One of the great things about the environmental movement is that it provides cover for those of us who are, shall we say, prudent about spending money. You can probably guess where I’m going here. Now, when I tell my wife that, no, we don’t really need to turn on the AC even though it’s 78 degrees outside, or when I urge my daughter to spend just a little less time in the shower, or when I cringe at the way we waste food in our home, I am no longer a skinflint or cheapskate. Seizing the moral high ground, I am now the guardian of our family’s carbon footprint.
Unfortunately, there are times when my intention to be “green” and to be frugal come into conflict–which brings us to my new car.
I’m not into cars, to say the least. I have been perfectly happy with my 1994 Volvo 850, bought used, now with a speedometer reading of about 146,000 miles. The last new car I bought was a Toyota Camry back in the mid-1980s. If everyone were like me, Detroit would have gone down the tubes years ago.
But as the costs of repairing the aging Volvo rose, and the dirt in those hard-to-get-to places was, well, hard to get to, I reluctantly decided that the time had come to replace it. But what to buy? I didn’t want to put a lot of time into car shopping, but I wanted to buy a car that I could feel good about owning and driving. I decided to treat myself to a new car, even though I’m pretty sure that it would be preferable from an economic and environmental standpoint to go with another used car.
So I did a little research and quickly narrowed the field to a handful of models—the Honda Civic (hybrid and conventional), the Honda Fit, the Toyota Prius, the Toyota Corolla and the Ford Focus. I don’t need a lot of car (obviously), which was another reason to let go of the Volvo. I work at home, drive less than 6,000 miles a year, and rarely go farther than the local airports. I’m driving less than ever these days because I recently bought a saddlebag for my bicycle, which I’m now using for the short trips (3 miles each way) to our local coffee shop, bakery, even the supermarket to pick up a few things. (Our kids are grown and my wife has a small Acura sedan we take on the occasional family trip.) So I was looking for a safe, reliable, cheap, environmentally-friendly car.
I signed up for Consumer Reports online, looked over its ratings and crossed the Ford Focus off my list. All things being equal, I would have liked to buy an American car but Consumer Reports says the Focus (a nice looking car, imho) has “handling that is less crisp than before,” is “still noisy,” and the “interior quality is lackluster.” I also gave up on the Toyotas—the Prius because they are ubiquitous and I didn’t want to drive what everyone else seems to be driving (it seems as if all the new cars at Adat Shalom, my synagogue, are Priuses) and the Corolla because, well, there was just nothing about the car that appealed to me. (I don’t claim that this is a rational process.) I also noticed that Toyota also slipped to third, behind Honda and Subaru, last year in Consumer Reports’ annual car reliability survey.
That left the Honda Fit, the Honda Civic and the Civic Hybrid—the car that I really wanted to buy. I test drove all three at a local dealer, liked them all, and then went home to do some math and see whether it made economic sense for me to buy a hybrid.
The numbers surprised me. For purposes of comparison, I looked at the Honda Civix LX 2dr coupe with an MSRP of $16,760 (includes AC, full power accessories, keyless entry, cruise control) and the four-door Hybrid with an MSRP of $22,600 (which includes all of the above features, as best I can tell.) I did a bunch of calculations on my own to see whether it was worth spending $5,840 more for the hybrid engine, and then discovered that Honda is kind enough to put a “savings calculator” on its website. EPA rates the standard Civic at 36 mpg highway/25 mpg city, the Hybrid Civic at 45 mpg highway/40 mpg city. I assumed that I would drive 20 miles a day (which is more than I do) and pay $5 a gallon for gas (which may sound high but I’m looking into the future here).
Honda says my fuel savings would be $1,013 in five years, or $202 a year. That means it would take, oh, about 28.9 years to pay back the extra cost of the hybrid. Yikes! You can quarrel with my calculation—I didn’t take the present-value of money into account, obviously—but not my conclusion.
I couldn’t see spending the extra money for the hybrid. Does this make me less of an environmentalist and more of a cheapskate? I’m afraid it does, but so be it.
