Customizing Your Car to Be Greener
In today’s economy, everyone seems to be finding new ways to conserve and make their daily routine as efficient as possible. At Sierra Mazda we understand this and fully support new technologies that make our lives greener and more efficient. We love the Southern California landscape, and would support any technology that would help cleanup the Los Angeles air.
Zoom Zoom with the Mazda MX-5 Miata
For example, how much gas could you save by making some strategic changes to your Mazda car or any car for that matter? Certain scientists at MIT say that you can save almost half your use, meaning with coming green car technologies, we’d all be buying 50% less gasoline.
The United States uses about 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year, meaning that the US has to do more than just drill to lower the costs of transportation (which also includes the environmental costs). Scientists and researchers led by John Heywood have just finished a five-year assessment of what can be done to cut down on fuel consumption for the nation and money for all of our pocketbooks.
The car efficiency researchers at MIT checked out how gas and diesel engines, as well as hybrid electric cars and plug-in cars, are likely to evolve between now and 2035. The researchers also studied what can reasonably be expected from new fuels such as hydrogen and biofuels.
“Improvements” in cars in recent years have largely focused on increasing performance, driven by the demand for ever-larger and more powerful cars (SUVs). As a result, no significant fuel consumption gains have been realised over the past 25 years, says the team.
They call for car manufacturers to focus efforts on improving fuel savings over performance.
Lose the Car Weight
The simplest way of reducing the amount of fuel used by cars without a big change in consumer preferences would be to produce lighter cars (Mazda’s been doing this for decades!). Heywood’s team estimate that the average US car 25 years from now could feasibly weigh between 20% and 35% less without compromising on auto security and convenience. This alone would cut fuel consumption by between 12% and 20%.
