Contrails and Warming

  • Researchers say preliminary results suggest contrails can warm the atmosphere - maybe above and beyond airplane's carbon emissions. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

It’s the tail end of the holiday
air travel season, and, if you’re
flying, you might not be thinking
about your impact on climate
change. But Shawn Allee reports, some scientists are:

Transcript

It’s the tail end of the holiday
air travel season, and, if you’re
flying, you might not be thinking
about your impact on climate
change. But Shawn Allee reports, some scientists are:

Mark Jacobson studies atmospheric science at Stanford University.

He’s just finished research on airplane emissions, including contrails. Those’re the streaming vapor clouds you see coming out of high-flying airplanes.

Jacobson wants to see if contrails contribute to global warming.

“And we’re trying to find out what’s the relative contribution of aircraft to that warming.”

Jacobson says preliminary results suggest contrails can warm the atmosphere – maybe above and beyond airplane’s carbon emissions.

He says his upcoming paper will likely stir a lot of debate next year, since flying’s becoming more common and there hasn’t been much research on its impact yet.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

When Animals and Airplanes Collide

  • Airport Operations Manager Todd Laps uses pyrotechnics - and sometimes just plain old honking the car horn - to harass birds and keep them away from the airport. (Photo by Julie Grant)

If you bite your nails every time
you’re on a plane – the increasing
number of bird strikes might give
you one more reason for concern.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
prevent airplanes from hitting birds:

Transcript

If you bite your nails every time
you’re on a plane – the increasing
number of bird strikes might give
you one more reason for concern.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
prevent airplanes from hitting birds:

Todd Laps probably never envisioned that he’d spend his days harassing
birds. He’s operations manager at the Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio.

(sound of a plane landing)

But for the past few years, he’s started doing everything he can to keep
birds off the runway.

(sound of a horn)

Sometimes he just chases them in a truck while honking the horn.

“If you chase them around enough, they get tired of it, and they leave.
But you may have to drive around blowing the horn for five minutes to get
them to leave.”

(sound of a horn)

It’s not that Laps hates birds. He’s actually trying to save them –
from getting sucked into plane engines. That’s pretty bad for the birds.
It can also damage the planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration says bird strikes have killed more than
200 people worldwide since 1988 – and cost the U.S. aviation industry
hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ever since geese took out both engines in US Airways flight 1549 earlier
this year – leading to that dramatic flight into the Hudson River –
more airports are paying attention to the surrounding wildlife.

Mike Begier is national coordinator of the Airport Wildlife Hazards Program
with the US Department of Agriculture.

He says populations of larger birds – such as geese – are increasing. At
the same time, there are more planes in the air then there used to be.

“So we’re competing for the same airspace. So it’s a probability.
The more times you fly, the more chances you have to strike something.”

Begier says most airports were built a little outside of the city, in
green, wet areas. And those places attract lots of birds and animals.

“Birds may want to stop over there and rest. Airports that do not have
adequate fencing wind up being a refuge for deer or coyote.”

At the Akron airport, they’ve recently cut down 40 acres of trees to make
the area less attractive to wildlife. They’ve also started mowing more
to discourage bugs. Without bugs, there are fewer small mammals and birds.
The folks in Akron think it’s made a difference reducing the number of
accidents.

Airports are not required to report wildlife strikes. Some do voluntarily.
When the FAA opened up its records on collisions between planes and birds
and coyotes and even alligators this year, it looked like the number of
accidents was on the rise at some airports.

But Begier says those numbers don’t provide an accurate picture.
Airports don’t have to report them, so as many as 80% of strikes still go
unreported.

“So when we see these high numbers of strikes, it’s important to
realize that the airports are actually being proactive, that they’re
reporting their strikes – which is a very good thing.”

Begier gives the example of JFK airport in New York. It’s in the top ten
airports nationwide reporting the most wildlife strikes. That sounds bad.
But because JFK voluntarily reported accidents, biologists were able to
figure out part of its problem. When the nearby bayberry bushes were ripe,
they were attracting lots of birds. By removing the bushes, they reduced
the number of accidents.

Researchers are also experimenting with higher tech solutions at airports.
They’re trying laser lights to harass birds away from hangars, using
small radar units to track birds and warn planes of approaching danger, and
using pulsating lights on planes to mimic bird predators.

