with a small turbo engine that could cruise at 130 kph (that's a bit over 80 mph) and get well over forty miles on a gallon of gas. Of course, it took a while to get up to that speed... Acceleration was "leisurely". They presented the car at several big auto shows, saying that if their was enough interest, they would build it. There was no interest at all. A customer buys a Mercedes primarily for the prestige. Leisurely acceleration carries negative prestige...
And yet... we have small Audis that have all the luxuries.
The problem is not technological. It is psychological.
Here in Yuma, the cool ride for many is a jacked pickup. It is, objectively, a ridiculous machine: hard to climb up into / down from, noisy, cramped cabin, rough ride, squirrely steering, and so on. No matter! It is perceived as valorizing.
Most of the normal-ride-height pickups in Yuma have chromed wheels. Think about chromed wheels on a pickup for a moment...
A car (or truck) is a mirror of its owner's self-image. Unless and until we can arrange to square that reality with lower emissions, we're screwed.
When we retired we finally got rid of our "back up" car. A 1998 Chevy Tracker the we had for 15 years. Just oil changes and the occasional battery change, headlight, etc. and that was it. This past February we traded the Benz (can't afford Benz payments on a fixed income
) in on a new 2014 Fiat 500L, like the 4 door the Pope rode around in while he was here. It gets great mileage and I can't find a blind spot on it. As one reviewer said, it's like driving a real life IMAX theater around. Came with a bad ignition switch, but they replaced it and re-keyed the rest of the car without a problem. As a back up car we bought a new 2014 VW Bug convertible (non diesel) the following month, though we almost never use it.
My wife and I lived separately for professional reasons for the last years before we retired. One of us drove across the country (France, not US!) just about every weekend -- five hundred miles, roughly. So when her old Citroën C5 sedan began age less than gracefully, she got a C4 Picasso, a mini-minivan, about the size of a Ford C-Max. Very comfortable interior, lots of gadgets, and good mileage, even at 80 mph.
I liked her car so much that when a young woman ran through an intersection and totaled my beloved Alfa Romeo 147, I bought a Picasso, too. Mine is white, hers is blue... otherwise...
Now we're retired. Just the two of us. We don't need two cars that big. But we have them... and they're still very nice cars... and buying anything in their place would be economic nonsense. So I window-shop "in case"...
Our ride here in Yuma is a Buick Encore. It's a small crossover, originally created for the Chinese market, and adapted to the US as an afterthought. The car is a brilliant example of "Mad Men thinking": Buick markets it to young families when in fact it is an ideal ride for empty-nesters! It is the easiest car I know of, to get into and out of. It is very quiet (active noise cancelling). It is a comfortable-for-two long-distance cruiser, while being easy to park in town. It is slow getting up to speed, but acceleration just isn't on my requirements list any more.
I haven't looked at the 500L up close. It went on sale after we shopped around and then bought the Encore. How is entry / exit? I'm 6'6", 290 lbs, and my back doesn't bend and twist like it once did...