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03/31/10(Wed)14:48 No.504551>>504502
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Myth: Cars are
becoming more fuel efficient
Fact: While it’s true that engines get
steadily better at using fuel, people have responded by buying more
fuel-hungry cars. As a result, the average efficiency of the Australian
vehicle fleet has not changed significantly since figures were first
collected in 1963.
Hopes that car use will become more sustainable
through better fuel economy are widespread, and often exploited for
political advantage. In 2007, for example, then State Treasurer John
Brumby used this myth to defend cuts to stamp duty on large new cars:
>I think it is generally accepted that newer cars
are certainly much cleaner, as I said, much safer and generally more
fuel efficient - not all of them, but generally more fuel efficient.... I
certainly believe that there will be very positive environmental
benefits from getting people out of old [cars].... and getting them into
new cars. -John Brumby, Victorian Hansard, May 2007
Such
hopes have been likened to walking down an ‘up’ escalator. Even if
vehicles become on the whole more fuel efficient, motorists can be
expected to respond much as they would to a drop in petrol prices: by
driving further and more often.
However, there is little indication
that the cars we actually drive are becoming any more fuel efficient. In
Britain, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution found that,
while the fuel economy of new British cars improved during the oil shock
of the late 1970s and early 1980s, fuel economy has actually worsened
since then. |