But for USDA wildlife biologist Rebecca Mihalco, the old fashioned methods
are the most rewarding – at least today. She works at the
Cleveland-Hopkins airport and just caught a red-tailed hawk.

“I’m always excited when I catch a hawk. I guess I’m a kid that
way.”

Mihalco drove the hawk far away from the airport and released it.

But to avoid so many accidents with wildlife, airports will have to do
better than catching them one at a time or chasing after birds and honking
at them.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Recycling Your Ride

  • Bassam Jody of Argonne National Laboratory is helping develop novel ways of sorting and cleaning shredder residue left over from cars, construction debris, and major household appliances. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

We’ve all heard over and over again
about that government program ‘Cash
for Clunkers.’ It’s got drivers
thinking about what exactly happens
to dead cars, regardless of how they
die. Shawn Allee looks at
how car recycling works and who’s
trying to improve it:

Transcript

We’ve all heard over and over again about that government program ‘Cash for Clunkers.’ It’s got drivers thinking about what exactly happens to dead cars, regardless of how they die. Shawn Allee looks at how car recycling works and who’s trying to improve it:

You might not think about it this way, but your car just might be the biggest thing you own that gets recycled.

I mean, someday you’re going to junk it, or maybe some future owner will. Anyway, I’m out in front of a car shop in my neighborhood, and with the health of cars in mind, I thought I’d ask some people around here, percentage-wise, just how much of a junked car gets recycled?

“I would say maybe, like, 5% of the car.”

“I’ll say, 20% – 30% probably, of a car.”

“I guess the recycled one could be 30% of the car.”

“I guess, like, 50%.”

“About 70%.”
++

In my little unscientific survey here, it turns out that most people are giving a pretty low estimate of how much of a junked car ends up being recycled.

The auto industry and the federal environmental protection agency say about 80% of the junked car gets recycled. The rest heads to landfills. That sounds pretty good, but that means we bury about five million tons of junked car pieces each year.

To understand why they can’t recycle even more of the car, I’m going to talk with Jim Watson.

He runs ABC Auto Wreckers in a suburb just south of Chicago.

“We don’t want to landfill anything. The objective is to take the vehicle, process it and have all the parts be used.”

Watson shows me his shop where he pulls parts for the used market. A dozen workers lift hoods, twist tires, and pull out stuff I don’t even recognize. It’s like an assembly line in reverse.

“They do an analysis and inventory each of the parts of the car that have a probability of sale and then they harvest or pull those parts off the car.”

Watson and some of the bigger auto wreckers have parts-scrapping down to a science, but it’s expensive to keep pulling parts and keep space open for scrap yards.

Eventually, Watson’s pulls off everything usefull and he’ll send it to a car shredder.

“A machine that beats it apart and shreds the car into small fist-sized or hand-sized components.”

Recyclers can pull out big shreds of steel and aluminum, but about 20% of the car is left-over. This shredder residue gets tossed into landfills. But scientists are thinking about how to recycle this shredded mess.

One works at a lab at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.

“This is what shredder residue looks like.”

Dr. Bassam Jody reaches into a cardboard box and scoops a jumble of car seat foam, metal cable, wood, and shards of plastic.

Jody says shredder residue is a recycler’s nightmare.

“Maybe there are more than twenty different kinds of plastics. I tell you, plastics are generally incompatible, they don’t like each other and they don’t work together very well.”

Jody is developing machines to safely clean and separate all this stuff. It’s tough science.

Jody: “The more things you have in the mixture, the harder it is to separate. The trick is, you have to do it economically, and to produce materials that can be used in value-added products.”

Allee: “What can you make out of them?”

Jody: “Car parts. For example, this is a seating column cover.”

Jody says he gets a kick out of his work. He might just squeeze a bit more good out of our cars.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Turning Clunkers Into New Cars

  • The scrap heap - what's left of hundreds of cars and other metal waste after they go through a shredder. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

All those clunkers are working their
way toward the final melt-down at
a steel mill. Lester Graham reports
you’ll see the steel from those clunkers
again:

Transcript

All those clunkers are working their
way toward the final melt-down at
a steel mill. Lester Graham reports
you’ll see the steel from those clunkers
again:

The steel from those clunkers from the “Cash for Clunkers” program will eventually be melted down and used again.

Bill Heenan is the President of the Steel Recycling Institute. He says it’ll be a few months before that scrap gets recycled.