I ended up buying the Honda Fit. MSRP is $13,950. EPA mileage is 28 city/ 35 hiway. Consumer Reports gave it a good score and talked about its “impressive interior room and versatility.” Car and Driver put the Fit on its 10 best list. (The Prius and Civic didn’t make it.) Edmunds called the Fit “a triumph of creativity, and proof that desirable cars don’t have to be expensive.”
Besides all that, I really like the way the seats on the car flip up, down and around—it’ll be really easy for me to take my bike places, without messing about with the rack. That cinched the deal.
So why am I sharing this experience with you?
For better or worse, I think my car-buying demonstrates that even “conscious consumers” can’t be counted on to put environmental or social issues at the top of list when buying stuff. I’m ordinarily quite careful about what I buy and from whom, in an effort to support companies that I admire. I wear Timberland boots, sit in a Herman Miller chair, brush my teeth with Tom’s of Maine, run in Nike shorts, drink Starbucks, stay at Marriotts, etc. But my support for better companies and my desire to have a lighter environmental footprint wasn’t enough to get me to spend thousands of dollars more than I need to for a cleaner, greener hybrid car.
Given that I’m more careful about my consumer choices than most Americans, I don’t think we can wait for consumers to drive us closer to a sustainable economy. Companies are likely to lead the way. And (we can hope) governments. What’s needed are companies that offer more good choices (and fewer bad ones), in cars and everything else, and government rules that incent them to do so, with higher CAFÉ standards, greenhouse gas regulation, research to promote alternative fuels and the like.
Here’s the Fit, by the way:
It is indeed overwhelming to try and make purchase decisions based on how green an individual product is (or is advertised) to be. A number of observers have cited the onset of a palpable “green information overload” to go along with the well-known resistance to paying a green premium.
It might well be easier, and ultimately more effective, for consumers to focus on the reputations of the companies with which they do business – as opposed to the “greenness” of specific products.
Doing business with companies that are making demonstrable and measurable efforts to be environmentally conscious across their operations and supply chains is a powerful way to leverage consumer power. Patronizing a company that is trying to make all the cars (or light bulbs) it makes or sells more energy efficient has much greater reach than simply finding and buying one (or a few) for yourself.
Considering you drive only 6K miles a year, in this case the cheaper Fit is also the greener choice. The much higher price of the Civic Hybrid in part reflects the higher embodied energy of the hybrid drivetrain, etc.
For someone who drives 60,000 miles a year, the Civic Hybrid would probably end up being both the more economical and the cheaper car, but for someone who only drives 1/10 that much, it is a waste of resources to park all that technology and embodied energy in the garage most of the time.
Take it from a fellow skinflint: you should relax, and realize that the prices of things are strongly correlated to the embodied energy of the thing, and the greenest choice is often not to buy anything at all… or to buy it used. Which leads to the conclusion that, while your choice of car was green, your decision to buy a new car can not be justified by either thrift nor by environmentalism… but you knew that.
I can completely understand your car buying dilemna. I bought a Subaru Forester two years ago — after owning a Ford Tempo for 13 years and a VW Beetle for almost 7 years. I too drive low mileage in a year, hate big cars (I can’t maneuver them!) and wanted something just big enough to fit my bike in with the seats down. I considered a Honda CRV, but the model that year was too big for me — they’ve since made them smaller. Every car salesman I met with tried to sell me something bigger — highlighting all the benefits of a big car while clearly NOT listening to why I wanted something small. Finally, on my way out the door of one Honda place, the salesman mentioned the Fit. I hadn’t heard of it and they didn’t have any on the lot. in fact, it was so popular that the only way you could see one in person was to order one! None of the dealers had any available for test drives. Since I didn’t want to buy untested, I ended up with the Subaru and love it. I also had been interested in a hybrid, but my fiance the tax lawyer told me it would take too long to recoup the investment — especially with as little as I drive. And this was BEFORE the VA tax credit expired. I’d say in the end it makes more sense to drive less using a conventional car then drive more and get the full benefits of a hybrid. Congrats on the Fit! Hope you enjoy it, but keep riding your bike too.
