The parking fairy loves hybrid drivers
How cool is it when you pull up to a parking space that's close to where you need to be and you're one of the few people allowed to park there? This privilege is most often reserved for handicapped persons and pregnant women, but the perk has been extended towards hybrid owners in a growing number of cities, communities and offices. Not surprisingly, there are both proponents (those with hybrids, obviously) for the system and opponents, most often people who choose fuel efficient vehicles that don't happen to be hybrids. This clash has led Fresno, California, to rescind its hybrid parking passes and the city of Ferndale, Michigan, to create its own special parking privileges to drivers of any car that get at least 30 miles per gallon in EPA testing.
The more reasons people have to choose a fuel efficient car, the better. Now that fuel prices have fallen so far, the ability to use HOV lanes and park in designated spots may help move the fuel-efficient metal.
[Source: USA Today - Photo: rscottjones CC 2.0]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bill 3:18PM (1/05/2009)
I am not sure, but I think you get points toward LEED certification of your building for having hybrid-only parking spots.
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letstakeawalk 3:27PM (1/05/2009)
Very good call. The LEED checklist for Retail has categories for "Alternative Transportation". Points are earned for public transportation access and LEV and Bicycle parking.
http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=3998
Jim 3:21PM (1/05/2009)
How absurd can people/cities get? This is really dumb.
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Tiger Mil 3:22PM (1/05/2009)
Yeah, and you get smug points for driving a hybrid esp Prius.
Watch South Park...
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Brn 3:23PM (1/05/2009)
I think Bill is right.
Otherwise, the whole hybrid parking thing is just dumb. I guess that makes Jim right too.
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Carney 3:37PM (1/05/2009)
What doesn't seem to penetrate through the cloud of smug and hype is that fuel efficiency gains, whether provided by hybrids or not, are basically irrelevant. They are more than made up for by the growth in world oil demand, especially coming from China and India. Slowing down the growth isn't enough; we need to change directions.
The most practical, affordable path forward is flex fuel vehicles. Since they can use gasoline and alcohol fuel with equal ease, FFVs are a good bridging technology (unlike other alt-fuels such as natural gas cars which leave you stranded if you're not near a natural gas station). Alcohol fuel is cheaper than gasoline (methanol much cheaper, ethanol especially if we drop our tariffs on Brazilian ethanol), ensuring that it creates its own market and demand, as long as you mandate FFV capacity in each new car, only a $100 expense.
And of course they are MUCH better for the environment. Alcohol produces far less ozone smog and acid rain. Burning ethanol and plant methanol is carbon neutral and raising the plants that make them cools the planet. Rather than persisting in the environment (Exxon Valdez is still killing wildlife), alcohol biodegrades readily in a day if not hours into harmless components, making spills and leaks a non-concern. And alcohol produces no soot, smoke, or particulate emissions.
If we're going to have cutesy gimimicks like this, we should at least include flex fuel vehicles, if not set aside spots for them.
But we need a mandate that all new cars have this feature standard, like seatbelts, to crate the critical mass necessary to make alcohol pumps at fuel stations commercially viable.
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Dave 3:50PM (1/05/2009)
Carney, burning alcohol is far from carbon neutral. The energy used to grow feedstocks to produce biofuels still uses quite a bit of petroleum. Until that can be significantly reduced, any benefits of burning alcohol are basically irrelevant.
That's not to say that we shouldn't be persuing biofuels. We should. And we also should continue developing hybrid and electric drivetrains.
There's nothing that keeps you from getting the best of both worlds, either - a biofuel powered hybrid, or if an electric vehicle - electricity generated by biofuels (though solar or wind would be more efficient).
Carney 4:18PM (1/05/2009)
How is solar or wind power more "efficient" than anything else? These power forms are notoriously fickle and feeble, not to mention drastically more expensive.
Electric cars are not going to be viable until fusion power is, so that's a long term only solution.
For the short to mid term, flex fuel is the only way to go. A flex fuel hybrid is nice but rather pointless. Scrimping and saving on fuel economy is not really necessary with alcohol.
Your sole environmental objection to alcohol is in questioning its global warming role. For the sake of argument, let's concede that it is no better than gasoline.
What about the long list of other drastic environmental improvements alcohol offers? You completely ignored them. Ask anyone coughing from L.A. or Beijing smog, or dealing with ozone smog, or witnessing the effects of acid rain, or seeing sea otters still dying from eating Exxon Valdex contaminated shellfish, or being unable to use their local aquifier thanks to a leak from the local gas station can tell you, there's a lot more to the environment than one issue, and all those problems are made worse by gasoline and better by alcohol.
And of course, ethanol does NOT contribute to global warming, nor does plant methanol.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-defense-of-biofuels
Chris M 6:53PM (1/05/2009)
Sorry, but "growth in demand" would have happened even without efficiency improvements, and without those efficiency improvements the use of oil would have been even greater. Hybrids are worthwile, even though they aren't a complete solution.
