A typical passenger vehicle emits around 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. This number may vary depending on the vehicle's fuel, fuel economy, and the number of miles traveled per year. Both the EPA and NHTSA cited important commitments by manufacturers to increase electric vehicle production and improve the efficiency of the entire fleet in the coming years as justification that manufacturers will be able to meet the more stringent standards of the proposals. In addition, both agencies cited the voluntary agreement that five automakers (Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, BMW and Volvo) made with the state of California to meet emissions standards significantly stricter than those established by the SAFE rule, demonstrating that their current commitments exceed significantly those rules.
Medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks account for only 5 percent of vehicles on the road, but account for about 24 percent of the U. S. UU. This category includes tractor-trailers, large vans and vans, delivery trucks, buses and garbage trucks.
Phase 2 standards are divided into five segments and were designed to help provide flexibility for manufacturers. To provide flexibility for manufacturers, the program allows averaging, banking and trading between regulated parties to accelerate the deployment of new technologies and reduce the cost of compliance. The report prepared for, and in collaboration with, the Low Carbon Vehicle Association, which includes major vehicle manufacturers and oil companies, highlighted the growing importance of considering lifetime carbon emissions, especially when evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from low carbon vehicles. In summary, the total emissions per mile of battery-powered cars are lower than those of comparable cars with internal combustion engines.
The report also indicates that the lifecycle carbon emissions of medium-sized gasoline and diesel vehicles that perform similar lifetime mileage are almost identical: higher diesel efficiency is offset by higher production emissions. If you make a car last 200,000 miles instead of 100,000, emissions per mile the car travels during its useful life can decrease by up to 50%, as a result of further reducing the distance from initial manufacturing emissions. To put this into context, in the United States, where the EPA assumes that the average gasoline vehicle has a fuel economy of approximately 22.0 miles per gallon while driving around 11,500 miles per year, operating CO2 emissions equate to approximately 38 tons over the life of a typical vehicle. Even if everyone drove electric vehicles instead of gasoline cars, there would still be a lot of emissions from plug-in vehicles due to their large volume, according to Knobloch.
The automotive industry is simply not phasing out the internal combustion engine quickly enough, and its lack of action to provide real solutions greatly limits people's freedom to choose greener, cleaner, and climate-safe transport. Of course, the exact benefits of new vs old cars, diesel vs hybrids, car clubs versus owners, etc., are different for everyone. It would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions because car rental companies have large fleets of vehicles. But it's a reasonable estimate that seems to indicate that cars could have a much larger emissions footprint than previously believed.
If you make a car last 200,000 miles instead of 100,000, emissions for every mile the car travels in its useful life can decrease by up to 50 percent, as a result of further reducing the distance from initial manufacturing emissions. And selling millions more electric cars would require implementing new infrastructure to accommodate all cars that require fast charging on highways and in parking lots. With this in mind, unless you drive very high mileage or have true gas consumption, it generally makes sense to keep your old car for as long as it is reliable and take care of it carefully to extend its life as long as possible. Despite automakers launching hybrid cars, the report concludes that this has done little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the required level.
Cars and light trucks (including vans and SUVs) are responsible for 58 percent of transportation emissions.
