Do you own a car? When you purchased this car, was the MPG
one of the factors that you looked at when you bought the car?
Yes, I own a car.
Admittedly, when I bought the car I did not look at the average
MPG. I bought the car solely on the fact
that it is a fast and loud sports car. Do I wish I had gone with a more
environmentally friendly car? No.
As the concern over global warming and climate change grows,
many large car manufacturers have responded by making “eco friendly” cars. According
to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, over the past one hundred
years, the average temperature of the earth has risen by 1.4 degrees and most
the change is due to human behaviors.
One of the main factors is our daily use of automobiles.
Why do I not regret my decision to buy a more economical and
“eco friendly” car? The answer is very simple.
They are all boring and surprisingly impractical. According to many top car manufacturers,
electric cars are the way of the future.
Companies like Nissan, Chevrolet, and Tesla all produce electric
cars.
The problem with current electric
car technologies is that the cars cannot drive for nearly as long as their
gasoline or diesel powered counterparts.
Jason Lancaster of Forbes explains the problem that Tesla Motors
is having with selling their new cars.
The cars can drive for 200-300 miles between charges, which is fairly
decent. The problem for Tesla is that
the cars take several hours to full recharge.
For someone like myself who drives from Chicago to Florida and back
multiple times per year, stopping every 300 miles to recharge for many hours is
just not feasible.
Finally, a journalistic study done by BBC's Top Gear (skip to 3:35) proves it’s not what car you drive, it's how you drive it.
skip to 3:35
I bought my first car last year as a junior, and I did think for a second about the environmental impact and the decision to buy one that was more eco-friendly. However, as you mentioned, I do think it really depends on how often one uses the car. Luckily for us as Furman students, all our essential needs are within a 20-30 minute car ride. Not that I'm trying to justify myself in the purchase that I made, but as you also mentioned, it can be inconvenient if you can't travel further distances, say for vacations where you may want to take a road trip. In China, the government actually started cutting down the number of taxi's in Beijing to reduce pollution, but this has also created so many problems as not enough people live close enough to subways or have other means of transportation.
ReplyDeleteHow does the media impact this issue? Do the advertisements of car companies sway your decision to buy sustainable cars at all, or do ads not influence your decision? It's important to discuss the media effect on the issue of green vs. not green cars.
ReplyDelete