Coolest Cars

Now there's good news for gals behind the wheel! Car companies say they're offering what women really want. There's a Lexus with a Coach leather-trimmed interior and handbag to match; Jaguar compares its glittering sedan to jewelry; and BMW's Active Seat gives the driver a back-and-bottom massage.

Why all this attention to our supposed desires? Maybe it's because women buy about 50 percent of all the new cars sold in the U.S. But some of us dream of "a car big enough to carry a couple of kids, a dog and luggage that gets 40 to 50 miles per gallon or better," says Sarah Clark Stuart, an ocean-policy consultant in Philadelphia. "The next car my family purchases is probably the biggest opportunity we have to reduce our contribution to air pollution and global climate change," Stuart adds. She's right: Cars and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are the second-largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide (CO2). If fuel-economy standards were raised to 55 mpg, we could be saving 4.8 million barrels of oil per day-nearly twice as much as we now import from the Persian Gulf, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. We'd save a lot of money too.

The options already exist: Nine of the "greenest vehicles of 2002," as rated by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), get from 39 to 56 mpg on the highway. Two of these, Honda's Insight and Toyota's Prius, are "hybrid" cars, powered by a combination of gasoline and electricity. Despite popular misperceptions, hybrids operate like conventional cars: the battery pack lasts an estimated 10 years and "no, you don't have to plug it in at night. Or ever . . . ," says Darden Rice, global-warming organizer for the Sierra Club, who drove a Toyota Prius through Florida. A colleague followed the same route in a GM Yukon SUV. The Prius used 16.24 gallons, which cost about $23; the Yukon, 43 gallons, totaling about $60.

Eve Winer, a psychologist in New York City, calls her Prius "spacious, comfortable and well-appointed." But Winer does have one complaint about hybrids: "There aren't enough Americans driving them-or any other fuel-efficient car, for that matter." The fuel efficiency for the average American car has slipped to 24 mpg, the lowest since 1979.

One reason is that hybrids aren't being made here. Currently, Ford is the only Big Three carmaker with plans to put a hybrid on the market in 2003: the Escape, an SUV. General Motors and Daimler-Chrysler are slated to follow suit with hybrid SUVs in 2004. But Therese Langer, transportation program director at ACEEE, anticipates that some of the first SUV hybrids to roll onto the market may bump up fuel efficiency only a few points-from, say, 14 mpg to 17 mpg. SUVs, classified as "light trucks," don't have to meet the 27.5-mpg standard for cars.

In March, under pressure from auto-industry lobbyists, the Senate rejected a nearly 50 percent increase in fuel-economy standards. Often evoked during the energy-bill debates were the needs of Soccer Moms, who apparently never go anywhere without strapping into their SUVs entire teams of children and who, according to Senator Barbara Mikulski (D., MD), "love their SUVs and minivans . . . because of their safety."

While the senator's concern may be heartfelt, "the typical SUV's rollover risk means that it's not safer than other cars," says Langer. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety puts the death rate from rollovers in lighter SUVs in 2000 at more than six times higher than that in the largest category of cars. Nor, curiously, do the occupancy figures for SUVs warrant their increased size. U.S. Department of Transportation data for 1995, the most recent available, found that the average occupancy for a car was 1.6 people; for an SUV, 1.7 people. (Just try fielding a soccer team with that!)

Although neither the government nor the auto industry is taking huge strides-or even baby steps-toward fuel efficiency, "the American consumer can be a force for change," says Rob Stuart, husband of Sarah and campaign director for the Patriot's Energy Pledge Campaign, a project of the American Conservation Association. The campaign asks consumers to pledge to save fuel and to support energy policies that reduce America's reliance on oil. "We can't let our kids go to war over oil," Stuart says. To parents, that provides perhaps the most compelling reason for fuel thrift.

Resources

For more on the Patriot's Energy Pledge Campaign, go to www.SaveaBarrel.org.

See ACEEE's Green Book: The Environmental Guide to Cars & Trucks at www.greenercars.com, or call 202-429-0063 to order ($8.95+$5 shipping).

For fuel-conserving tips, see the Union of Concerned Scientists' www.ucsusa.org.

For information on hybrids and future hydrogen fuel-cell cars, see the Department of Transportation's www.ott.doe.gov/hev/related.html.