FIRST CREATED 2018

I am 75. On what turned into a highly memorable 39th birthday, I totaled my car. Apart from being rescued by two drunk Alaskans, I could have died that day. The destroyed car was a VW Rabbit, an ugly orange color I hadn’t chosen, as I bought it used. Time to shop for something else, maybe something brand new. What a very unexpected birthday present!

This was pre-Internet 1984. I contracted with Ashly Knapp, who at that time was running a business called Auto Advisor. As a single woman, I wanted masculine professional help to pick out a new car. Ashly’s services included gathering details about my car habits (I saw a car as a necessary evil, not a cherished toy) and advising and even negotiating what to buy next. He found me a used white Honda Civic Hatchback at a good price. But, he cautioned me: “Don’t fall in love with this car. My job involves annual tours of the Big 3 auto makers in Detroit, and I can tell you that they have on the drawing boards cars that will get 80 miles per gallon (MPG), coming in three years, so you may want soon to upgrade.”

I loved my little Honda hatchback and it got 47 mpg on the highway. I waited with bated breath for the 80 MPG cars that Detroit knew how to build. But instead, we went down the SUV rabbithole. A Sports Utility Vehicle, a pseudo-truck, was exempt from federal automobile emissions standards, and that’s what Detroit began to build and Americans began to buy. The 80-MPG car seemed to have been completely shelved.

In August 2018, we were arguing about 30 mpg (Trump) vs 50 mpg (Obama) emissions standards. Apparently, we’re still pedaling backwards. California is the only state even approaching doing this right. Transportation contributes at least 30% of American greenhouse gas emissions and looked like an easy fix. What in the world happened?

Are we going to abandon high MPG fossil-fueled vehicles and skip straight to electric vehicles (EVs) instead? That would be OK if 1) there weren’t huge greenhouse gas emissions involved in manufacturing EVs and 2) if we could be sure that the electricity our EV plugs into is from renewable sources.

That’s another blog.