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thoughts on vehicle choices
May. 15th, 2006 10:45 amLast week's sad, pathetic tokens: 0.5
Sunday's miles: 3.0
Miles out of Hobbiton: 819.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 359.5
Miles to Lothlórien: 106.9
This story on Americans griping about gas prices while buying new SUVs shows that Americans have no actual interest in backing off gasoline consumption.
The key to this isn't absolute gasoline price; it's in percentage of income, I think. The article quotes a J.D. Power analyst as saying, "Prices have to get to $4 and maybe even higher—and stay there for at least a year—before we'll see a substantial shift in what we drive." Given, according to the article, that 4.5% of household budgets to go fuels and in the last major fuels crisis - the one that actually caused a behavioural shift - that number reached nine percent, I think the target price is pretty clear. At $6/gallon, sustained, or somewhere around $140/barrel, you'll start to see a shift in consumer choices. Alternatively, real incomes could drop significantly, achieving the same effect.1
Again quoting the article, "today's cars average 12,190 miles on the road annually, up 24 percent from 1980, according to federal statistics." That doesn't include the fact that average car ownership count per person has risen as well - about 15% since 1980 - indicating that car miles driven per person is actually up an astounding 42.6%, rather than 24%, a more meaningful number than miles driven per car.
Looked at another way - at per-household rather than per-person - the average household had 1.66 cars as of 2000, whereas the 1980 number was 1.56, a 6.3% rise in average vehicles per household. Since the number of miles driven per vehicle is up 24%, and the number of vehicles per household is up just over 6.3%, we also know that the per-household increase is about 32% - or, that households are driving around 20,235 miles per year against 1980's 15,336 miles/year, an addition of close to 5,000 miles per year.2
And people wonder why there's an obesity epidemic amoungst children.
So. Anyone looking for a behavioural change now has some ideas about when they can expect to see it: at $140/barrel oil, or $6/gallon gasoline. But, all other things equal, not very much before.
1This is complicated by the fact that the Baby Boomers are pretty much at their peak earning potential, and are rolling in dough. So as their incomes are dragging the average up. And since their incomes are high, their choices are made accordingly. These two factors may cancel each other out, but it's hard to tell. Historically, being at this age, they'd be low on debt and high on savings - but the Boomers haven't saved much of anything for retirement. The number of factors this complicates make meaningful predictions (in this, and many, many other matters) difficult, so I'm sticking with the raw numbers.
2Interestingly to me only, this more than two and a half times as much driving as Anna and I do every year, meaning that our percentage of budget spent on gasoline should be around 1.8%, against the national average of 4.5%. Our total driving is only 1.6 times the increase per family since 1980, and extrapolating backwards using numbers I don't have all of (and estimating conservatively), is roughly equal to the increase in driving since 1970, per household. At $3.24/gallon, which is what I measured in North Seattle last Tuesday, I would predict that we'd spend about $864 a year on gasoline.
Sunday's miles: 3.0
Miles out of Hobbiton: 819.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 359.5
Miles to Lothlórien: 106.9
This story on Americans griping about gas prices while buying new SUVs shows that Americans have no actual interest in backing off gasoline consumption.
The key to this isn't absolute gasoline price; it's in percentage of income, I think. The article quotes a J.D. Power analyst as saying, "Prices have to get to $4 and maybe even higher—and stay there for at least a year—before we'll see a substantial shift in what we drive." Given, according to the article, that 4.5% of household budgets to go fuels and in the last major fuels crisis - the one that actually caused a behavioural shift - that number reached nine percent, I think the target price is pretty clear. At $6/gallon, sustained, or somewhere around $140/barrel, you'll start to see a shift in consumer choices. Alternatively, real incomes could drop significantly, achieving the same effect.1
Again quoting the article, "today's cars average 12,190 miles on the road annually, up 24 percent from 1980, according to federal statistics." That doesn't include the fact that average car ownership count per person has risen as well - about 15% since 1980 - indicating that car miles driven per person is actually up an astounding 42.6%, rather than 24%, a more meaningful number than miles driven per car.
Looked at another way - at per-household rather than per-person - the average household had 1.66 cars as of 2000, whereas the 1980 number was 1.56, a 6.3% rise in average vehicles per household. Since the number of miles driven per vehicle is up 24%, and the number of vehicles per household is up just over 6.3%, we also know that the per-household increase is about 32% - or, that households are driving around 20,235 miles per year against 1980's 15,336 miles/year, an addition of close to 5,000 miles per year.2
And people wonder why there's an obesity epidemic amoungst children.
So. Anyone looking for a behavioural change now has some ideas about when they can expect to see it: at $140/barrel oil, or $6/gallon gasoline. But, all other things equal, not very much before.
1This is complicated by the fact that the Baby Boomers are pretty much at their peak earning potential, and are rolling in dough. So as their incomes are dragging the average up. And since their incomes are high, their choices are made accordingly. These two factors may cancel each other out, but it's hard to tell. Historically, being at this age, they'd be low on debt and high on savings - but the Boomers haven't saved much of anything for retirement. The number of factors this complicates make meaningful predictions (in this, and many, many other matters) difficult, so I'm sticking with the raw numbers.
2Interestingly to me only, this more than two and a half times as much driving as Anna and I do every year, meaning that our percentage of budget spent on gasoline should be around 1.8%, against the national average of 4.5%. Our total driving is only 1.6 times the increase per family since 1980, and extrapolating backwards using numbers I don't have all of (and estimating conservatively), is roughly equal to the increase in driving since 1970, per household. At $3.24/gallon, which is what I measured in North Seattle last Tuesday, I would predict that we'd spend about $864 a year on gasoline.
