Last week, lots of experts were predicting that lower oil prices would lead to lower fuel prices at the pumps this summer. I wondered about that because Tom Whipple had noted that gasoline stocks were very low. The Kansas City Star takes the fuel stocks story a bit further: 

The conventional wisdom has been that gasoline shot to about $4 a gallon because the price of oil soared.
But that ignores a key factor: Even though U.S. gasoline use is declining, refiners have kept U.S. stockpiles below average by curbing production and exporting more gasoline. ... 
So even though crude oil stockpiles are above average, and oil prices have come down recently, U.S. gasoline inventories remain below average. And that could help keep pump prices from fully reflecting the recent decline in crude oil.

So prices may drop, but they may not drop all that much. I assume that most people have thought about some strategy or response to high prices.

Is Small Beautiful Enough?

After going to the Motor Trend Auto Show a few months ago, I gave a Hyundai brochure to a woman in the office that said she was thinking about replacing her Sonata. She had driven me to several meetings, and the Sonata always seemed just roomy enough for my moderately tall frame. A few weeks later she traded it in on an Accent. She seemed very happy, but on an hour long drive to a project site, I felt cramped and very close to the cars in front of us. 

The two most affordable green cars on the ACEEE list were the lunchbox-sized Smart Car and the Mazda 2, which is nineteen inches shorter than the Accent. I have a feeling that most Americans will resist cramming into small cars as long as possible. According to a blog by Green Car Congress (GCC), small cars have been selling better, but they still don't represent even four percent of sales:

US Sales of hybrid, diesel, and very small cars outpaced overall growth in the market, according to a new report by auto analyst firm Baum and Associates. Sales of hybrids grew 33.9% in 1Q 2011 compared to 1Q 2010; diesel grew 42.9%; and small cars such as the Ford Fiesta and Honda Fit grew 23.3%. Sales of all light-duty vehicles in first quarter grew 20.2%. These results led to a hybrid new vehicle marketshare in 1Q 2011 of 2.3%; a diesel marketshare of 0.6%; and a small car marketshare of 3.4%.

For March 2011, hybrid sales grew 46.4% year-on-year; diesel sales grew 46.1%; and small car sales grew 30.0%. March 2011 new vehicle marketshares were 2.7% for hybrids; 0.7% for diesels; and 3.6% for small cars.

Hybrid Happy Motoring

In my personal opinion, hybrids are a strategy to offer enviable fuel economy so people can keep driving cars and SUVs. But as blogged in the GCC, hybrids are still too expensive:

Growth of alternative powertrain vehicles sales will be limited by consumer concerns about costs as well as functionality, according to the newly-released J.D. Power and Associates 2011 US Green Automotive Study. With a rapid increase in the number of alternative powertrain vehicle models projected for the next several years, automakers will be fighting over the relatively few consumers who are willing to pay to “drive green”, according to the report. ...

While consumers often cite saving money on fuel as the primary benefit of owning an alternative powertrain vehicle, the reality for many is that the initial cost of these vehicles is too high, even as fuel prices in the United States approach record levels. Reduced expenditure on fuel is the predominant benefit cited by considerers for each of the primary alternative powertrain technologies examined in the study.

Hybrid sales are less than three percent right now, and if GCC is right may treble to ten percent, but as commenter Gerald noted, "First, I got to get a job, then I worry about the other stuff." Hybrid purchases will rise among those who can afford them as a hedge against rising fuel costs but millions will be either unable or too nervous to spend an extra few thousand to save the planet. 

Three Wheel Bad

Three wheeled putt-putts are popular in the third world. In addition to custom delta trikes, I've been seeing TV ads for motorcycles with two wheels in front. I've wondered if they could catch on here. One would think that three wheels would be more stable than two, but I've tested several delta and tadpole recumbent tricycles, and even taking slow turns in the long wheelbased Hase Lepus, the inside wheel lifts off the road. Maybe batteries are heavy enough to make an EV trike stable, but I have personal doubts about the stability of gas engine three wheelers in high speed turns.

