Advanced Automotive Technology: Visions of a Super-Efficient Family Car

Chapter 1

Executive Summary

The automobile has come to symbolize the essence of a modern industrial society. Perhaps

more than any other single icon, it is associated with a desire for independence and freedom of

movement; it is an expression of economic status and personal style. Automobile production is

also critically important to the major industrial economies of the world. In the United States, for

instance, about 5 percent of all workers are employed directly (including fuel production and

distribution) by the auto industry.^1 Technological change in the auto industry can potentially

influence not only the kinds of cars that are driven, but also the health of the economy.

The automobile is also associated with many of the ills of a modern industrial society.

Automotive emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides are responsible for as much as 50

percent of ozone in urban areas; despite improvements in air quality forced by government

regulations, 50 million Americans still live in counties with unsafe ozone levels.^3 Automobiles are

also responsible for 37 percent of U.S. oil consumption,^4 in an era when U.S. dependence on

imported oil is more than 50 percents and still increasing. A concern related to automotive

gasoline consumption is the emission of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, which may

be linked to global climate change. The automobile fleet, which accounts for 15 percent of the

U.S. annual total, is one of this country’s single largest emitters of carbon dioxide.^6

Recent technological improvements to engines and vehicle designs have begun to address these

problems, at least at the level of the individual vehicle. Driven by government regulation and the

gasoline price increases of the 1970s, new car fuel economy has doubled between 1972 and

today,^7 and individual vehicle emissions have been reduced substantially.^8 Several trends have

undercut a portion of these gains, however, with the result that the negative impacts of

automobiles are expected to continue.

An important trend has been a 40 percent drop in the real price of gasoline since its peak in

1981.9 This decline has reduced the attractiveness of fuel-efficient automobiles for consumers and

1 American Automobile Manufacturers Association, Facts and Figures 94 (Detroit, MI: 1994), p. 70. The number of workers employed by the
industry is somewhat controversial because there are several alternative interpretations about which workers are in this category, and some of the data
for specific sectors does not separate out automotive and nonautomotive workers, e.g. workers in petroleum refining. The value here includes motor
vehicle and equipment manufacturing (which inadvertently includes workers making heavy trucks), roadconstruction and maintenanceworkers,
petroleum refining and distribution, auto sales and servicing taxicab employees, car leasing, and auto parking. 2
Here and afterwards automotive refers to automobiles and light trucks primarily used for passenger travel—vans, sport-utility vehicles, and
pickup trucks. These vehicles use half of all the oil consumed by the U.S.transportation sector.
3u.s. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, National Air Quality and Emissions Trends Report,
1993, EPA-450/R-94-026 (Research Triangle Park, NC: October 1994).
4 U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook, 1995, DOE/EIA-0383(95) (Washington, DC:
January 1995), tables A7 and Al 1.
5 For example, imports were 54 percent of total supply in August, 1994. U.S.Department of Energy, Energy InformationAdministration, Monthly
Energy Review, DOE/EIA-0035(94/09)(Washington, DC: September 1994).

(^6) Energy Information Administration, see footnote 4, table A18.
7S.C. Davis,.. Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 14, ORNL-6798 (Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge National Laboratory May 1994), table
3.35 and earlier editions.
(^8) The federal Tier 1 emissions standards represent emission reductions of about 97, 96, and 89 percent, respectively, from uncontrolled levels of
hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides. Actual on-road reductions are not this high, however.9 Davis, see footnote 7, table 2.16.