The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | An immodest proposal about fuel efficiency

114 comments on An immodest proposal about fuel efficiency

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Kiashu on June 10, 2008 - 7:23am

Again, you're talking about people driving to work.

And on average that's 22% of all trips taken.

Okay, so for some people that's going to be 90+% of their driving. But that's not the majority, that's not the average.

I mean, you can always drag out cases of people who genuinely have little or no choices. But the vast majority of people do have a choice, they're like my mate - too lazy to walk or bike or whatever.

I'm just suggesting that each of us take a detailed look at our driving, record our trips and see how many are trips we could do by some other method, or which we could roll in with another trip.

So the guy whose only driving is to and from work from his godforsaken McMansion with no public transport in the area, he records that in his little logbook. But the guy who drives 15km along the railway line to and from work, 1.5km to the park, three times a week 2km to the gym, and six times a week 2km to the shops and then on Sunday goes for a drive to see the country, he records that, too.

Just take a look at your driving. Don't tell us fairy tales about the Poor Little Aussie Battler, just take a serious look at it and see what you can do without or reorganise.

And that'll reduce your fuel use a heap more than buggerising about with the accelerator pedal or any nonsense like that.

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louGrinzo on June 10, 2008 - 5:52pm

"And that'll reduce your fuel use a heap more than buggerising about with the accelerator pedal or any nonsense like that."

Sorry, but you're focusing too narrowly on one particular solution. As gasoline prices have a greater impact on people, they will resort to a wide range of responses, and everyone will adopt them differently, at least at first. A lot of people in the US are already using more public transportation, where it's available, driving less (combining and eliminating errands), using the most efficient vehicle in a household, etc. Very few are hypermiling today, but as the cost of fuel becomes more onerous, they will. They'll also feel much more downward pressure on the number of miles they drive, so they'll make even more changes to drive less. The optimal destination is to drive as few miles as possible and as efficiently as possible. Different people will take different paths to get from their present behavior to that optimal state. Insisting that one solution (driving less) is better or worse than another (hypermiling) as a first step without knowing the details of an individual's circumstances is just silly.

And by the way--I wrote about hypermiling just today over on TCOE, and I pointed out that people should do it in addition to those other steps, so someone has indeed said it:

http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/06/10/free-hybrids-for-every...

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