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When it comes to buying cars, I am a total nerd. I have never bought a new car. Fifteen years ago, when buying my first "new" used car, I calculated the most cost-effective age of car to buy: a four-year-old. My prior two cars had been resuscitated from the brink of the junkyard by my brother. Normally, I wouldn't be in the market for a car, as both our 10- and 19-years-olds are running fine and have low mileage. Lately, though, my 22-mpg fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have been weighing heavily on my conscience.

With existing technology, cars, SUVs, vans and trucks can get 50 - 200 mpg without losing the power and features people desire. The equivalent of 400 - 500 mpg can be achieved now with hybrids that use "flexible-" or bio-fuels. In Europe, VW has sold the 237-mpg two-seater diesel "Lupo" since 1998; this model will get 250 mpg by 2010.

How do hybrids work? Hybrid vehicles make energy as well as conserve it. Unlike most cars and trucks that have only one engine (internal combustion or diesel), hybrids have two: a more efficient gas engine and an electric motor. At low speeds and for short distances, a hybrid runs on the electric motor alone. On acceleration, both engines operate. At high speeds, the gas engine runs the car. When you brake, the electric motor is recharged by a method called regenerative braking. The gas engine also recharges the electric motor.

Hybrids save fuel in many other ways. Constructed from lighter materials than regular cars, they are still strong enough to maintain equivalent safety ratings. They're more aerodynamic too. Other technology improvements include a continuously variable transmission, which operates like the many gears on a bicycle, variable valve control and an integrated starter-generator, which shuts down the gas engine when idling at stoplights and in traffic.

This last advance alone could save significant quantities of the fuel wasted while cars idle. According to the Sierra Club, if every new car had the integrated starter-generator, the U.S. would save almost 840 million gallons of gasoline a year and cut greenhouse gases by nearly 12 million tons. Contrary to popular opinion, current hybrids don't require special fuels or need to be plugged in. They are filled with regular gas like any other car, only not nearly as often.

Hybrid savvy: When it comes to hybrids, a few facts are essential to know. A hybrid is not always more fuel efficient than its non-hybrid counterpart. In response to the demand for the first hybrids — Prius and Insight — auto manufacturers, with GM and Toyota in the lead, trumped up several "hybrid" vehicles that perform better but are only nominally more fuel efficient than conventional cars. These fake hybrids confuse consumers and damage the term "hybrid." As The New York Times reporter Jeff Sabatini put it, "How did it come to this, that Toyota is now selling a hybrid gas-electric vehicle with no tangible fuel economy benefits?"

In 2006, hybrid offerings have expanded considerably, with four new SUV hybrids and 12 more hybrid models coming out between 2006 and 2008. The three types of hybrids available are full, mild and micro (or hollow). The micro and mild hybrids are less fuel efficient than the full hybrid because of different engine components and other features.

Full hybrids (40 - 45 percent more fuel efficient):

• Honda Insight, a 63-mpg two-seater, was the first hybrid available in the U.S. For the fifth year, it has topped the EPA's list of most fuel-efficient cars.
• Toyota Prius, a 55-mpg five-seater, was redesigned in 2004 to be larger, more powerful and pollute less. In 2004, it received the Motor Trend Car of the Year Award.
• Honda Civic Hybrid, at 50 mpg, looks just like the non-hybrid Civic that gets 30 - 35 mpg, except for the two engines under the hood.

Mild hybrids (20 - 25 percent more fuel efficient):

• Ford Escape Hybrid SUV, at 32 mpg, is not a gas-guzzling SUV but gets only 50 percent of the fuel efficiency of a true hybrid.
• Honda Accord Hybrid, a powerful V-6 sedan, gets 33 mpg — much better than the non-hybrid Accord.

Beware the micro or hollow hybrids (0 - 10 percent more fuel efficient):

• Toyota Lexus RX 400h SUV, at 30 mpg, is a luxury SUV that has the same body as the Lexus RX 330, is more powerful and gets no better mileage but, to its credit, pollutes less.
• Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV, at 28 mpg for highway, gets the same mpg as its non-hybrid counterpart but considerably better mpg in the city and pollutes less.

PHEV cars available in near future: A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle or PHEV is created by taking a Prius hybrid or similar and adding extra batteries. The PHEV is plugged into a regular garage outlet at night. PHEVs use existing technology to triple the effective mpg of current hybrids, up to 180 mpg. Prototypes of these vehicles are available now; they get over 100 mpg for the first 50 - 60 miles of daily trips. The first automaker to commit to them is DaimlerChrysler on its Sprinter commercial-van platform. FedEx and other customers will be getting their first Sprinter PHEV vans late in 2006.

