This is called “embodied energy” and the facts aren’t all that hard to get. A simple google search will turn up a lot of statistics. The difficulty is finding out how much steel, glass, rubber, plastic, etc. a particular new car will contain. Depending on the quality of air coming out of the beater and the size of the new car (assuming it’s not a Prius either) I would guess that a used car would be greener. Smarter too, economically speaking, for a little while anyway.
And I’d like to point out that if you don’t buy the car, the demand for used cars drops, making junking (crushing) the car you would have bought (or another car) a greater possibility. And that takes energy. I know it’s hard to quantify this assumption. It’s probable that, assuming we aren’t talking about a real smoker beater car here, the car would probably not end up crushed. Someone would buy it. But then they wouldn’t buy a different car that was a real crappy car, and THAT car would get crushed, when it wouldn’t if you bought the beater.
Enola Straight: Your last post just made me reflect on the fact that the quote
“The average jet airliner produces more pollution every takeoff than the average car over its entire operating lifetime.” is probably false. However, if you were talking about your namesake plane, The Enola Gay, then… well, that quote is probably accurate.
prisoner6655321: I’ll try googling, this evening for the evidence you suggest I might be able to find. Should be a fun hunt, at the very least.
If you are looking at it from a green perspective, your resale of the used car at a “market” price includes an environmental subsidy roughly equal to the envirnomental subsidy you received when you bought it as a new car. So from an environmental view, you need to count the cost of pollution of an additional car.
One of the things which I’m interested in Rick is the aspect of keeping “older classics” going in a nice, green friendly manner. As you probably know, I own a 66 Shelby Mustang GT350 - and in my enquiries on the Edelbrock website, it seems amongst other things, that I can buy “unleaded compatible” alloy heads for my 289, along with a very modern and frugal “electronic fuel injection” manifold which replaces the traditional carby inlet manifold. All the computers and injectors etc are provided and apparently, it increases both horsepower and fuel efficiency, as well as making the car run much greener “emissions wise”.
Now, I find that to be a very interesting little niche in this debate - because it implies that older engines can (sometimes) be brought into the modern era. Certainly, in the context of considering the net total of resources used in making a car from the cradle to the grave, it’s an aspect which bears consideration I rather think.
I can’t give you a cite, but I can tell you that I have heard several times from the engineers that our modern cars put out less pollution when driving than a 1960’s vintage car did when it was parked!
Back in the 60’s gas caps were vented, no evap control systems, the vinyl’s and other materials out gassed hydrocarbons, etc.
Now you could up date the engine in your GT 350 and clean up the tailpipe emissions quite a bit. Let’s say for the sake of an argument that when new your GT produced about 7% Carbon Monoxide at idle and about 500 PPM of unburned hydrocarbons. This is probably a pretty close guess based on what my 67 MG produces at idle, along with what I have observed in other cars over the years. Tailpipe controls did not come into effect until 1968.
So let’s say you go hog wild and do the full update. Let’s further say that the emissions are cut by 75%.
That would leave you at 1.75% CO and 125 PPM of hydrocarbons.
A late model car would be listed as a gross polluter at 1.75% CO IIRC. So you have for sure improved the car and made it greener, but not as green as a new car.
Also this being a classic you have to consider the impact to the value of the car. IMHO doing this update would pretty much kill the value of an original GT 350. Furthermore it might be cause for some car nut to come threaten death to you for messing with Mr. Shelby’s creation.
My personal feeling is that you probably don’t put enough miles on the Shelby to make much of a difference in the overall smog picture, I would keep it original and keep it worth the money.
Now your daily driver would be a different story.
Boogers Your links were interesting….
From your first link
Sorry I but I’m gonna call bullshit on these numbers. First off my company will build about 500,000 cars next year. Doing the math that is about 6,000,000 liters of spilled oil if this page is correct. That’s 1,585,000 gallons. We only have 1% of the market. That would mean that overall the car industry dumps 15,850,000 gallons of oil into the sea every year. For comparison the Exxon Valdez spill was about 11,000,000 gallons. I can’t buy that.
