Posted on 05/23/2009 5:09:48 AM PDT by ovrtaxt
President Obama announced on May 19, 2009, a “historic agreement to help America break its addiction to oil.” The centerpiece of that announcement was a new 35.5-mpg CAFE standard for 2016. Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has been advocating the entry of fuel-efficient cars into the market for years. The time is now ripe, and we are in the midst of a major national push for the adoption of these cars.
One of the barriers to widespread adoption is the common-yet-misleading line of logic that most consumers follow—that fuel efficiency equates to smaller, less safe cars.
This misperception is fed by the media, including an April 14 New York Times story, “Study Says Small-Car Buyers Sacrifice Safety for Economy” and a May 22 The Wall Street Journal piece, titled “Light Cars are Dangerous Cars.”
Sure, based purely upon a typical vehicle's design, geometry, and occupant position, we agree that larger—but not necessarily heavier—vehicles can offer considerable safety advantages to passengers within. But left out of this quickly developing story is engineering design.
Recent research by Rocky Mountain Institute indicates that an ultralight vehicle that is large and better designed can have crash safety comparable to, or better than, that of a similarly sized heavy vehicle. The platform of a light and large vehicle relies on stronger, lighter materials. Designing for passive safety on par with current NHTSA five-star ratings demands not only using lightweight materials, but also new vehicle geometries and components that can act as energy-absorbing crumple zones. Indeed, a lighter vehicle can achieve the performance of a conventionally designed vehicle, but because it can do so with a smaller engine, there is more room in the engine compartment for crush space and, ultimately, a better crumple zone design. Furthermore, automobile manufacturers are beginning to incorporate advanced active safety features, such as side curtain airbags, and collision prevention systems, such as Volvo's "City Safety."
There is another aspect of safety not considered when using conventional logic: the safety of the people outside the car. A lightweight vehicle will be less aggressive (less likely to injure the occupants of another vehicle, bicyclists, or pedestrians external to the primary vehicle in a collision), thereby reducing the overall number of traffic deaths. For an object moving at a given speed, a reduction in mass corresponds to a reduction in the amount of energy that object brings into a collision with another object. Thus, a lightweight fleet (traveling at the same speeds) is statistically less dangerous than a conventional (heavy) fleet.
As part of our research on vehicle lightweighting, RMI reviewed all the available data and commentary about the relationship between size, safety, and weight, including reports published by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Many reports link size and weight as being responsible for safety reductions, while the most recent studies disaggregate the two, and find size alone to blame.
In a January 2007 article, IIHS stated “a way to improve fuel economy and maintain vehicle crashworthiness is to use lighter materials that reduce vehicle weight but not size.” IIHS also noted “Indexing these requirements to the vehicle size makes it less likely that auto manufacturers will reduce the weights of their vehicles in ways that degrade occupant protection, and some weight reduction, especially among very heavy vehicles, could improve total safety by lowering the risk to other people on the road.”
The fact is that today, there are not many examples of vehicles that have been designed to be both lightweight and large. This will soon change as domestic and overseas automakers explore designs and materials that will be both fuel-efficient and safe.
RMI continues to encourage OEMs to make efficient, lightweight cars. We hate to see the benefit that comes from fuel efficiency thwarted by misconceptions about safety trade-offs. Both fuel efficiency and safety can be achieved and both are good for the health of the country in more ways than just safety on the road.
Results of a recent RMI study on this topic are expected to be released in July.
For additional information, please visit www.rmi.org.
The authors are all employees of Rocky Mountain Institute, where Mike Simpson is a transportation analyst, Kristine Chan-Lizardo is Interim Director of the Mobility and Vehicle Efficiency Team (MOVE), Cory Lowe is a public relations manager, and Cameron M. Burns is Senior Editor.
“It’s not incredibly earth shattering, but why isn’t anybody doing it on a mass scale?”
My guess is that it has not been cost-effective. Making a large but light car costs more than a consumer would be willing to pay, so it’s a losing proposition for the company.
“This is why old, crusty companies need to be allowed to fail, and newer, more agile players need to enter the market. WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT.”
This is so absolutely true.
In other words, get up high and most of the force of the impact will pass beneath you.
(I drive a mildly jacked up F-150 4x4. A little extra advantage in muddy pastures, too.)
Wish my bank account had a crumple zone or two.
Wow cars so light,slow, and flimsey that if they hit a pedestrian they won't even hurt.
