Riddle Me This: Ode to the Model T
Posted July 24, 2007 in Moving Beyond Oil
What technology is less efficient today than it was 100 years ago? The automobile in America. The 1908 Ford Model T got 25 miles per gallon. What's the average miles-per-gallon for cars in America today? About 21.
Think of the advancements in other technologies in just the last 20 years. Personal computers. Cell phones. The internet. HD-TV. GPS.
My car has heated seats, a radio that displays the name of the song that's playing, a special lighted signal to tell me when the windshield-wiper fluid is running low. But it can't go as far on a gallon of gas as a model T.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is no faster, cheaper, better way to break our addiction to oil that to have cars that go a lot farther on a gallon of gas.
The technology exists right now to make almost all cars get 35 miles per gallon or a lot higher. It's expensive you say? Not when you think about the money you will save in just a couple of years on gas. Not when you account for the cost of staying friends with the oil-rich countries that would just as soon see us dead than sell us oil. Not when you consider the cost of relocating our population inward as the seas rise due to the melting ice of global warming.
The Senate passed the fuel economystandard that would make new cars (and light trucks, meaning SUVs) in America get an average 35mph in a little over 10 years. Now, Congress is at bat. At this moment, we predict the House will vote on its energy bill as soon as one week from today – that's Tuesday, July 31. Right now, there is no fuel economy standard in the House energy bill. But there is still time to get it in there. That's the goal of the NRDC Action Fund this week. Check it out.
