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Hi everyone. As we gear up to celebrate the New Year, there are a number of transportation issues this month to talk about. The Detroit automakers have gotten lumps of coal from Congress so far, but girls and boys who want to be good green travelers this holiday season have something new in their stockings. And will baby New Year be bringing plug-in hybrids along with him (or her)? Let’s take a look and find out.
Take care,
Scott Nathanson
UCS National Field Organizer &
HybridCenter.org Administrator
In this issue:
 Since last I wrote, the request from the Detroit three automakers for a bailout has turned into a political maelstrom.
I’m happy to say that as the automakers were called to Capitol Hill, so too was UCS. In November, Clean Vehicles Washington Representative Eli Hopson warned Congress that “If American taxpayers are going to support the automakers they deserve a return on their investment. Congress should require automakers to produce the cleaner cars that are key to their future success.”
UCS Clean Vehicles Research Director David Friedman was then asked to testify in the wake of automaker CEOs at a December 4 House Financial Services Committee hearing on the issue. Friedman strongly advocated that Congress should link any U.S. auto industry financial assistance to vehicle performance standards that will provide a return on taxpayer investment, strengthen the industry, curb our dependence on oil, and help prevent the worst consequences of global warming. You can find his full testimony here.
Members of the House of Representatives responded to UCS by seeking to condition any fiscal assistance on the automakers dropping all legal efforts to block the clean car standards now adopted by 13 states and the District of Columbia. Issues beyond emissions standards have conspired to thwart a legislative compromise between the House and Senate, leaving the future of government assistance to the Detroit Three in considerable doubt.
 Well, it’s holiday time, and the Nathanson family is packing up the Prius to go see the in-laws once again. We’re always pretty pleased with ourselves for managing to minimize our carbon footprint by squeezing the kids and all the bags in the Prius rather than taking our larger wagon that I would generously say gets about 25 miles to the gallon.
But, since we reside in the Northeast Corridor, we have also tried other methods of getting to grandma’s house. Last year we took Amtrak up to New York City, then transferred to the Long Island Rail Road for the home stretch. (Amtrak was great, but traveling with two kids and lots of bags on the LIRR around Christmas was a little dicey.) My parents, who summer in Long Island, are now huge fans of the Vamoose bus service. This service is very inexpensive, and contrary to the stereotype, these new buses are roomier, with more comfortable seats, and my pristine step-mother even gave the bathrooms a passing grade.
All of these considerations are of the practical sort. But for the eco-minded traveler, the notion of “green vacations” has focused almost exclusively on the carbon footprint of your vacation destination, not your vacation travel. Getting a handle on the relative pollution level of your vacation travel options has always been educated guesswork.
Until now.
Thanks to the amazing work of our consultant Debbie Gordon (who in a previous life was the director of the UCS Clean Vehicles program) and Senior Vehicles Engineer Jim Kliesch, I bring you Getting There Greener: The Guide to Your Lower-Carbon Vacation. In Getting There Greener, the Union of Concerned Scientists presents the first comprehensive analysis—peer-reviewed by experts—of the highest-carbon and lowest-carbon options for vacation travel.
This analysis shows that three key factors determine the environmental impact of your travel:
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the type of vehicle you are taking;
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the distance you are traveling; and
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the number of people traveling with you.
Based on these factors, this guide can tell you how environmentally sound (or perhaps unsound) your travel plans are. The Vacation Traveler Carbon Chart (.pdf) is a great, quick reference that gives travelers a ranking of travel options along the above three categories.
While that’s a great leaping-off point, this report also talks about comparing modes of travel, and how you can get the lowest-carbon trip once you’ve selected your travel method. Some of the conclusions are fairly intuitive, some are pretty surprising. So check it out, and see what’s best for you.
On a personal note—if you turn to the more detailed report (.pdf) and check out figure 25, you will see that my Prius, fully loaded with four travelers, just nips the motor coach for the top green mode slot! Boy, I knew that those two little fellas were good for something other than all that love and pride stuff…
I tried to stuff a lot of the best travel tips into our neat top 10 slideshow which you can find on the Getting There Greener homepage. So whether you’re escaping the cold weather in the Escape Hybrid, riding the rails down the West Coast (Bonnie Lee, the travel agent who spoke at our press conference said that train hugged the coast “like a winter glove”—great image), I hope you’ll find this information as helpful as I have in gaining some perspective, and power, on greening-up your vacation travel.
Finally, I wanted to point out that we’ve created a great little Getting There Greener holiday travel pledge and e-card campaign that I hope you’ll visit and use to spread the word. It’s a fun and free way to help make the holidays a littler cooler.
- Small Players Vie for ‘Green Car’ Loans: There’s $25 billion in loans up for grabs for domestic automakers. These loans—set up by the Department of Energy—are for the development of more fuel efficient vehicles. The Detroit three, along with smaller car companies, are submitting their proposals in hopes of securing some of the loans as venture capital money given that credit lines remain virtually frozen. To learn more, visit the Hybrid News Center.
 Getting There Greener--Enterprise Expands Hybrid Offerings: Enterprise Rent-a-Car recently announced that it is designating 80 branches nationwide as ‘hybrid branches’ and adding nearly 5,000 hybrids to their fleets. That will double the number of hybrids Enterprise previously offered. The hybrids they offer include the Prius, Nissan Altima, Toyota Camry, and Ford Escape. For more, visit the Hybrid News Center.