This is an interesting sentence, especially as it is at the heart of the argument. Are they talking about the vehicle (with aggressive being just a terrible word choice) or the driver ( adopting the common deceit that "people drive more aggressively when they have anti-lock brakes, nada,nada") or conflating the two somehow? In spite of your well thought out endorsement of them, they come across as Obama techies, GE types.
And for those Kalifornia New York City types, a plug-in electric car does not pollute in their back yard. It pollutes in my back yard. Just like their land-fill trash.
The Rocky Mountain Institute is Amory Lovins’s creation. I have never found him to be constrained by truth or reality.
You are forgetting the new superhighways with truck only lanes and clown car only lanes.
“stopped this run in the 1960s because it was unprofitable.”
The left doesn’t comprehend the meaning of profit.
E=MC2
Before you flame this article..Too late...
There is another aspect of safety not considered when using conventional logic: the safety of the people outside the car. A lightweight vehicle will be less aggressive (less likely to injure the occupants of another vehicle, bicyclists, or pedestrians external to the primary vehicle in a collision), thereby reducing the overall number of traffic deaths. .This was written by quiche eating, sandal wearing, apartment dwelling, city living yuppies. As only they would think of bicyclists and pedestrians when factoring 'Car Safety'. If they lived in Chicago they'd be Cubs fans.
For an object moving at a given speed, a reduction in mass corresponds to a reduction in the amount of energy that object brings into a collision with another object
Try that In English elitist yuppie scum. fyi, That's one of Newton's Laws of Motion (2nd one), F=ma (Force = mass x acceleration)
Thus, a lightweight fleet (traveling at the same speeds) is statistically less dangerous than a conventional (heavy) fleet.Yeah that's right, 'statistically' Its also why nobody ever dies in the Bumper Car ride at Carnivals.
However take that micro mini lightweight fleet of death traps and put them on any expressway where there's an 85,000# Semi two feet from your rear bumper, you see traffic stopped up ahead but HE DOESN'T and you can't change lanes because you've already used all 25 HP of your energy efficient green car. You won't even have time to say a Hail Mary before you're flattened along with ten micro mini death traps in front of you.
I HATE these people!
If they wan to commit mass suicide they should buy a a gun, but leave ME Alone.
FARS, the government’s own Fatal Accident Reporting System for all fatal accidents in the US, consistently (for several decades) shows that small cars have about THREE times the fatality rate as big cars. This includes single car crashes, which includes a large percentage of the fatalities. Whatever is done to make a small car safer can also be done to a big car, making the big car three times safer, still. The laws of physics cannot be repealed, even by Obama.
From their website:
Rocky Mountain Institute® (RMI) is an independent, entrepreneurial, nonprofit think-and-do tank™. We envisage a world thriving, verdant, and secure, for all, for ever. To that end, our mission is to drive the efficient and restorative use of resources.
RMI’s style is nonadversarial and transideological, emphasizing integrative design, advanced technologies, and mindful markets.
We work extensively with the private sector, as well as with civil society and government, to create abundance by design and to apply the framework of Natural Capitalism.
Natural Capitalism? What the hell is that?
Natural Capitalism
Companies Can Profit From the Principles of Natural Capitalism
The previously mentioned core principles form the backdrop for Natural Capitalism, a new and rapidly spreading business model that harnesses environmental performance as an engine of competitive advantage. Our activities are increasingly based on this thesis, detailed in the book Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (www.naturalcapitalism.org).
Here’s the thesis.
Previous industrial revolutions made people vastly more productive when low per-capita output was limiting progress in exploiting a seemingly boundless natural world. Today we face a different pattern of scarcity: abundant people and labor-saving machines, but diminishing natural capital.
Natural Capital refers to the earth’s natural resources and the ecological systems that provide vital life-support services to society and all living things. These services are of immense economic value; some are literally priceless, since they have no known substitutes. Yet current business practices typically fail to take into account the value of these assets — which is rising with their scarcity. As a result, natural capital is being degraded and liquidated by the very wasteful use of resources such as energy, materials, water, fiber, and topsoil.
The next industrial revolution, like the previous ones, will be a response to changing patterns of scarcity. It will create upheaval, but more importantly, it will create opportunities.
Natural Capitalism is a new business model that enables companies to fully realize these opportunities. The journey to natural capitalism involves four major shifts in business practices, all vitally interlinked.
The Four Principles of Natural Capitalism
Radically Increase the Productivity of Natural Resources.
