Acura, Common Sense Refute Gas Crisis

These days, griping over high gas prices is ubiquitous, and that griping leads to ever more hand-wringing, which in turn translates into a mountain of punditry regarding various "solutions" to this "crisis." SUV owners wail into every available microphone about $4 gas, Green Peace screams for Exxon executives' blood, and a never-ending procession of self-appointed experts bombards the Internet and opinion pages with their pet solutions for easing Americans' "pain at the pump." Frankly, I'm finding it all a little bit tiresome, so yesterday I conducted an experiment that might just render all the complaining and crack-pot schemes moot. It was a very low-tech experiment. I slowed down a little.

For my low-tech experiment, I selected a stretch of US-50 West from Cambridge, Maryland (where my ailing grandfather lives) to Alexandria, Virginia, where I live. My primary piece of equipment for this experiment was the odometer on my 2006 Acura RSX, which the EPA claims will get 31 mpg in "normal" highway driving. In a previous test on this same route, I divided my miles driven by the exact quantity of gas I burned and obtained mileage of 36.5 without really making any effort to save gas. So this time, I made an effort, and got some interesting results.

Over 93 miles, I used 2.34 gallons of regular unleaded, which works out to 39.75 mpg. After hitting the "equals" button on my calculator, my first thought was, "And why is there a gas crisis in this country?"

I should note here that my car possesses no technological wizardry to enhance fuel efficiency. It's powered by a 2.0 liter, inline-four engine, mated to a five-speed automatic transmission. No hybrid engine, no regenerative braking. It's just a smallish car (2,800 pounds), with a smallish, efficient engine.

And all I did to wring the extra miles from each gallon was to drive a bit slower, and crack my windows instead of run the air conditioner. When the speed limit was 55, I drove 55. When the speed limit increased to 65 on the western shore of Maryland, I drove 60. When I got stuck in horrendous traffic thanks to the hordes of families returning from Ocean City and other beaches, I let the engine idle in neutral. Approaching red lights, I coasted. Taking off from green lights, I went easy on the go pedal and kept my engine revs low. Not exactly the sort of stuff that will win me a Nobel prize for physics.

So, cruising at a leisurely pace in the right-hand lane, I saw near-hybrid mileage with some pretty stodgy technology. I can only imagine what a small car with a more frugal engine and a more advanced transmission (or a manual) could do, especially without the traffic jams; I bet a Mini Cooper, a Yaris or an entry-level Civic would probably have cracked 45 mpg, and maybe even threatened 50.

But tooling along in the slow lane, watching 5,000-pound SUVs zoom by at 75 mph, I realized that cars like mine and drivers like me are in the minority. All whining and recriminations aside, the average American drives a big, heavy car with a big, inefficient engine, and drives it very inefficiently, which goes a long way toward explaining why we as a country consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil every day. So now more than ever, I'm sick to death of hearing about this "fuel crisis" and the need for radical new technology and heavy-handed government mandates to "rescue" us from expensive oil. We don't need salvation; we just need a little high school physics and an end to the piggish "bigger is better and I'm entitled to what's better" mindset that's shaped the auto market for the last 20 years.

I'm about the last person in the world who'd advocate for energy rationing, or restrictions on the cars consumers buy, or any of the other command-and-control solutions that green warriors secretly venerate, because as with so many alleged "crises," I know the solution will be worse. But I'll be the first to tell an aggrieved motorist who's complaining how expensive it is to tow his 30-foot boat with his V-8 pickup that in economics, as in physics, you reap what you sow.