Making Our Cars More Environmentally Friendly

Following the release of the 2007 budget by Stephen Harper and his party, my roommate, Meg, and I got to talking about the controversial car rebate/surcharge initiative. For those of you who missed that, the Tory government has offered rebates of up to $2000 for new fuel efficient vehicles, while at the same time added up to a $4000 surcharge on fuel inefficient vehicles. Read what Treehugger had to say about it here. It's all good right? Well, not quite. Meg explained what her economics professor, Peter W. Kennedy, had to say about it in class. Apparently, the rebates and surcharge may actually lead to more greenhouse gas emissions. Bear with me while I try to explain how.

By raising the price of gas guzzlers, you decrease the number sold. That part is simple. It gets complicated when you look at what happens in the used vehicle market. Those people who want, for example, a Hummer, won't buy a new one because it's too expensive. Instead they will buy a used Hummer which does not have the surcharge. On the flip side, by lowering the price of Smart Cars and Prius's, you allow people who couldn't afford to buy a car to be now able to afford one. This would increase the number of drivers on the road. Meg and I discussed this idea for a while, with me still contending that it didn't mean FOR SURE that emissions would increase, but that it could. The main issue that we saw from this part of the budget was that it didn't encourage decreased use of gas. The only real way to deal with that would be to bring in something like a carbon tax, which would encourage people to drive less in order to save money. I'll leave it at that for now (no doubt I will talk about a Carbon taxes, but if you're interested in them until then, try reading Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce, which explains carbon taxes and many other great ideas!).

After this discussion I also thought a lot about cars and how we can make them more efficient and less of a burden on our atmosphere. I had two ideas which I'm surprised are not in widespread use. The first is actually pretty obvious (and after doing research found that it has been used in many places). We could put solar panels on cars to help with energy needs. Note that I am not suggesting that we make solar cars like the ones used in the World Solar Challenge. I'm suggesting we add solar panels on cars to help out with such things as heaters, air conditioners and in the case of hybrids, running the car. I found an article on treehugger about Steve Lapp, a Canadian engineer who outfitted his Prius with solar panels in 2001. All the links to his project unfortunately don't work. The Treehugger article, along with this article, claim that there is a 10% increase in gas mileage in converted hybrids.

My second idea is to use wind power to generate electricity. I'm sure all of you have been riding in a car with the windows down and have felt the wind hit your face hard. Why not find a way to use that energy to generate some electricity? Perhaps a pipe could be put somewhere on the front of the car that could turn a turbine which could then generate some electricity. Apparently I am not the only one to think of these ideas, as I found a similar suggestion here. I also found this car, which may not be the most practical, but it did have something to use wind power.

So those are my ideas. Though I'm not quite an engineer, I think something like this needs to be done with cars. If our society is to keep on functioning, we will need to either drive less (and we'll need incentives like taxes to make that happen), make our cars more efficient (with hybrid technology and alternative energy sources), or both.