“It takes some time for that old automobile, the clunker in this particular case, to work its way through the dismantling system and then through the shredding system and eventually to the steel mill.”

Scrap yards can remove things such as fenders or hubcaps for used parts, but what’s left – including the engines – goes to the shredder.

Bill Heenan says those 700,000 clunkers won’t mean a glut of scrap steel.

“Let’s say there’s a ton of steel in each one, you’ve got 700,000 tons. That seems like a lot. But in a given year, we recycle 80-million tons.”

That 80-million tons of scrap is melted down and becomes the bulk of new steel products in the U.S., including new cars.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

A Clunker’s Fate Once It’s Cashed In

  • Cars stacked up and waiting to be shredded at United Iron and Metal in Baltimore, MD. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

The federal Cash for Clunkers
program kicked off this weekend,
and dealerships were pushing it
hard to sell new cars. The program
was created by Congress last month
to give a boost to the struggling
auto industry while helping the
environment. The idea is to get
older polluting cars off the road
for good and replace them with
new more-efficient ones. Tamara Keith has this report
on what will happen to all the
clunkers:

Transcript

The federal Cash for Clunkers program kicked off this weekend, and dealerships
were pushing it hard to sell new cars. The program was created by Congress last
month to give a boost to the struggling auto industry while helping the environment.
The idea is to get older polluting cars off the road for good and replace them with
new more-efficient ones. Tamara Keith has this report on what will happen to all the
clunkers:

Car dealers suddenly have a whole bunch of cars on their lots they have absolutely
no use for. The clunkers cannot be re-sold. That would defeat the whole green goal
of the program.

So all those old trucks and sagging sedans, they’re headed to places like M and M
Auto Parts in Stafford, Virginia. Most of us would call it a junk yard. But don’t tell
that to owner Rick Morrow.

“Long before green was popular, this kind of operation, even though a lot of people
said, ‘Oh junk yard.’ But they were actually recycling cars. They were making use of
what the component was built for in the first place.”

His company’s logo prominently features a large green recycling symbol.

“This is the dismantling area where after the cars come are inventoried and then take
them apart.”

Morrow’s business is all about re-use. A fender, or a tail light, or maybe an alternator
from this car will live to see another day in a car that needs a replacement part.

You’d think Morrow would be totally excited about Cash for Clunkers. But he’s not.
Because the one component from the clunkers that absolutely cannot be re-sold is
the engine – pretty much the most valuable thing in the car.

“If we do a few dozen cars and it looks like it’s costing us more money than it’s worth,
we’ll say, ‘sorry.’”

From an environmental perspective, it absolutely makes sense to prevent those
engines from ever polluting again. But, from a business perspective it’s a real
problem for the nation’s auto recyclers.

“It will make it extremely hard to make money on a car.”

Scotty Davis is the vice president of All Foreign Auto Parts in Fredericksburg
Virginia. He says it costs him $1800 in labor to take apart a car.

“It’s going to cost me money to do this. It’s one of these things. I have to bring the
car in. I have to get rid of the tires. I have to get rid of all the fluids, the freon,
process it – just to crush the vehicle.”

Davis specializes in newer foreign vehicles. Parts from a clunker won’t help stock
his shelves. But he feels like he has to take the cars to stay in the good graces of
the auto dealers he sells parts to.

“And I’ll be very honest with you. A couple of them I do a lot of business with, I said,
‘I will take your cars.’ And they said, ‘what are you going to do with them?’ I’m going
to crush ‘em. I mean they’re not of any value.”

(sound of a shredder yard)

Once all the usable parts are removed, and the toxic chemicals cleaned out, most
cars will end up at a scrap yard like United Iron and Metal in Baltimore.

“Right now you can see the tail end of a car coming on the conveyor belt down into
the shredder.”

“A tremendous amount of friction is going on as these hammers are pulverizing that
car into small pieces.”

Bruce Savage is with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries – a trade group. It
only takes 15 seconds, and when the shredder is done with a car, it isn’t even
recognizable.

“That big pile over there is the end result. It’s just a big pile of metal pieces.”

Savage says the metal is then sold. Whether scrap recyclers will cash in on Cash
for Clunkers all depends on the commodities prices for metal in the coming months.