The average car weighs about 3,000 pounds, and they want me to believe that the car company throws away an equal amount of trash to build it? Are you serious? I have been to car factories. The parts don’t all come in little tiny boxes that have to be opened ya know. I was surprised at just how little waste is generated at the factory. Let me see if I can recall what waste I have seen. The sheet metal stamping does generate waste from what is cut off when a panel is stamped. All of this is recycled, same with metal shavings at the engine plant. Parts either arrive in custom designed holders (big stuff), large wood boxes, or pallets all of which are returned to the supplier for reuse. Some items have thin sheets of paper or foam to cushion parts from being scratched. Again recycled. Very small parts like nuts, bolts, and rivets come in large plastic bags. Again the bags are recycled. Hell they even have a recycling bin for the employee’s newspapers. I can’t see where the 1.5 tons of waste comes from.
So I gotta say CITE to the info on that page.
You second page has some great information on automotive tailpipe emissions. They even have a dandy little calculator to find out how much cleaner a new car is, but it seems to be DOA at the moment. :smack:
See this is the reason I visit this forum, not because I’m a pervert or something.
Rick I have a 1990 Geo Metro contvertable. My cylinder challenged car gets 40+ mpg when it’s cold and 35+ when it’s warm (aerodynamics). I would’nt trade my car for $20,000 dollars, or trade her for pretty much any other car, despite the terrors she gives me turning on to the highway. Anyway compared to modern cars is it still fairly green?
Part of it is going to be determined by how well in tune the car is, how worn the rings are, etc. The worst 20% of cars for pollutants emit more than 80% of all auto pollution. A car in really bad shape can emit more than 100 times as much pollutant as the max allowable for new cars.
Just today I was behind a GMC pickup that was leaving a blue cloud so thick it was still visible for two blocks. I literally had to get off the road and take another way home because the exhaust was making me sick, and I couldn’t get around him.
If you’re really, honestly worried about the environment, take your car in and get an emissions check.
Actually, and this doesn’t address the isue of the Shelby, but re-visits the diesel:
For North Americans, it might seem strange, but diesels are really getting a lot of attention in Europe. There are a number of reasons, including some ‘green’ benefits:
Lower CO2 emissions than gasolin engines (but higher in other poluting agents, most notably soot and, IIRC NO, but that’s getting fixed too).
About 30% better fuel economy.
Forget about noisy and smelly trucks and buses. Modern diesel cars go: Volkswagen’s new SUV, Touareg has a V10 diesel as an option, and it goes 0-62 in 7.8 seconds, with a top speed of 140 mph. Audi makes some diesels that kick butt too: The A6 with a 2,5 liter turbo diesel gets you to 60 in less than 9 seconds and tops at 140 mph. This without a monster engine like the one in the VW.
There are still some issues that environmentalists gripe about, but start shopping when the models for '06 come out, at which point I think auto makers selling diesel cars in the US must have gotten emissions down to the same level as cars with gas engines, meaning a car that performs as well, is cheaper to drive, and which emits less bad stuff.
If you assume 12000 miles annually at 15mpg for 8 years (assumed remaining useful life of the jeep - generous!) that’s 6400 gallons of gas. At 25mpg for the new car that’s 3840 gallons, a difference of 2560 gallons. 2560 gal x 6.15 lb/gal x 20,750 Btu/lb = 326,688,000 Btu of energy used by the jeep more than what the new car would have used. That’s equal to 95,742 kW-hours.
At 8.23 cents/kW-h, that’s $7880 worth of energy. That means it would have had to cost more than that to produce the new car for it to be worth it (this is very simplified, obviously). Strictly as comparison, an average home uses 10,000 kW-h per year, so that’s 9.5 years worth of use by the home. Based on these numbers, especially the $7880, and the cost of new cars, I’d say it couldn’t cost much more than that to produce a car or they’d never make any money. Also, your used car will require more energy in parts and repairs than a new one, reducing that number even further.
My opinion based on the above (and I hate to say it, because I’ve always used this argument to keep my old cars and a clean conscience) is that the world is better off if you buy a new car. But try to find one that gets better than 25mpg, that’s pathetic. My 1969 VW bus gets 22mpg! By the way, you’ll also probably be safer with all the new safety features…
Have a green day!
