There is a good and sure way to find out if you are in the midst of an energy crisis. All you have to do is answer the following questions (correctly):
1. What is the price of a barrel of fuel?
2. What is the MPG of your car?
3. Which car manufacturer sells a popular hybrid?
If you know the answer to all or any of the above, the crisis is on. Ten or twelve months ago, when cars were fast, fuel was cheap and politicians were smart, we didn’t worry about any of this. Now that concern is high, and the best brains in the field have figured out not enough dinosaurs perished in the Jurassic to supply our fuel needs, we begin to see some pretty creative solutions emerging.
This makes it the perfect time to rewind and return to a time similar to this, when fuel prices spiked – enter the 1973 oil fuel crisis.
I have a good idea... let’s get everybody to purchase pickup trucks!
Back then concern was as high as it is now, and the pressure for an immediate solution to the pain of high prices was in demanded. As I discussed in my previous blog “Clapping with one hand” systems involving humans, technology, software, vehicles and infrastructure are complex; Complex to create, maintain and most importantly complex to understand. Creating a change, even a well intentioned change, can result in very unwanted results due to the complexity of the entire system.
The remedy for the oil crisis pain was the US congress’ CAFÉ or the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program. Catchy name, but it had nothing to do with a skimmed milk latte.
Its aim: lower the US dependence on imported oil by reducing fuel use. The method: require 
all vehicle manufacturers to meet a pre-defined fuel use standard for its passenger and light trucks. The logic: as fuel consumption is related to the vehicle mass, (the heavier, the more energy required to move) in order to meet the fuel use, standard vehicles will need to become lighter and thus more fuel efficient. The expected result: lower US dependence on imported fuel.
What a beautiful plan. With only one minor downside, it didn’t work. And it had some odd results, such as increasing fuel consumption and increasing the number of fatalities on US roads.
At that time, car safety related to vehicle size. As cars became lighter and smaller due to the CAFÉ requirements (without having the benefit of current safety features and impact absorbing engineering) crash fatalities began to rise. Suddenly light vehicles met very large and heavy vehicles (such as vehicles transporting heavy goods that could not do anything to become lighter) and the results were catastrophic (for the person in the light vehicle).
Another unwanted result was the fact that vehicle manufacturers needed to introduce new lines of vehicles to meet CAFÉ requirements. These additions needed to be funded somehow, and this was done by increasing the cost of large vehicles. Consumers being consumers (i.e. clever) quickly found out that if you want to own a large (but cheap) vehicle, you could actually do so by purchasing... well, a truck. And thus the number of pickup trucks and later SUVs increased substantially. These vehicles created another unexpected result. Being bigger, heavier and taller, these cheaper options rolled over more easily. Being heavier meant that when they crashed into a smaller and lighter vehicle (now present at growing numbers because of CAFÉ) the risk of fatality increased. And finally, begin bigger and heavier meant larger engines which meant…more dependency on imported oil. Now hold on! Isn’t that what this program tried to prevent in the first place?? And what about the unwanted result of increased fatalities?
This should all be interesting to us today. We are in the midst of an energy crisis and we should be critical of the many solutions we are offered. We need to think and see what potential outcomes may be. Replacing one energy source with another, can be great for some reasons, but produce unwanted and unexpected results elsewhere.
Have a cup of coffee and think about it. And if you really, really want to do something really good for the environment, help conserve energy while being completely unwanted results hazard free do the following (while thinking about it):
Don’t speed
· Don’t accelerate harshly
· Drive moderately
Drive safely, it’s worth it,
Hod Fleishman
Founder and Senior Vice President of Business Development, Green Road.
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