“What was an old car can become a new car or can become a dishwasher or siding
for a home. It depends on the materials. But everything is being reused,
reprocessed and renewed.”

So maybe a 1989 suburban can be reborn as a 2010 Ford Focus Hybrid.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Dealerships Prepare for Clunkers

  • ‘Cash for clunkers’ became popular before all the rules were final. For the past few weeks there’s been a growing backlog of orders at dealerships. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Today is the first official day of the cash for clunkers program. The government program offers you up to $4500 to trade in your gas guzzling car for a more fuel efficient new car. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Today is the first official day of the cash for clunkers program. The government program offers you up to $4500 to trade in your gas guzzling car for a more fuel efficient new car. Lester Graham reports:

The goal is to clean up the environment and give sagging new car sales a boost.

‘Cash for clunkers’ became popular before all the rules were final. For the past few weeks there’s been a growing backlog of orders at dealerships.

At Varsity Ford in Ann Arbor, Michigan, people have been seeing if their clunkers qualify, and picking out a new car that they’ll finally be able to drive off the lot today.

Matt Stanford sells cars there. He says as far as he’s concerned, ‘cash for clunkers’ is already a success.

“We’re going to sell new cars. We’re going to get cars that don’t really need to be on the road off the road.”

The National Autobmobile Dealers Association says some dealerships have been holding off until they learned more about the rules of ‘cash for clunkers’ which were just cleared up last Friday.

The clunkers will be scrapped. The cash ends when the one-billion dollars in government money runs out.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Getting Quiet Cars to Make Some Noise

A lot of people who drive gas-electric hybrid cars love how quiet they are. But others say hybrids are so quiet they’re hazardous. People in the blind community say they can’t hear hybrid cars coming… and they’d like to have sound added back into the cars. Rebecca Williams has the story:

Transcript

A lot of people who drive gas-electric hybrid cars love how quiet they are. But others say hybrids are so quiet they’re hazardous. People in the blind community say they can’t hear hybrid cars coming… and they’d like to have sound added back into the cars. Rebecca Williams has the story:

(tap tap tap of white cane)

Fred Wurtzel has excellent hearing but he can’t see.

He can tell by the echo from his white cane when he’s gotten to the edge of a building or the corner of a city block. And he knows cars by their engines.

(sound of car rumbling past)

“That car has a tweety bird under its hood, a loose belt or whatever it was. Now, there was a car going the other direction. (sound of truck going past) That’s probably a UPS truck.”

But he can’t hear hybrid cars – at least not until they’re right at his feet. That’s because the electric motor is very quiet. And when a hybrid comes to a stop, the engine shuts off.

“If you don’t know there’s a hybrid car there waiting, it may start turning and you may step into its path and not even be aware that there’s a car coming around.”

Wurtzel is president of the Michigan chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. He says the blind community wants some sound added back into hybrid vehicles.

“’Course I grew up in the 60’s so a nice Mustang or something like that would be good (laughs)… just a sound that would let me know that the car’s accelerating or the car’s decelerating – whatever a normal vehicle would sound like.”

Well that’s one idea.

Patrick Nyeste has several ideas. He’s a researcher at North Carolina State University. He tried out 18 different sounds on his test subjects.

Everything from sirens (sound of siren)… to whistles (sound of whistle) … to engine sounds (sound of engine).

“I had a horn from a Beetle – so it’s, ‘meep meep,’ and I would just get giggles from that.”

But, he says to make a quiet car safer, the sound needs to be continuous – like a traditional car. That means some sounds can get annoying really fast.

(sound of continuous beeping)

Yeah that’s enough of that.

Nyeste says that engine noise we heard earlier was one of people’s favorites. They also liked white noise (sound of white noise), and the hum sound (sound of humming). He says that’s because we’re used to hearing those kinds of sounds when a car goes by.

He says a sound added to a hybrid also has to be loud enough to be heard above lawn mowers and garbage trucks.

“You want to make sure that the noise is heard, especially by the blind around corners, around objects, I mean some of these sounds can get masked and that’s important information to know where an object or a vehicle is.”

But some people are worried about adding sound to our cities and suburbs, they say they’re already so noisy.

Lotus Engineering says it has a solution for that. They added a four cylinder engine sound to a Toyota Prius. But the volume’s adjustable.

Colin Peachey is an engineer with Lotus.

