Sierra Mazda’s Guide to Green Driving: Part 4
Natural Gas Vehicles
The Honda Civic GX is truly engineered for the environment. Honda gives you the details at this Honda Civic GX link, which is worth checking out. It is an advanced technology partial zero emission vehicle (AT-PZEV) and, if you lease an in-home refueling system, you can re-fuel in your own garage. The Civic GX gets between 220 and 250 miles per fill-up. You can fill up quickly at special service stations located around Southern California or, if you have the home system, it can take up to 16 hours to fully refill the tank.
Southern California Sunset
Conventional gasoline, high-miles-per-gallon vehicles Sierra offers
The California Air Resources Board categorizes new vehicles for sale in California as Low Emission Vehicles (LEV), Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (ULEV), Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (SULEV), Partial Zero Emission Vehicles (PZEV), Alternate Fuel Partial Zero Emission Vehicles (AT-PZEV) and zero emission vehicles (ZEV). For detail on what these categories mean, see the ARB’s pdf at:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/factsheets/calemissions.pdf.
These designations apply to criteria pollutants (hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, particulates, lead, ozone and oxides of sulfur). Next year there will be a new label on new vehicles in California that shows the relative effects of the vehicle’s carbon dioxide emissions which affect global warming, but really that measure has been there for a long time in the form of the EPA mileage estimates, which correlate directly with CO2 emissions.
Sierra Mazda’s Guide to Green Driving: Part 3
Hybrids
Los Angeles California
Hybrids use two sources of energy to power the vehicle – gas and electricity – either in combination or alternating, depending on what kind of driving you are doing. The vehicle’s computer figures out whether to use the gas or the electricity or both without you even being aware of the decision. They get better mileage because of the advanced power train, but also because of a host of other technologies used on hybrid vehicles, including regenerative braking (charging your batteries when you brake), turning off at idle speeds (they turn right back on when you step on the gas), lower profile/higher pressure tires and generally a vehicle design that emphasizes weight reduction. For a history of the Honda hybrid program and more detail on how it works, search for Ken Liu’s article on the subject.
Sierra Mazda’s Guide to Green Driving: Part 2
Buying The Right Car for Green Driving
Buying the right car for you also entails identifying what features you need and want in your car or truck, including how many miles you will be driving it each year and what type of driving (city, highway, combination) you will be doing. Consider how many seats your really need, how much stuff you need to carry around (it takes extra gas to carry extra weight) and how much power you need (these days a 4 cylinder engine can delivery a surprising amount of acceleration). You can compare the mileage ratings of the vehicles you are considering at www.epa.gov/fueleconomy. This guide lets you compare similar vehicles (like small cars like Mazdas, or large SUVs) for their fuel efficiency. It won’t, however, be a true measure of the miles per gallon you will get because how you drive is a huge variable in determining miles per gallon. Also, you can compare new cars for their emissions at www.epa.gov/greenvehicles. Make sure you only look at the drive trains that include the California emissions controls, which are better and included in any new vehicle you buy from a California dealer.
2009 Mazda 6
As you check out the differences, you might want to calculate how fuel efficiency affects your costs of driving. Buying a new car or truck will almost always be an environmental plus for criteria emissions. For carbon dioxide, which is the key greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, increasing miles per gallon decreases your CO2 emissions. It also reduces your cost of operating the vehicle (by requiring less gas). If you want to get an estimate of how much you could save by buying a higher miles per gallon vehicle, this calculator should be helpful.