- Long-Lived, but Not Immortal--Fears Fade on Hybrid Batteries: Hybrid critics have long pointed to hybrid batteries as problematic, claiming the cost of replacing the battery would quickly erase the cost savings from using less gasoline. A decade after the release of the first hybrid in the United States, hybrid owners and automakers agree that hybrid batteries have proven to be reliable. Toyota, Honda, and Ford are all reporting they’ve had to replace very few batteries and that the majority of them have cost the consumer nothing since they were still under warranty. And as predicted, the cost of replacement batteries has gone down over time thanks to advancements in technology and increased sales. More on hybrid batteries, both conventional and plug-in, can be found at the Hybrid News Center.
As many of you know, plug-in hybrid vehicles that can travel great distances solely on electric power have been creating a huge stir for some time. This next generation in hybrid technology has the potential of dramatically reducing our nation’s oil consumption and reducing global warming pollution from the transportation sector. Several companies, including GM and Toyota, have announced that they are working on plug-in hybrid vehicles for the public. The potential of plug-in vehicles has caught the eye of a great many politicians here in the United States and abroad.
Our new Outreach and Program Assistant Leah Rose had the chance to hear from auto industry representatives at a recent Capitol Hill hearing on this issue. Here’s what she came back with:
 As part of his New Energy for America Plan, president-elect Barack Obama has announced an ambitious goal of putting one million plug-in vehicles on the roads by 2015. Across the ocean, Germany—a country proud of its auto industry—has set a similar goal, but by 2020. How exactly to achieve these goals was the focus of the Capitol Hill briefing I recently attended.
I was drawn to this briefing because of the assortment of panelists and I was curious about what they had to say on the issue. There was a representative from Toyota—today’s hybrid leader; a representative from Tesla Motors—a company focused on making the high end, fully electric Roadster; a representative from Germany’s Agency for Renewable Energies; and one of the leaders of Germany’s Green Party. As an aside: a representative from GM was slated to be there but was a no-show. Presumably he was busy preparing for the first round of the automaker bailout hearings that were happening later that same day.
Despite their diverse interests, all four representatives had similar messages about the opportunities and challenges of plug-in vehicles. Their levels of optimism varied quite a bit, but overall the feeling in the room was of excitement about the potential of plug-in vehicles to reduce both oil consumption and global warming pollution.
 So what did they have to say about plug-ins? I was impressed that they pretty clearly laid out the challenges ahead. First, as this newsletter has talked about before, are the batteries. According to our Senior Engineer Jim Kliesch, the cost, safety, and durability of lithium-ion plug-in vehicle batteries have seen improvements over the past few years, but aren’t quite market competitive yet, with battery cost remaining a significant barrier. So, auto companies may be focusing on hybrids which have limited electric-only range, but significant improvement in fuel economy. In the future you may be seeing a mixture of more “Super Prius” kind of vehicles along-side the more extended-range vehicles like the Chevy Volt.
There’s also that pesky issue of “where do you plug it in?” The battery recharging infrastructure issues need to be ironed out before charging ports are publicly available in significant numbers. According to the representative from Toyota, roughly 50 percent of Americans don’t have the ability to charge their car every night when they get home because they don’t have an electrical source near where they park their car. Our Senior Vehicles Analyst in California, Spencer Quong, noted to me that if we are serious about a plug-in future—residential, commercial, and government buildings should start rapidly integrating electrical access for vehicle charging. The power needs to be there no matter what the final charging device(s) might look like.
And to make sure that a massive number of plug-ins does not over-stress the electric grid during peak electricity use hours, we need to develop standards now that allow utilities to turn off charging during peak times when power is needed elsewhere. Developing those rules now will be crucial to guiding future consumer behavior and expectations.
 Of course, the final issue on plug-in power is the elephant in the room—the source of electricity that will power these vehicles. Coal plants generate roughly 50 percent of our electricity in this country, but burning coal releases more global warming emissions than any other source of electricity. We need to focus on charging these vehicles from clean sources of renewable energy. To my relief and surprise, every speaker touched on this issue and, more specifically, the need to invest in renewable energy.
The leader of Germany’s Green Party—a man a little more hardened by time and politics—seemed skeptical, and pondered this dilemma: should we first develop renewable energies and then build electric cars? Or start by building electric cars and then develop renewable energies? While he didn’t provide an answer, he had a laundry list of what it would take. To address long-term global warming pollution from the vehicle sector, it’s clear we need to do both. His final comment struck me the most: if the United States meets the goal of putting one million plug-in vehicles on the roads by 2015, then so will Germany by 2020. Cooperation and competition are powerful things.
With icy winter storms and blasts of Arctic air hitting many parts of the country, let’s highlight the hybrids out there who brave the cold air and heavy snow each winter.
 Andrew Mason of South Royalton, VT loves everything about his Toyota Prius Gen 2. He feels good about driving it and says it's very comfortable to drive.
 Jonny Goldberg of Sharon, MA succinctly puts his feelings about his Toyota Prius Gen. 1 "It just makes sense!"
 K.E. Matthews of Ontario, Canada, says her 2002 Prius is more than up to the challenge of the Canadian winter. It always starts, even on the coldest mornings, despite never being in the garage. It's been a great gas miser as well. She once drove from Toronto to Montreal and back on a single tank. (For those of you not up on your Canadian geography, that’s 670 total miles!)
 Jane Baldwin of Wilson, WY lives on a steep driveway. It was a risk to buy a 2-wheel drive vehicle, but she wanted to try it. So she bought the good, sticky rubber snow tires. Except for one November afternoon after an eight inch heavy, wet snow, she has made it up the 1/3 mile driveway to her house every time this winter. This Prius has exceeded her expectations for fuel economy & heart.
Have a safe and joyous holiday season, however you celebrate it, and I’ll talk to you again in 2009!
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