Through fundamental changes in both production design and technology, farsighted companies are developing ways to make natural resources — energy, minerals, water, forests — stretch five, ten, even 100 times further than they do today. The resulting savings in operational costs, capital investment, and time can help natural capitalists implement the other three principles.
Shift to Biologically Inspired Production Models and Materials.
Natural capitalism seeks not merely to reduce waste but to eliminate the very concept of waste. In closed-loop production systems, modeled on nature’s designs, every output either is returned harmlessly to the ecosystem as a nutrient, like compost, or becomes an input for another manufacturing process. Industrial processes that emulate the benign chemistry of nature reduce dependence on nonrenewable inputs, make possible often phenomenally more efficient production, and can result in elegantly simple products that rival anything man-made.
Move to a “Service-and-Flow” Business Model.
The business model of traditional manufacturing rests on the sale of goods. In the new model, value is instead delivered as a continuous flow of services—such as providing illumination rather than selling light bulbs. This aligns the interests of providers and customers in ways that reward them for resource productivity.
Reinvest in Natural Capital.
Capital begets more capital; a company that depletes its own capital is eroding the basis of its future prosperity. Pressures on business to restore, sustain, and expand natural capital are mounting as human needs expand, the costs of deteriorating ecosystems rise, and the environmental awareness of consumers increases. Fortunately, these pressures all create business opportunity.
The Next Industrial Revolution
The next Industrial Revolution is already being led by companies that are learning to profit and gain competitive advantage from these four principles. Not only that, their leaders and employees are feeling better about what they do.
Shortages of work and hope, of satisfaction and security, are not mere isolated pathologies, but result from clear linkages between the waste of resources, money, and people. The solutions are intertwined and synergistic: firms that downsize their unproductive tons, gallons, and kilowatt-hours can keep more people, who will foster the innovation that drives future success.
“Shortages of work and hope”?
Nope. Not buying into their new age junk. Not this crap. They are in the tank for the whole Obama socialist crap.
And we all know how important it is to 'feel' better about what we do.
This is not directed at you, ovrtaxt, so please don't take it personally. I think there are components of this that are fine. But I read this statement, and this sounds very much like Jeff Immelt, Socialist GE CEO who is feeding off the government trough, and is looking to have an even bigger part in it with his "Healthymagination" BS:
"...“The economic crisis that’s going on right now doesn’t represent a cycle, it represents a reset. And people that understand that will prosper and people who don’t understand that will get left behind…. When we come out of this fog, this notion that companies need to stand for something and need to be accountable for more than just the money they earn will be profound.”..."Jeff Immelt, CEO GE
Look, it’s an easy equation- the less you have to spend on overhead and inefficiency, the more you can put in your pocket. Personally, I hate paying for gas at even $2 a gallon, when I know that I shouldn’t have to. (We’ll leave the soon-to-be plummeting value of a dollar out of the equation for now.)
I hate paying $1 for an ear of corn. I hate paying $9 a pound for steak. I want to spend less and get more for it, don’t you?
Everyone wants to turn everything into a Dem vs Rep thing (especially the politicians) and when you do that, you’re playing into their control freak game. We also have entire industries whose existence depends upon our forced use of outdated technology. These people contribute a lot of money to politicians, so regulations and mandates, written in their favor, keep the stupidity (and the money flow) alive.
It’s time to break free from the limited thinking that’s led us to where we are today. Obama certainly isn’t the solution, but neither is maintaining things that need to go by the wayside.
Morale is a very real component in the performance of any organization though. I agree that a lot of this translates to psychobabble by the time a bureaucrat gets done with it, but there are lots of people willing to work harder if it’s a labor of love.
Thanks for the respectful debate, by the way!
You'll also have to make the trees along the road lighter, maybe all balsa wood trees.
You mentioned profit. These guys are advocating FOR PROFIT solutions. They are not leftists.
It gets a little frustrating when someone gets pigeonholed wrongly just because they come from a different angle than the traditional BS we’re usually fed. Alternative technology isn’t left or right (a false dichotomy anyway), it just works or it doesn’t.
I work for a lighting company who manufactures LED lighting. It’s a superior technology, it just is. Does that make me a liberal? No, it makes me an advocate of spending less money on your electric bill so you can spend it on something else. Preferably something more profitable.
Air drag is proportional to size so it will be hard to make big cars competitive on fuel efficiency. Most of leftism is motivated by size envy, so when a rich person drives by in their titanium jet engined light Hummer, leftists are going to flip out and find a reason to tax them out of existence.
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