Carbon Audit: Evaluating my Automobiles

Read other articles in the Carbon Audit Series: an ongoing investigation into our carbon footprint.

My husband and I own three cars. Yes, that’s right. Two people, three cars, 12 wheels, and 15 seats. Let’s just say that my husband has a hard time getting rid of things. Especially automobiles. He has a visceral emotional attachment to cars he has owned.

Let’s have a look at our automobile menagerie:

1.  1996 Ford Mustang

I hate this car with the fire of a thousand suns. I’ve owned it since I was in college. It’s teal green and stupidly long. It has a turning radius comparable to a semi-truck, and it smells a bit like sauerkraut.

It is also a thief magnet: the stereo has been stolen on five separate occasions, so I’ve reconciled myself to driving around with a big hole in the dash. In doing so, I’m sending a clear message to the thieves: “You win! So stop breaking my windows!”. I’d be glad to be rid of this car.

Still, I rarely drive it, so it’s low on miles and in perfect condition. Well, besides the radio.

The car claims to get 18MPG city, but actually gets about 16 MPG total. Emissions-wise, it’s a little above average, but not great, generating 8.7 tons/yr of CO2 for the average driver. 

2.  1990 Jeep Cherokee

This is the car that my husband has had since high school. He adores this car so much that I sometimes worry about it threatening our marriage. This is why I had a cake of it created for our wedding; it’s always best to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Click on the picture to see my husband's car in glorious cake form.

It runs pretty well, but is at the point where parts fail unexpectedly. The final straw for me was when we were driving past the dealership where we normally get it repaired and it started vomiting up enormous quantities of green fluid, like a scene out of an alien movie. And all of this not 20 meters from where it would ultimately be fixed. My husband soothingly patted the car and praised her for “holding in her sick” until we were somewhere easy to repair her, but I’m convinced that this car likes being in the shop. She gets off on the attention.

Anyhow, when we purchased our new Jeep Liberty, we didn’t have a place to park this car anymore, but my husband couldn’t bear to part with it. Thus, it sits in storage, awaiting the day when we have a three car garage and/or a 16 year old child.

The mileage and emissions on this car are not bad, considering its age, but still not great. It gets 16MPG and on average releases 10.2 tons of CO2 a year.

3.  2005 Jeep Liberty

We purchased this car a couple of years ago to replace the untrustworthy Cherokee. We like having 4WD for our frequent snowboarding excursions and it’s come in handy to haul large quantities of stuff around on multiple occasions.

Still, at 15MPG, it is the most inefficient of the three cars we own and also the worst emissions culprit at 10.8 tons of CO2/year. How is it that Jeep’s standards got worse over the last fifteen years?

Our Driving Habits
The hubbie and I are not what I would consider to be frequent drivers. We live in an urban area because we enjoy walking as many places as possible. A typical week looks like this:

1. We carpool to and from work together (70 miles)
2. We take one trip into Seattle to meet friends or run errands (15 miles)
3. We visit local family on a weekend (20 miles)
4. Misc errands, grocery store, etc.  (5 miles)

All told, we put 6000-7000 miles on our cars a year. This is about half the average 12000-15000 miles/year the typical American puts on their car. Which means we already produce only half of the average emissions. But, the fact that our cars are such horrible polluters nearly negates the gains we get by not driving much.

Total Carbon Footprint from driving:
From the above data, we estimate our automobile-specific carbon footprint is about 5.4 tons of CO2 per year. That's a lot. We're talking acres of pine forests here.

Plotting out a change:
We are interested in changing the automobiles that we have to be more eco-friendly overall.  But we’re faced with the following questions and problems:

• How do we do so without incurring huge expense? After all, these cars currently run great, but two of them aren’t worth much money.
• Should we buy new or used? What is the comparative production footprint for a new car compared to the footprint that it makes burning fuel over time?
• How do we cope with my husband’s unyielding devotion to an old SUV? Is there a way to keep this car and make it more environmentally friendly?

Upcoming projects will investigate these questions and hopefully, provide some answers.

Comments

[arduous]

If you carpool to work, why not get rid of the Mustang, which you hate anyway? Keep the Jeep Liberty for now, since you bought it recently. The more you two get into the environmental thang, the more your husband might be inclined to get rid of the Cherokee on his own. Then eventually, if you want, you can sell the Jeep Liberty and buy a slighly used hybrid. (I recommend used from both an environmental and frugal point of view.)

Like you, I'm just getting into environmentalist mode, and I think it's smart for us all to take baby steps.

For now, don't worry about having to sell the Liberty and buying a new energy efficient car. Just try to drop down to two cars, and maybe buy some carbon offsets at TerraPass or CarbonFund.org.

[Jolly Green Girl]

I am sorry to hear about your Berner. So many people have told me how short their lifespan is. We are just trying to enjoy Abby as much as possible and may breed her if her genetics test come back good when she turns two. Three cars! Wow.. can I have one? We only have one at the moment. :)