“You could set the sound to be higher in certain circumstances or quieter in other circumstances. We could actually make the sound to be whatever level we fancied.”

And you don’t have to hear the sound inside the car.

There’s also a startup company in California – Enhanced Vehicle Acoustics. It’s designing a similar system for hybrids.

But it’s not clear how soon quiet cars might start making noise.

Spokespeople for Toyota and the Big Three say their companies are working on solutions. And some states and members of Congress have been talking about requiring hybrids to make some minimum level of sound.

Then, automakers will have to figure out exactly what a hybrid sounds like.

(montage of engine sounds)

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

(sounds continue)

Related Links

Part One: Kicking Gas to the Curb

  • Ted Bohn, a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory in the Chicago suburbs, shows off a modified Saturn Vue with a lithium-ion battery in the rear (Photo by Gabriel Spitzer)

One of the great hopes for a green
car is the plug-in hybrid. It’s like a regular
gas-electric hybrid, only you can plug in at
night. That charge is supposed to let most
people make a typical commute without the gas engine. Carmakers and the government are throwing a lot of money at the technology – GM and Chrysler both hope to release models in the next few years. But the cars might not deliver what boosters promise. In the first part of our series on saving gas, Gabriel Spitzer
reports on what new research says about plug-in hybrids in the real world:

Transcript

One of the great hopes for a green
car is the plug-in hybrid. It’s like a regular
gas-electric hybrid, only you can plug in at
night. That charge is supposed to let most
people make a typical commute without the gas
engine. Carmakers and the government are
throwing a lot of money at the technology – GM
and Chrysler both hope to release models in the
next few years. But the cars might not deliver
what boosters promise. In the first part of
our series on saving gas, Gabriel Spitzer
reports on what new research says about plug-in
hybrids in the real world:

Ted Bohn is a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory in the Chicago
suburbs and he’s showing off his ride.

“So this a prototype, plug-in hybrid vehicle. The rear half is a 10
kilowatt-hour battery.”

It’s a modified Saturn Vue, with a big old lithium-ion battery in the rear.

That battery is like what runs your iPod – only it weighs as much as a
linebacker.

Ted Bohn: “If you actually had to drive less than 40 miles on a typical
day, you could drive the whole day without starting the engine.”

Gabriel Spitzer: “Could you drive this very vehicle 40 miles round-trip
without starting the engine?”

Ted Bohn: “Close. If you drive slowly. To be honest, 25 to 30 is what
you’ll really do – driving on a nice day downhill with a tailwind is 40,
more realistically, 25 to 30.”

The thing is, you don’t hear those little caveats from some people, like, say,
General Motors.

“You plug it in. And they expect you’ll get up to 40 miles without a drop
of gas. Wow. The Chevy Volt. I’ve heard the future, and it hums.”

That 40-mile range is based on EPA tests.

Argonne scientist Aymeric Rousseau, with backing from the government,
compared those measures to how people drive in the real world.

Based on more than 100 drivers in Kansas City, he found that 40 mile range
shrinks to about 30.

Flip on your AC, and it’s more like 20.

“People now think about, you know, your mileage may vary. Now we
have to think about, your electrical distance may vary, depending on
how you drive, and what accessories you’re using.”

Rousseau says factors like aggressive driving sap the all-electric range.

And don’t forget – we’re talking Kansas City, here.

“When we talk to people from the EPA they actually say that people in
California drive more aggressively than people in Kansas City.”

General Motors concedes the point.

Rob Peterson is a spokesman for GM.

He says driver behavior can have some affect on the all-electric range.
Though …

“I wouldn’t go as low as 28 to 32.”

He says for a reasonable driver, the Volt can still get about 40.

And how about those pedal-to-the-metal Californians? Well, he says GM
studied exactly those people.

“For 64% of the people that we tested, they would be able to finish their
day with a petroleum-free and a tailpipe-emission-free commute.”

That’s not exactly what Argonne found.

Granted, the batteries they looked at were a little smaller than the Volt’s.
Size matters when it comes to batteries.

Said Al-Hallaj teaches at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

He says carmakers could build a battery that would boost up the all-electric
range – the problem is money.

“If you’re talking about a 25% increase, you know, from 30 to 40 miles,
that could mean thousands of dollars. So that could take it out of the
price range that will make it actually practical for the industry to make
it.”