The problem with biofuel production is that it does take some fuel to produce the crops to make those fuels, and that has to be taken into consideration. With corn ethanol, the energy return makes it hardly worth the effort, as it produces only slightly more energy than it takes to produce. Result, corn ethanol needs substantial subsidies to be cost competitive. Alcohols from agricultural wastes or switchgrass have a better energy return, but are still limited. Waste vegetable oil is very cost effective, but has a very limited supply. Algae based biofuels are promising, but are still under development.
There have been a lot of "flex-fuel" vehicles produced, mainly because it allowed the automakers to cheat on their CAFE requirements and produce more of the big expensive gas guzzlers that used to be so profitable. Few of those "flex fuel" vehicles have ever run on E85, mainly those sold in the midwest corn belt states. California, the largest auto market with a substantial number of flex fuel vehicles sold, has exactly 2 E85 pumps.
Photovoltaics are 16% to 20% efficient at converting sunlight into useable power, with experimental cells and solar thermal achieving even higher levels. Biofuel crops are around 1%, so solar is most definitely more efficient than your favored biofuels, would require far less land to power our transportation, and don't require fertile farmland.
The only inhibitor for plug-in cars is cost, and the cost is rapidly dropping as designs and production methods improve.
Carney 9:47AM (1/06/2009)
Chris M., hybrids would be worthwhile to consider if flex fuel did not exist, but it does.
Money, man-hours, public attention, and policy momentum are all finite. Right now hybrids effectively serve as big diversion of dollars and awareness that are better put toward flex fuel; thus hybrids are an obstacle to moving away from oil.
For the cost of hybridizing one vehicle, an automaker can flex fuel several others, with far greater benefit provided with just one of those FFVs, let alone all of them.
The claim about ethanol's energy levels comes from only one source, a radical insect ecologist writing far outside his field of expertise, and whose paper on it has been systematically refuted in the peer-reviewed literature. Outside academe it stumbles on despite all the stakes in its heart, given continued "life" by conservative and libertarian groups rigidly opposed to ethanol subsidies as a violation of free market purity but somehow indifferent to OPEC's far more massive distortion. When it comes to disputes over the energy levels in fuel, I'll trust a rocket scientist like Zubrin instead.
Mike Z 5:47PM (1/05/2009)
Is it just me or does starting a business selling 'Hybrid' plaques to put on cars sound better and better?
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Killroy 6:11PM (1/05/2009)
Carney, this is where you lost me:
"Electric cars are not going to be viable until fusion power is, so that's a long term only solution."
I don't think that all hybrids should be considered alternative transportation. I say the parking space should read :
"Less than 0.4 lb of CO2/mile" Which would alow the Honda Insight, BEV, and PHEVs. Sorry, no production Flex Fuel that I know of.
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Carney 9:39AM (1/06/2009)
Burning E85 means an 85% cut in gasoline use. What hybrid car with an extant non-hybrid version can claim such a drastic improvement?
And FFVs are not only far more effective, they offer more bang for the global warming buck, because adding flex fuel capability to a car model costs $100; hybridizing it costs thousands.
Killroy 12:24PM (1/06/2009)
Carney,
You are starting to sound like a Corn Lobbyist.
The issues with Flex Fuel and Ethanol that contradict your claim are:
1. The petroleum and energy to create ethanol
2. Over farming causes pollution too, one example is ground water.
3. The true cost of ethanol is extremely high do to current gross government subsidies.
4. Food should not compete with fuel to feed the population of the future.
5. Not enough farm land to support.
6. The internal combustion engine is still horribly inefficient.
Cars don’t have to be hybridized to be efficient. With the combination of downsizing, weight reduction, aerodynamics, start-stop technology, fuel data display and driving habits Prius fuel economy can be achieved.
And another thing: From a Climate Change risk mitigation perspective, should cars be inexpensive to buy? No, there should be a incentive paced on mass transit, short commutes, and bike commuting.
APT 1:26PM (1/06/2009)
"Burning E85 means an 85% cut in gasoline use. What hybrid car with an extant non-hybrid version can claim such a drastic improvement?"
No it does not. Much of the country already uses 10% ethanol in their gasolines. The bigger issue for most people with E85 is that they get about 2/3' the fuel economy, so they have to use 25% more E85 fuel to go just as far as regular unleaded. Another cut into your 85% number.
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Sally 8:41AM (2/03/2009)
I would love to buy a hybrid car - but although the price may have come down a bit, it still is nowhere near what people can afford.
Re. companies paying for car parking spaces for staff. There are precious few car parking spaces as it is - if companies had to pay for them - there would be even less!
I think when they build/recreate any new offices - they should also make enough car spaces to go with the place. It can be an enormous headache and you can't concentrate on your job if your car isn't safe.
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