We are living with legacy transportation systems, while alternatives are available. We are demanding inefficiency while smarter choices exist. These choices will hopefully create a dent in the demand-side of the hydrocarbon value chain and help create an economy that will focus more on fuel that will not end this civilization soon. Driving an SUV in this time and age is like using a mainframe to update my blog. Its like spending $20 per minute calling India from the US while there are alternatives that cost a cent. But when it comes to cars, somehow we are blind to these alternatives. We refuse to believe that smarter choices are available and if we know that smarter choices are available, we refute to promote them.
We need to divorce the internal combustion engine from hydrocarbon energy and we need to do this on a war-footing. An obsolete technology, this engine wastes about 90 cents on a dollar. This is due to the fact that only about 10% of a gallon is used to propel the vehicle/driver forward, while the rest of it is wasted in various operational aspects of the engine ending up as heat and exhaust.
The most simple thing to do is to demand more fuel-efficient vehicles. But we are all caught in the web of form not function, style not substance. Hence, a lot of people think its cool to buy SUV's and sports cars which suck gas like a starving vampire would suck blood. The car companies (especially the big three in the US) are culpable for promoting a lifestyle that derives self-identity from the car a person drives. They stick up some "green" labels on the new vehicles which cunningly display some "sustainable" feature or the other, usually hogwash. Looked beneath the surface, most of these vehicles are made the same. Until the gas prices truly reflect their social cost, consumers will not change their habits. When gas prices fall, the SUV's will come out and when gas prices go up, the demand of hybrids will increase. But we do not understand that these price mechanisms follow the evil calculus of OPEC. These countries manipulate their supply to promote demand. The economics of oil dictate the lives of businessmen and politicians alike. Here is a facet of the oil economics (I found this breakup at http://jb-williams.com/).
Based upon a $3.00 gallon of gasoline, the average break-down is as follows.
Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon
Oil Company $.08 cents per gallon
Refining $.29 cents per gallon
Marketing/Distribution $.32 cents per gallon
Taxes $.59 cents per gallon
Cost of crude $1.71 per gallon (delivered)
As you can see, the retailer makes nothing, the oil company itself makes wafer-thin margins while the refiners and marketing make close to 20% of the margin. Government gets about the same (20%). Since most of the oil companies are vertically integrated, we can safely assume that about >21% of the cut goes to them while about an equal amount going to the Government. This is the reason why usually Governments do not care too much about reducing oil dependency. Tax money is easy money, it goes into running bloated and inefficient governments. This is why they refuse to make sincere efforts to promote hybrid and electric vehicles. Besides, the car companies have massive lobby operations which help reduce investments into public transport. So the more oil is sold at the retail outlets, the more tax money the Government gets and the more the profits of the oil company and the more dependency on cheap energy (since social cost is not taken into account). This web of dependencies can easily be classified as a socially acceptable drug addiction.
Since we, the people, are alone in this war against oil, there are a few things we can do. First, demand more fuel-efficient and smart cars with engines that do not waste too much fuel. We can promote and invest in companies that are innovating towards this end. Tesla, an electric car company, has been investing bucket loads of money to make a good looking electric car but they are too expensive at the current rates to cater to the mass market. Toyota Prius, Honda and Ford hybrids, while being more affordable are not well liked by consumers for the lack of sex appeal. Again, this is because we put more focus on style than substance. I guess, its up to the car companies to restyle these hybrids and electrics into more likable designs but at the same time, we can make a few style sacrifices as well.
There are a couple of others ways to increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles. The first is by using lighter materials for manufacturing, and this is the department of material science engineers. If spiders can make webs that are stronger than kevlar, I wonder why we cant make a material that is light enough to be fuel-efficient but strong enough to be safe. The second method is by using aerodynamic drag reducers. These drag reducers are perfectly suitable to trucks doing long-hauls and they help improve fuel-efficiency by about 10-15% depending on different studies. Using lighter and stronger materials could be cost-prohibitive which makes drag reducers a more cost-effective and scalable solution. The drag is created because of design issues. Almost all trucks that you see on highways are shaped like big boxes. Not a lot of thought is put into their design. Its easy to see that they are not efficiently designed since more energy is required to move a rectangle or square compared to sleeker shapes. A square has to displace a lot of air and this creates a drag which in turn demands more energy from the engine. There are already companies out there that place smartly designed drag reducers that help reduce this drag. We should have to start using them.
Drag-reducers for trucks and semis and hybrids and electrics are the way to go in the future. These technologies are not rocket science. In fact, these days even rocket science is not rocket science. If we can improve various aspects of our lives by focusing on efficiency, I wonder why we neglect something that is so basic. Transportation is an integral part of modern life. But the methods used for transportation are archaic and even anachronistic. To tolerate an internal combustion engine that wastes 90% of the non-renewable resource put into it is essentially living in apathy. To destroy ecosystems that took thousands of years to come to life because of this apathy, is to kill life by ignition, the ignition of our internal combustion engines.
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