Al-Hallaj says as the technology improves, so will drivers.

People are already getting better at squeezing fuel efficiency out of their
cars.

“For the first time I see people even worried about closing the window
versus opening the window because of drag. And we’re talking about
common people here, just trying to pay attention to, if your tires are not
properly inflated, the you have prob — so people start adapt and
probably get the best out of your battery.”

So it’s not that a plug-in hybrid can’t get 40, it’s just that you need to drive
like a grandmother to do it.

But if gas prices continue to climb, we may be seeing a lot more grannies
behind the wheel.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gabriel Spitzer.

Related Links

Part Two: Kicking Gas to the Curb

  • (Photo by Julie Grant)

Lots of new hybrids and electric
cars are coming to the market. But some
say you don’t need an expensive new car to
get really good gas mileage. In the second
part of our series on saving gas, reporter
Julie Grant met one group of guys who says
you just need to take good care of your vehicle
and drive like your grandmother:

Transcript

Lots of new hybrids and electric
cars are coming to the market. But some
say you don’t need an expensive new car to
get really good gas mileage. In the second
part of our series on saving gas, reporter
Julie Grant met one group of guys who says
you just need to take good care of your vehicle
and drive like your grandmother:

John Stine – aka Johnny Mullet – has always been crazy
about fast cars and big trucks.

But in the past year, this self-described country boy put
aside the hot rods and four-wheel-drive pick-ups and bought
an old Chevy Metro with a tiny 3 cylinder engine. He made a
few changes to make it more aerodynamic such as taking off
the passenger side mirror and even the radio antennae.
And, Stine also started driving really slowly.

It took a while for Johnny Stine’s wife to come around to the
changes.

John Stine: “What did you think at first?”

Mrs. Stine: “At first?”

John Stine: “I’m a nerd. You’re crazy.”

Mrs. Stine: “I thought he was a big nerd. I thought ‘oh my
God.’”

John Stine: “What are you doing to my car?”

That all changed pretty quickly as prices at pump went up.
Her nerd went from geek to chic.

Mrs. Stine: “Anything to save gas. We have a big truck. It
was costing us over $160 a week in fuel. But when he got
57 miles to the gallon, I was just like, ‘wow, what a
difference.’”

(sound of car talk)

Stine is meeting up today with about 20 other motor heads
from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and as far as Virginia. They’ve
gathered at a state park to check out each other’s souped-
down vehicles.

The parking lot is not lined with macho- muscle cars with 20-
inch rims. These guys drive refurbished Ford Festivas, Geo
and Chevy Metros on the skinniest tires possible.

Paul Keim says they’re just trying to save a few bucks on
gas. But his wife isn’t completely sold on this hobby.

“Ask her. The lady in the green shirt, she’ll tell you, my
name is ‘cheap bastard’.”

Keim says his wife does appreciate his gas saving tips.

She’s picked up 5 miles per gallon – just by keeping up the
tire pressure, changing the oil regularly, and, adjusting the
nut behind the wheel.

“You are the nut behind the wheel. Once you adjust your
attitude, and your driving style, you can get incredible
mileage.”

So, what do we need to change behind the wheel?

(sound of car doors)

John Stine is going to give us a few tips.

First, pay attention to your aerodynamics.

Julie Grant: “It’s pretty warm, am I allowed to have the
windows opened?”

John Stine: “The windows open when we’re sitting is fine.
As I’m driving, I like to keep them up unless it is very hot.”

Open windows are bad for aerodynamics. Air conditioning
wastes gas.

So, there are sacrifices. You might get a little sweaty – just
carry some extra deodorant.

Everyone here today drive cars with a stick shift because it
means better gas mileage.

Stine does whatever he can to keep momentum and not stop
at a traffic light. That can mean coasting very slowly up to
an intersection.

Some guys here say it’s been tough to adjust their driving
habits. To drive slowly – especially when the driver behind
them is bearing down on the bumper in a race to the office.

Ken Pietro of Detroit says he knows it irritates other drivers,
but that’s their problem.

“It’s just like, ‘hey, go around, go around,’ we’re in no hurry.”

Pietro says he doesn’t care, since he’s getting more than 52
miles per gallon. What’s your mileage? He didn’t even have
to buy a hybrid.