According to CalCars, thousands of Prius owners are chomping at the bit to convert to PHEVs. In early 2006, these owners will be able to convert their Priuses. Unfortunately, the conversions are not yet commercially available or blessed by Toyota. When mass produced, PHEVs will cost about $3,000 more than the regular Prius. The payback time in fuel-cost savings will range from 2 - 5 years. With gasoline at $3 a gallon, it costs

8 - 20 cents a mile to run a typical gasoline car. PHEVs can be run for as little as 2 - 4 cents a mile. This difference is because electric motors are much more efficient than gasoline engines. Typically, most cars (70 percent) are driven less than 40 miles each day. Since a PHEV can cover this range on electric charge alone, if renewable sources were used, PHEVs would save more than 75 percent of the fossil fuels the U.S. uses for transportation.

Hybrid Resources: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy: www.greenercars.com California Cars Initiative: www.calcars.org/about.html Hybrid Cars.com: www.hybridcars.com The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association: www.nesea.org/greencarclub/choose.html Sources: ApolloAlliance.org; CalCars.com; Co-op America Quarterly, Fall 2003; Home Power, Aug/Sept 2005; Mother Earth News, September 21, 2005; Newsweek, March 7, 2005; The New York Times, July 2005; United States Department of Energy and United States Department of Agriculture, July 2002; University of New Hampshire, Michael Briggs; US PIRG and Sierra Club websites.

The hot debate: hybrid or biodiesel? Currently, proponents of both hybrid and biodiesel-fueled cars are actively debating which is best. Research scientist Michael Briggs has done an extensive analysis of biodiesel. He says that for every 1 unit of energy put into growing a crop like soybeans, you get 3.2 units of energy to burn as biodiesel (an energy ratio of 3.2). This compares with gasoline's 1 unit of energy input to only 0.80 unit of energy to burn — in other words, a 20 percent loss. In addition, new diesel engines are much more efficient than gasoline engines, providing 30 percent better fuel economy and producing 15 - 20 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions (even while burning fossil-fuel-based diesel instead of biodiesel).

Straight vegetable-oil wastes from restaurants or crops that are even more efficient than soybeans can be used to make biodiesel fuel. Briggs is studying algae, which can be used to make biodiesel and reaches energy ratios as high as 5 to 10 (or 2 - 3 times the efficiency of soy-based biodiesel). Briggs calculates that for $46.2 billion a year, domestic algae farms (on just 1 percent of existing farm and rangeland) could yield all the biodiesel to completely replace the petroleum fuel needed for the entire country's transportation and home heating. This is very economical when compared to the $100 - $150 billion the U.S. spends each year purchasing foreign crude oil. (See also "Running Clean with Biodiesel" in issue #8.)

If your source of electrical energy is renewable (solar, wind, thermal, hydroelectric), then PHEVs are a completely earth-friendly option. Although PHEVs could be plugged into "dirty energy" such as coal, they're still better than gasoline engines because they generate half the greenhouse gas over the same distance. Also, about a third of home electricity comes from sources that are either neutral for greenhouse gases (nuclear, biomass and renewables) or produce none at all. Overall, this means PHEVs produce only one-third of the greenhouse gases of gasoline engines, making them a great choice.

The answer is: Hybrid/PHEV and biodiesel are both excellent options. Each provides substantial relief to the combined problems of excess fuel consumption, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Due to the length of time it will take to replace all the gasoline engines, it is critical that hybrids/PHEVs and biodiesel are all actively produced and marketed by auto manufacturers and supported by the public and by legislation.

Best of both worlds: The use of biofuels such as cellulose ethanol to power a hybrid engine makes plug-ins even more appealing. Former CIA director James Woolsey argues that burning E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) would further reduce the gasoline used by the flexible-fuel plug-in hybrid. Taking the 160-mpg PHEV Prius and feeding it E85 results in an amazing 1,000 mpg for the first 60 miles. After 60 miles, the equivalent fuel efficiency is still remarkable at 333 mpg.

Gal Luft, an energy security advocate, has estimated that if a government plan to accelerate the conversion to hybrid technology were put in place today, by 2025, it would reduce foreign oil imports by 40 percent. The plan would cost about $12 billion — the equivalent of three months of government expenditure on the Iraq war. But Bush's 2005 energy tax package has a paltry $2 billion allocated for more efficient appliances, homes and vehicles combined, while giving $13 billion in tax breaks to the nuclear, coal, oil, gas and utilities industries.

As transportation accounts for nearly 30 percent of the average U.S. household's greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 70 percent of our use of fossil fuels, Bush's energy tax package is the antithesis of reducing our oil habit. So I will join the grassroots campaign to replace our gasoline cars. We'll replace our 19-year-old car in 2006 with a biodiesel vehicle; then we'll replace the 10-year-old with a PHEV as soon as conversion kits are available. I'm not sure if it'll be soon enough for my guilt pangs to subside completely, but buying a biodiesel or hybrid helps my family's health and wallet. It's also a step closer to world stability and a healthy planet.

Marian Wineman is an environmental consultant living in Seattle with her husband and six-year-old daughter.

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