THINKING OUTSIDE THE TANK

The average speed of an automobile in a city is 8.1 mph

43% of fuel is consumed while stopped in traffic

“What we’re doing is finding more efficient ways to do stupid things,” says Dean Kamen (DEKA), inventor of the Segway. “If you find better ways to grow corn, but then you’ve got to move it here, distill in there, boil it here, move it there, and finally, in the end, put it into a 3,000 pound box that’s 20 feet long so that you can creep along in front of some guy doing the same thing, you’re not going to solve the problem. People are solving the wrong problem,” he explains.

Segways may still be more niche and wow than practical for daily transport on a large scale, but Kamen has helped kick open the doors to new ways of thinking. “We need to change the energy consumption per task in a highly efficient way, not find more and more ways to make inefficiencies practical,” Kamen admonishes.

In other words, transportation as a whole needs to be reinvented, not just a fuel source. We cannot “energy crop” our way to a stable climate, faster travel, or even, at least in the foreseeable future, energy independence.

That will require the commitment of imaginative urban planners, backed by political will, to make public transportation a priority and try new ideas tailored to different kinds of travel needs. It also requires all of us to keep our eye on the ball and pressure Congress for higher fuel efficiency standards. According to consumer group Public Citizen, raising fuel standards by 2015 from 27.5 mpg to 40 mpg for passenger cars (which hybrid vehicles already meet or exceed), while raising standards for SUVs, vans and light trucks from 22.2 mpg to 27 mpg, would reduce fuel needs by one third (p.17 of report). Based on current consumption, that translates to a savings of 50 billion gallons, or 10 times the amount of ethanol produced in 2006. That’s enough to send demand for foreign oil crashing, boosting energy security, while dramatically reducing CO2 emissions. And, of course, the money that wouldn’t have to be spent on gas could now be spent on something else. Something more fun. Or tasty. Popcorn anyone?

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3 There are an estimated 250 million cars in the U.S. -- a total cited by President Bush in his 2006 State of the Union speech --  making them the most abundant non-insect, non-rodent “species” after Man in North America. About a third of the cars in the world are in the U.S., bringing the global automotive population to 750 million. Add in trucks and the number likely climbs beyond a billion. Although car populations in North America and Europe have been leveling off, the auto “birthrate” is soaring in economically prosperous developing countries such as China. 

graphic source: Robert Q. Riley Enterprises

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