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The View From Planet Yaris Toyota's Minicar Offers Glimpse of World Of Changed Auto Habits for Americans May 1, 2006 Wall Street Journal While Washington was doing backflips about rising gas prices last week, I spent a few days gaining perspective about the fuel-economy debate by driving around in a car sent from an alternative universe. The car is the new Toyota Yaris, a tiny hatchback with a 106-horsepower, 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine, a five-speed manual transmission, a minimum of power features and an EPA mileage rating of 34 mpg city, 40 mpg highway. The price tag for the model I drove was $12,720. For Americans, the world the Yaris calls home is an alien one indeed. It's the world of Europe, where gasoline costs $4 or $5 or more per gallon, and where government policy increasingly is tilted toward minimizing carbon-dioxide emissions, the better to delay the day when some adventurer can water-ski from Prudhoe Bay to Murmansk. As Congress weighs President Bush's call to raise passenger-car fuel-economy standards for the first time since his father was president, the driver's seat of a Yaris offers a clear view of just how far Americans will have to go if they want to get serious about consuming less petroleum. Forget all the talk about ethanol, hybrid gas-electric vehicles and fuel-cell powered "hydrogen" cars. What stands between the U.S. economy and a significant reduction in gasoline consumption isn't some Manhattan Project leap of technology. It's a more-challenging effort to recalibrate culture. Since the early days of the auto industry, two competing visions of the automobile's place in American society have battled for supremacy. One, championed by Henry Ford with the Model T, was the idea that a car was a mobility appliance. The Model T wasn't stylish -- Mr. Ford famously offered it in just one color, black. While he and his engineers improved the car over time, he didn't fundamentally change its architecture. Instead, Ford concentrated mainly on cutting the car's costs, in the process essentially inventing modern mass production using the moving assembly line. The rival vision was advanced and honed by General Motors, which during much of the first two decades of the 20th century was an upstart chasing Henry Ford's tail. GM's leaders realized that cars could be more than appliances. They could be expressions of the owner's personality. They could be status symbols. They could come in colors. Designers could render new body styles as often as every year, the better to entice consumers to buy cars more often, for fear of appearing out of fashion. The GM model prevailed, of course, and defines competition in the auto industry (as well as other industries) to this day. Over the decades, American consumers have rewarded car makers, particularly the Detroit brands, for building vehicles that are bigger, faster and more distinctively styled. Car makers responded by satisfying the consumer passion for power and status at the expense of other values, chief among them fuel economy. For most of the past 20 years, this tradeoff appeared to be perfectly logical: As memories of the 1970s oil shocks faded, gasoline prices became a secondary issue to most people. What was important was that the government not restrict consumer access to vehicles that were large and powerful -- and profitable. After 1990, Congress effectively barred the government from raising the average fuel-economy standard for passenger cars from 27.5 miles per gallon. Congress also held the fuel-economy standard for light trucks significantly lower than the car standard, allowing the industry to transform low-mileage pickup trucks into low-mileage sport utility vehicles. Big, heavy, V-8 powered SUVs became substitutes for the big, heavy, V-8 powered family cars that hauled many a Baby Boomer on many a family road trip in the 1960s. Sales of minicars -- derided as "econoboxes" -- languished. The result should have been no surprise: Cars and trucks got heavier, faster, more powerful. The average 2005 model light vehicle sold in the U.S. weighed 4,089 pounds, about 900 pounds heavier than in 1981-82, according to a comprehensive, though not inspirationally titled, Environmental Protection Agency report, "Light Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975-2005." (Click here5 to see it as a PDF.) "You have to go back to 1978 to find a heavier car or wagon fleet," the report states. "On the average 2005 cars, wagons, vans, SUVs and pickups are as powerful and fast as they have ever been." The average 2005 model light vehicle -- the average -- runs from stop to 60 miles per hour in 9.9 seconds. In 1975, the average car loped to 60 miles per hour in 14.1 seconds. The average 1975 car had a mere 137 horsepower under the hood. The average 2005 vehicle packs 212 horsepower -- reflecting, among other trends, a horsepower race in "family" segments such as mid-size sedans and minivans. It's true, as industry representatives often stress, that average fuel economy improved by 60% to 21 miles per gallon in 2005 from 13.1 miles per gallon in 1975. But since 1987, average light-vehicle fuel economy has declined from 22.1 miles per gallon, reflecting in large part the shift to SUVs. About half the 2005 vehicles sold were classed as light trucks, compared to 28% in 1987. The auto industry looks a lot better when one considers how much fuel it takes to move a ton of vehicle weight. That measure has improved nearly 58% since 1975. The EPA figures that if 2005 vehicles had the same distribution of weight and performance as in 1987, and car makers had applied all the technology they used to hold mileage steady as they goosed performance and size, the 2005 fleet would have been 24% more fuel-efficient. Another way to put it: Americans driving 2005 cars would have burned up 24% less gasoline than they did, assuming they didn't use their efficiency savings to drive more. This is where the Yaris comes in. The Yaris embodies what the EPA is talking about. It uses little in the way of exotic technology to achieve its 40 mpg highway rating. It just puts fuel efficiency first. The car's little engine uses increasingly common technology such as computer-controlled variable-valve timing to enhance fuel efficiency. The hatchback offers 13 cubic feet of cargo space (almost as much as the larger Corolla.) I got a fairly large framed poster in the back with the rear seats folded down. A week's groceries would fit easily, as would several golf bags. The Yaris is not all the car many Americans would want, but it is all the car many Americans need. With a manual five-speed transmission, it's possible to achieve perfectly adequate acceleration from a stop light or onto the freeway. And the car's diminutive size isn't an issue for a lone commuter: In my office parking garage, I would much rather have the Yaris than the large SUVs I drove recently. Better yet, I could hope to do a week's worth of commuting on roughly six gallons of gas -- a little more than half a tank. Right now, minicars such as the Yaris represent a tiny slice of the U.S. auto market, although BMW's Mini and Toyota's Scion have had strong sales. A wavelet of new minicars is about to hit the U.S. market, including the Nissan Versa, the Honda Fit, and a redesigned, Korean-made Chevrolet Aveo. The technology to have a substantially more fuel-efficient car fleet in the U.S. is here. There's no need to wait for fuel cells, or a new government fuel-economy mandate. The question is whether more American consumers will put aside habits acquired over the past 70 years and rethink their obsession with speed, size and status. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:205968 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