“People just can’t believe I’m getting that. You’ve got all the
newer Priuses and Honda Insights and all that. And these
people are shelling out 20 or 25 thousand dollars to get good
gas mileage with these hybrid vehicles. Which is fine, you
got the money to do it. That’s great, save the environment.
But I can do it in a $500 car and I’m getting better mileage
than them.”

And while you might complain about their slow driving, they
might just beat you home – they won’t have to make a pit
stop at the pump.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Part Three: Kicking Gas to the Curb

  • Reporter Rene Gutel gets tips from Mike Speck, a master eco-drive trainer at Pro-Formance Group of Phoenix (Photo courtesy of Rene Gutel)

We’ve all heard we can improve our
gas mileage by changing our driving habits.
And you might think you already know what
that means – coast more, for example, or check your tires’ air pressure. But according to Ford Motor Company, if you really want to get better mileage, you need a trained coach in the passenger’s seat teaching you how to do
it. In the final part of our series
on saving gas, we sent reporter Rene Gutel out to learn how to eco-drive:

Transcript

We’ve all heard we can improve our
gas mileage by changing our driving habits.
And you might think you already know what
that means – coast more, for example, or check
your tires’ air pressure. But according to
Ford Motor Company, if you really want to get
better mileage, you need a trained coach in
the passenger’s seat teaching you how to do
it. In the final part of our series
on saving gas, we sent reporter Rene Gutel
out to learn how to eco-drive:

(sound of car)

So I’m behind the wheel of my silver Mini Cooper and eco-driving instructor Mike Speck
is coaching me on how to get the best gas mileage I can, as safely as possible.

“Try to keep just a steady throttle input. You can see you are on and off the gas quite a
bit.”

We’re on suburban Phoenix roads at the beginning of rush hour. I drive a stick-shift and
one of the first lessons Speck teaches me is to shift gears a lot more quickly than I’m used
to.

Mike Speck: “And upshift.”

Rene Gutel: “Already?”

Speck: “And upshift.”

Gutel: “Oh! But we’re only going 30 miles an hour in fourth gear?”

Speck: “Yeah, it’s below 2000 RPM. The car is perfectly fine doing it.”

Speck is what they call a master eco-drive trainer at Pro-Formance Group of Phoenix.

Ford Motor Company recently teamed up with Pro-Formance to offer nearly 50 eco-
driving tests in Arizona. They studied the results which showed that by working with a
coach like Speck for just a few hours, drivers can improve their fuel economy by 24%.

The nuts and bolts of eco-driving are simple enough: Accelerate and break smoothly.
Slow down and watch your speed. Also, anticipate traffic signals as you’re going down
the road. But all this sounds way easier than it really is.

Speck: “Now we know there’s another slow left-hander coming up so off the gas.”

Gutel: “Okay, I’m off the gas.”

Speck: “And just let it coast around the corner.”

Gutel: Okay, I feel like you’re teaching me to drive my car all over again.

Speck: “I’m trying to do it as mellow as I can.”

That feeling – of going back to driver’s ed – is actually part of the experience of learning
to eco-drive.

Curt Magleby is the Director of Government Relations at Ford and he says to learn how
to do it right, you do need a coach.

“It’s not about tips and that’s what you’ll see on many websites throughout the US: tips
on how to be a better eco-driver. It’s got to be the hands-on coaching experience that
changes behavior.”

Ford is part of a new nationwide effort to encourage eco-driving. Magleby says there’s
talk of putting trained coaches at Ford dealerships.

“So when a person comes into a dealership and they’re considering the purchase of a
vehicle and we can talk to them about not only, here is the technology vehicle, here’s
what you can do, but you are a part of that equation.”

And down the line, Magleby says Ford might be pushing to have these techniques
become a part driver’s ed classes.

(sound of driving)

Speck: “You are accelerating very smoothly… very linearly. It’s very good!”

Gutel: “This is a different feel to driving. I feel like I’m coasting everywhere.”

Speck: “You are, and most people freak out about how much time they’re going to take.
When we validated the study, the average time increase was only 10%.”

Speck and I drive the same route three times during my eco-driving lessons. The first run
was the control, no tips from him at all, and I averaged 27 miles a gallon. But by the end
of the third run, we boosted that to 36 miles a gallon. Not bad, huh? Now if I can only do
that well on my own.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rene Gutel.

“Now try second. Well done! Go to third and just let it coast. Very well done.”

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