Nobrainer’s Think Tank

In an effort to write a post about the new, 2007 Camry Hybrid, I was looking up some numbers in order to determine the real value (or cost) of choosing the hybrid. On that journey, I stumbled and bumbled my way upon the Transportation Energy Data Book.

I have only browsed through about one chapter–chapter 4–at this point, but I ran across a few tables and graphs that are worth a quick look and quick discussion.

The data I was searching for was the average life expectancy for a car in America. In Table 3.9 (Excel file), I found the answer, shown graphically below.

We see that a car made in 1990, is expected to last nearly 17 years. This is a nice increase from the 12.5 year average for cars made in 1980. Just before this, however, we are given Table 3.8, which shows that the median age of the car on the road these days is about 8.4 years. If you think that this data is conflicting, consider that of the human population of America, the average life expectancy is somewhere in the 70-year range, whereas the average American certainly isn’t 70 years-old. This is of course due to an increased number of births, year over year.

This median age of the car on the road, has been growing at an average rate of about 0.11 years per year. For light trucks, the median age is only about 6.8, and not exactly growing.

This means, that for any legislation passed for new cars, it will probably take 7 to 10 years or more for only half of the American fleet to be at the new standards.

So for us to be operating at a higher standard now, someone should have legislated it 5 or 10 or 15 years ago. I’m not placing blame.

So what are some of our current regulations? For one, there’s the gas guzzler tax.

See the note at the bottom. The gas guzzler tax does not apply to light trucks. This legislation has perversely lead to the rise in SUVs. What’s more, legislators remain fearful of altering the laws for fear of further hurting the Big 3, who are probably being hurt the most now by years of protectionism. And what have we seen?

Since the early nineties, the big growers in market share have been large and medium SUVs and large pickups.

Arguably, this tax meant to stop gas guzzlers, has helped reduce the fleet fuel efficiency.

I think this graph demonstrates a few interesting points. Note that the efficiency of imports has steadily decreased. This may indicate that the US consumer simply has had very little taste for high efficiency vehicles. This leads to the 2nd point, that we haven’t seen much change over the last 20+ years.

So for the situation we have now, why are we blaming the oil companies?