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Ford heralds slow demise of SUV
BBC
Mark Fields says population trends will dictate Ford’s priorities
Large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) will go out of fashion because of environmental worries and demographic trends, a top Ford executive has said.
Mark Fields, who runs Ford’s US business, said consumers would move away from SUVs to smaller cars in what he characterised as a “tectonic shift”.
…In a speech to industry experts, Mr Fields said that accelerated investment in hybrid vehicles and energy-saving technology was a financial as well as an environmental necessity for Ford.
Its research had shown that 70% of Americans were now “very concerned” with the environment and that fuel efficiency was one of the three most important factors in influencing people’s choice of cars.
(9 Aug 2006)
McDonald’s puts toy Hummers in its Happy Meals for children
Melanie Warner, NY Times
Would You Like a Gas Guzzler With That?
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WHEN General Motors introduced the three-ton, 11-miles-to-the-gallon Hummer H2 four years ago, it redefined American extravagance. But now, with gas prices hovering at $3 a gallon and threatening to go higher, sales of Hummers are declining as Americans become increasingly conscious of gas mileage.
McDonald’s, however, appears not to have gotten the message. This week, the restaurant chain started putting toy Hummers in children’s Happy Meal boxes, calling it the “Hummer of a Summer” promotion. Television and radio ads, which started running this week, feature a family riding in a Hummer on the way to a McDonald’s.
With enough visits to McDonald’s, children will be able to collect eight different Hummers in a variety of colors, including two versions of the H1, the original and most monstrous member of the Hummer family, which General Motors stopped making in June.
(10 Aug 2006)
Polluter Scooters
Erika-Leigh Goodwin, Willamette Week Online
What’s worse: breathing the fumes of an SUV or a two-stroke scooter?
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With temperatures rising like gas prices, scooters may seem the perfect mode of transportation.
You get up to 100 miles per gallon, on top of the hipster factor and the feel of the wind in your hair. But there’s one imperfection to these sassy little two-wheeled machines: A March 2005 study by the Environmental Protection Agency shows most scooters on the road pollute more than SUVs.
That sounded so counterintuitive that WW decided to test a few scooters, with help from the crew at Esquire Motors in Goose Hollow, which donated its time and emissions-testing equipment.
Then came the hard part.
Telephone calls and emails seeking scooters to test from scooter shops and groups went unanswered; other scooter owners proved willing to talk-until the story’s angle was revealed. Finally, however, we persuaded three scooter lovers to volunteer their vehicles.
Patrick Fitzgibbons, co-owner and founder of P-Town Scooters, let us test his vintage scooter, which established just how bad older models are. Although he knew his pride and joy wasn’t the cleanest of motorized vehicles, Fitzgibbons was still surprised by the results.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
Pretty bad.
(9 Aug 2006)
UPDATE (Aug 12) Reader AJW complains that the conclusions of this article are invalid:
Most notably, the authors are looking at concentration of pollutants in exhaust as opposed to volume of pollutants per passenger mile. Clearly they have no technical understanding of the issue. They also compare obsolete engines to a modern one.
