in clean vehicles    Drilling in Detroit

A new UCS report, Drilling in Detroit, shows the potential for putting a lean, green fleet of safe and fuel-efficient automobiles on the road. Existing technologies, many of them on the road today, could raise fuel economy from a gas-guzzling 24 mpg to 40 mpg by 2012 and then 55 mpg by 2020.

Consumer Benefits
Using conventional technologies, automakers could create a fleet of passenger vehicles that average more than 40 miles per gallon, nearly a 75% increase over today's fleet. Fuel cost savings to consumers could be as much as $3,000 to $5,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle. These savings would more than make up for the cost of the fuel economy improvements. Under such a scenario, the typical family car could reach over 45 mpg, while the cost of filling up an SUV could be cut in half with a fuel economy of 40 mpg.

Hybrid electric technologies could take fuel economy up a notch, bringing it to at least 55 mpg across the fleet. This would more than double current fuel economy and could save consumers $3,500 to $6,500 in fuel costs. Hybrid family cars could reach nearly 60 mpg, while hybrid SUVs could cross the 50 mpg mark. Fuel cell cars offer the greatest benefit, potentially tripling fuel economy.

Improving fuel economy does not mean making vehicles less safe in crashes. Most of the improvements in fuel economy can be achieved using more efficient powertrains, which will have no impact on vehicle safety. Additional gains can be achieved by reducing the weight of light trucks and altering their design to make them less dangerous to the other vehicles on the road. This strategy would not only improve fuel economy, but would also reduce the number of fatalities from pickup and SUV crashes.

Nationwide Benefits
If fuel economy increases to 40 mpg by 2012, and then 55 mpg by 2020, oil use would decrease significantly. Instead of growing unchecked, by 2015 it could be brought back to what it is today. And it could keep going down.

Fuel economy improvements would dwarf oil supplies from proposed expansion into environmentally sensitive areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. By 2020, fuel savings would amount to more than four times the oil economically recoverable from the Arctic.

In addition, if Americans spend less money buying fuel, they'll have more to spend elsewhere. The 9.8 billion dollars consumers could be saving by 2010 and the 28 billion by 2020 would be returned to the nation's economy. In the auto industry, investments to improve fuel economy and the money saved by consumers, could create 40,000 jobs by 2010 and 100,000 by 2020.

Furthermore, the environmental benefits in decreased emissions would be significant. By 2010, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions from driving and providing fuel for cars and light trucks could be reduced by 273 million tons, diminishing transportation's contribution to global warming. At the same time, nearly 150 million pounds of toxic emissions and 320 million pounds of smog-forming pollutants would never find their way from refineries to our lungs. By 2020, emissions reductions would be even greater: 888 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, 481 million fewer pounds of toxics, and 1,039 million fewer pounds of smog-forming pollutants.

Re-Investing in Fuel Economy
In the early 1970s, we experienced an energy crisis that drove up gasoline prices and forced consumers to wait in long lines to fill their tanks and empty their pockets. The government responded by investing in fuel economy improvements and created the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. As a result, over the next 10 years the fuel economy of passenger vehicles doubled. But no further increases have been required since 1985.

After 15 years of stagnant fuel economy standards, significant pressure from many stakeholders has prompted the federal government to investigate a reinvestment in fuel economy policy. Based on the results of our study, we recommend that the government and the automobile industry take the following steps:

•	Raise the CAFE standards for light-duty trucks to that of passenger cars. Closing the "light-truck loophole" is a key first step.

•	By 2012, raise the CAFE standards for the combined fleet of cars and light trucks to 40 mpg. Treating cars and light trucks as a single fleet will give automakers the flexibility to meet the standards in whatever manner suits them.

•	By 2020, raise the CAFE standards to 55 mpg. Hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicles could help achieve these and higher fuel economy levels.

•

Provide consumers with improved safety technologies through both automaker initiative and government standards. With today's engineering practices and technologies there is no reason consumers should have to sacrifice safety to gain improved fuel economy. The potential also exists for simultaneous improvement to both.

•	Increase government funding for research and development of advanced technologies and create incentives tied to fuel economy improvement.

Future Promise
The vehicles that will reach future fuel economy standards will not be much different from those we drive today. We will not need to sacrifice performance and comfort, but will be able to buy higher fuel economy versions of the same safe and reliable vehicles we now drive.

Following this path to higher fuel economy will enable us to turn back the clock on our car and light truck oil use while significantly reducing the environmental footprint we leave behind — all the while leaving more money in our pockets. Along the way, we will find that drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive areas becomes a notion of the past as we use our existing resources more efficiently.

David Friedman is a senior transportation analyst in the UCS Clean Vehicles Program.

Drilling in Detroit is available on the UCS website (www2.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/index.cfm). To order, see inside back cover.  

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