I completely understand your dilemna, and the underlying policy challenge for government and the private sector—how to make the “green” choice the best deal, too. I had a similar experience a year ago when I needed a new hot water heater for my house: the environmentally-correct tankless heater was three times as expensive as the conventional type. Without some kind of subsidy or rebate, there was no way I could afford to pay for the tankless one, so I went with the conventional, and less green, variety.
Marc, I have come to the identical conclusion as you. I also work at home and have localized my life. So instead of a hybrid, I still drive my old Forester. It’s way too big for what I need, except schlepping my daughter to and from college, but when I do that I drive it at 60 MPH and get pretty decent mileage. I decided instead of springing for a hybrid, I would simply drive as little as possible, take mass transit whenever possible, and wait it out for an electric car in a few years.
Drive safely!! Driving less advantages the collective – not just fewer emissions, but one less car clogging up the road, slowing others down, taking up parking spaces etc.
So, what color is the car? Red, as the one in the photo? Or green?
Its’s red. The Fit doesn’t come in green. My wife also reminds me that the new car we bought in the 1980s was a Honda Accord. (The Camry was bought used from a neighbor).
And…to slightly correct my self-portrait as a cheapskate. I’m willing to spend money on experiences–travel, vacations (we go to Alaska in a few days) and restaurant meals, for example. But I’m more reluctant than ever to buy “stuff” and trying generally to declutter my life and think about the environmental impact of what I buy.
“incent” as a verb? What could you be thinking, Marc?
Marc:
Your account provides a good example of what we all go through when trying to manage and balance our financial and non-financial impacts in the world. What it does less well, I think, is differentiate your own impacts from the impacts of the companies you discuss. In other words, there is a difference between your own sustainability and the sustainability of the companies whose products you purchase. Your story, I think, invites confusion between the two.
Indeed, what may be best (or worst) for you may be worst (or best) for us all, in terms of the sustainability performance of the companies involved. For all we know, Honda’s manufacturing of the Fit may be the most unsustainable operation on the planet. Your focus on only your own use of it, however, would have us ignore the very question of that.
Think of it this way: to say that a product is best for you, is not to say that the impacts of its production is best for us all. There is a difference between the sustainability of your own use of a product, and the sustainability effects of the company that produces it. Your account, however, fails to make this distinction, so we will never know if you made the best decision or the worst one – nor will you.
Alas, since you and much of the rest of the press seem content to commit this mistake, the world as we know it is more likely to press on to hell in a handbasket, not less. How about you take a stand against this and stop inviting confusion between consumer behaviors and producer behaviors? There is a difference, you know. Just a thought.
Mark
Marc,
we can’t rely on government or corporations to make it “easier” for us to make the change. unfortunately like you, I am the carbon manager of my family and office. to most people it is “inconvenient” to reduce their carbon footprint. we have to demand that these larger entities follow our choices. i know spending 5K more is a lot but it is necessary to send that message out there that we as the largest entity (consumers) want a more sustainable product. I found your post from reading “So It Goes” A Blog by Jeff Weintraub http://soitgoes.typepad.com/ where Jerry comments on your post about the need for more “convenient” choices. My response: there is nothing convenient about the choices we have to make. The Corporations are doing something about it but we need to get organized and advocate to eachother of the necessity of our conscious consumerism, convenient, affordable, or not.
Billie Mintz
Artists Raising Consciousness
http://www.arcinstitute.net
[...] post was in response to and inspired by Marc Gunther’s post: http://www.marcgunther.com/?p=383#comments and Jeff Weintraub’s [...]
If only everyone approached such decisions in such a multidimensional way, what a better place the world would be. You looked at the issue from all sides, considered all the factors (mileage, comfort, utility, features, etc.), and then made the best OVERALL decision for you.
In fact, considering how easy it is to get virtually all the information you need to make an informed, balanced decision like the one you made here, it’s pretty much just lazy not to.
So the obvious question, if it’s so easy to do, why don’t more people do it?