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.
Current vehicle MPG (mpg1)
New vehicle MPG (mpg2)
Price of a gallon of fuel ($)
Number of miles you travel each year (M)
Annual gas savings (gallons)
M*(mpg2-mpg1)/(mpg2*mpg1)
Annual Dollar Savings
($*M)*(mpg2-mpg1)/(mpg2*mpg1)
You can change the numbers in this calculator to get a sense of how much difference a change of vehicle might make. For example, if you have a mazda sports car that you only drive on weekends, putting about 4000 miles per year on it, and it gets 16 miles per gallon, changing to a 30 mile per gallon car would only save you about $470 per year, assuming gas costs $4.00 per gallon. If you love that sports car, your limited use of it is causing little impact on the environment and not costing you all that much, even considering the high cost of gas.
Southern California Beach Cliffs
The bottom line to finding a green car is that there are a lot of variables other than fuel efficiency and environmental impacts to consider in making a decision about what vehicle is right for you. But most buyers are fairly comfortable with all of the other variables, so this part of our website focuses specifically on Sierra’s offerings and how you might consider the environment and fuel efficiency in thinking about which one to buy.
Next: Hybrids
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