House of Eratosthenes

I just finished a car-shopping experience for the first time in many years (more on this later), and I was pleasantly surprised about what’s available. I even had to eat a few of my own words about the newer cars; things are not the way I had imagined them to be.

The supply differs strikingly from the demand. If you want a car that gets 35 miles a gallon, you can have it right now. And you don’t have to sacrifice anything at all.

But that isn’t what people are buying. When I look at a highway, there’s really no way to misinterpret what’s going on there. Navs. Explorers. Hummers. Trucks that you can’t possibly call “pickups,” because a pickup is something that holds half a cord of wood and can be parked fairly easily. That simply isn’t what a “truck” is today. In this era of Inconvenient Truth when we’re all oh so worried about polar bears losing their ice, a truck is a gargantuan beast that requires a stepladder even if you’re Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And nobody bats an eyelash at you for driving to work in one, five days a week, with no cargo in tow whatsoever save for a possible “chocolate bar” cell phone.

But the gas prices, they are to ruin us are they not?

A Wall Street Journal reader writes in with a dose of badly needed perspective…

In 1960 cars got an average of just over 14 miles per gallon and gas cost around 31 cents per gallon, making for a cost per mile driven of about 2.2 cents. Today with gas around $3 and cars getting an average of 22 miles per gallon, it costs nearly 14 cents per mile to drive. But from 1960 to 2006 consumer prices went up around seven times, which means that 2.2 cents in 1960 now equates to more than 15 cents.

Virtually nobody talked about “high” gas prices in 1960. Today, alas, that is all we hear from all too many people, even though driving is actually cheaper.

I do have to take issue with part of this — the logic depends on the improvement in gas mileage over those 48 years, to 22 miles a gallon. Now, I think 22 is a reasonable estimate of the average rating of what I saw in the lot over the weekend, available for my purchase — it is not a reasonable estimate of the average of what I see prowling the highways. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself. Go to a shopping mall. Okay maybe that’s not fair…those people expect to carry something home.

So just go to work. Go to a place that employs a couple hundred people, and go to the employee parking lot — see what’s there. Now, you take that 1960 average of fourteen miles a gallon. Would that be out of place among the gleaming metal beasts you see parked side by side? It looks to me just about dead-on, as a ballpark average. Sure, some of the “mid-sized” vehicles get 19 or 20. There are far more that get 11. Some get 8.

But the letter still makes an important point, one not commanding all the attention it should while we bitch about gas prices. The size of our cars is decisional.

We make conversation with each other by pissing and moaning about gas prices.

Our cars are freakin’ huge.

They aren’t all necessarily built that way. We buy ’em that way. For the purpose of carrying…no freight. None at all most of the time — very little, some of the time.

Clue?

[…] [Discuss this article with MKFreeberg over at House of Eratosthenes…] Share Article Sphere: Related Content Trackback URL […]
- Webloggin - Blog Archive » On Gas Prices | 01/28/2008 @ 12:28
The wife’s 2003 Taurus gets 28 on the highway, about 20 in the city. I’d call it a mid-size.

My Escort gets ~24/35. It’s a 1998. Compact, though.

We had a ’96 Taurus that got pretty much the same mileage as the 2003.

Now I’d love to have a smallish SUV, say on the order of an old Geo Tracker. I I must admit that I’m spoiled by my Escort’s gas mileage, but camping trips, especially in bumpy places, I’d like something that holds a little more, has a little more road clearance, and might have optional 4WD. But I just can’t justify the cost in my budget at this time for any of that. Plus I hear parts are hard to come by for those old things.

Apparently they have some SUV-ish type vehicles that can get ~30 on the highway.

Not the honkin’ Cherokees. A friend has a Ford Escape that gets about 24 on the highway, 18 in the city. I can’t remember the model I asked a woman about in a store parking lot a few months ago. It was a smallish one she said got about 30 on the highway.
- philmon | 01/28/2008 @ 12:55
I, for one, am getting danged sick and tired of having to answer imbecilic questions like “why do you have such a tiny car? Isn’t it impractical?“The standard come-back, although rarely used, is “why do you have such a tiny brain?” etc., etc.

It works for me, gets great mileage, and is six different kinds of fun. But that’s not enough, I suppose. As a good patriotic American I guess I should be driving a humongous SUV…like everyone else. Right.
- Buck | 01/28/2008 @ 15:31
There are only a handful of valid uses for high-octane accelerant. One is for the small commuter vehicle, roomy enough for four average males, with good fuel economy and reliability. The next is for large diesel powertrains to move shipments and cargo from A to B. The next is in some form of high-performance almost-track-only vehicle, usually flatbedded to and from a track. The last is for the F350 used to tow said flatbedded vehicle 🙂
- dcshiderly | 01/28/2008 @ 21:29
There are only a handful of valid uses for high-octane accelerant. One is for the small commuter vehicle, roomy enough for four average males, with good fuel economy and reliability.

My knowledge about this is anecdotal, which is inferior. But my anecdotal knowledge says a third of a million miles on high octane fuel can keep things humming along for a very long time…provided one is religious about timely oil changes and other upkeep.
- mkfreeberg | 01/29/2008 @ 08:20
Buck and Phil,

Words simply cannot express how crazy this whole thing makes me, except to say it yanks me up the insanity scale up toward the levels that involve frothy spit. If people pretended to be concerned about Fluffy the Polar Bear finding his next ice floe but didn’t care about the size of the car, that would not be so maddening. But the subtle — is “undertreatment” a word? — the behavior as if any vessel smaller than a Dodge Durango, doesn’t really exist, or shouldn’t. While shoveling out the obligatory bromides about the globular wormening. With this charming lack of understanding of the irony, as if to say, “yeah, so?”

As if the light bulbs in the house count toward something, and the pumping of the gas does not.

Just makes me wanna slap ’em.
- mkfreeberg | 01/29/2008 @ 08:25
[…] People are much more concerned about the price of gasoline than they were before. Or they’re supposed to be…but their cars are much bigger, too. They don’t notice that driving is actually cheaper now for the individual consumer, once inflation is factored in. Or maybe they do, on a subconscious level — the cars stay big, because everyone likes to feel safe, everyone likes to sit up high. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/03/2008 @ 10:11

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On Gas PricesMonday, January 28th, 2008

On Gas Prices
Monday, January 28th, 2008