Two Wheel Good

The same guy that wouldn't be caught dead in a Smart car will cheerfully ride a big motorbike. I'm seeing more people riding motorcycles and scooters - with and without helmets. In Motorcycle Sales Rise, Driven By Pricey Gas, the Wall Street Journal confirms that two wheelers are selling well:

Motorcycle sales rose 7.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011, compared with the same period a year earlier, says the Motorcycle Industry Council.

In its retail sales report, which tracks sales among the 18 leading brands sold in the U.S., the industry trade group said scooters posted the biggest sales increase of nearly 50%. Sales of dual-purpose motorcycles, which are designed for highway and off-road use rose almost 25%. The group attributed the rise in dual purpose sales in part to the segment’s overall fuel efficiency.

You can lean into curves, but motorcycles have inherent risks. Last year, one of my brothers bought a BMW bike to commute, then slipped on wet leaves, went off a curve and broke his collarbone. And he's the good rider in the family. Another was enjoying the fine weather and drove off the road when the car in front of him suddenly stopped. Decades ago, I found out the hard way that people in cars don't always notice people on two wheels.

There's a lot of action in the electric bicycle market, too. Many of them are perfectly reasonable designs, like Currie's Izip series, but some custom jobs hit 40 mph and don't brake or handle as well as motorcycles and scooters.  

Sick Transit, but Sicker Freeways

Again from Australian Broadcasting we now have The Science Show - a radio show with both audio, mp3 and a transcript. Host Robyn Williams interviews Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University and Chris Paine, who directed Revenge of the Electric Car, but mostly Newman.

Robyn Williams: Your paper cites six main reasons that car ownership is going down. What are those?

Peter Newman: Well, we talk about hitting the Marchetti wall, and in many ways that's the key to it. Marchetti was the first to define that every city has a one-hour travel time budget, and if you can't get to most destinations in one hour over an average for your travel time for the day, then you either move or you get very angry and the road rage settles into a political movement that defines elections, like has just happened in Sydney. And that has been the limit, because we built cities around the car, which could go quicker and be more flexible, and for a while there we were keeping well within the Marchetti travel time budget, but we have gone over now. And most cities have hit the wall on freeways. They don't work any more. They're absolutely jampacked at peak time, so it really needs a different sort of economic approach.

And the reality is, and I have been looking at this in quite a bit of detail through my Infrastructure Australia hat, it costs about $50 million to build a lane of freeway today and pretty much the same to build a rail line, except the rail line will carry 8 to 20 times more people than that road will. So it doesn't take long to recognise that the cities are going to fill very quickly with cars, and the only way around it is to get public transport going. So at the same time as this peak car use is happening, we are seeing dramatic increases in public transport. In Melbourne and Perth in the decade '99 to 2009, 70% increase. In Brisbane, 50%. Sydney had just a few percent because it didn't build anything new, every other city has been building it. And as soon as you build it, they come, because it's a better way to get around, it's quicker, and you are not stuck all day in the traffic.

Bike to Work

People have chosen biking over walking or driving or riding public transit to work for many reasons over the years. Bill Main's Bike to Work video mentions health benefits, environmental benefits and lower costs. Bill even decided that a combination of biking and transit would be faster than driving his particular route, so another benefit might be time. One fellow mentions meeting people on the train. Not mentioned is the benefit of avoiding parking difficulties. 

There are, of course, difficulties with biking. Bad weather, theft, and the worst of all, collisions with cars. In some countries biking is accepted by auto drivers. In America, both auto drivers and bike riders have the expectation of going very fast, and they get in each other's way.

NYC DOT explains Bike Lanes in the Big Apple

NYTimes.com - Keeping Cars Out of Bike Lanes

Oddly enough, New York City's efforts to promote bike commuting have been controversial with residents while Philadelphians seem to have embraced bikes. City officials claim that Philly has the highest percentage of bike commuters among large cities.