My SUV Backlash

My “After College” Vehicles

I got my Bachelor’s Degree in 1990 and my parents bought me a used 1984 Volkswagen Scirocco for graduation.  It was pretty much the perfect car for me at the time.  It was inexpensive, somewhat sporty-looking, and still practical.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t very reliable and it was much slower than it appeared.  Plus it kept getting broken into.

After graduation, I worked my way through a Master’s Degree thanks to a job I had as a software engineer.  Then, a couple years after that graduation, I decided I wanted a pickup. The VW just wasn’t well suited for getting camping gear to the mountains or the desert.  And once I was out of college, I was doing more camping.  Anyhow, I decided to shop around and I ended up buying a used 1991 Nissan 4WD Pickup.  For a while, I had both vehicles at the same time, but I decided that was redundant.  Besides, I’d racked up some credit card debt I wanted to pay off.  So, I sold the VW, leaving me with just the Nissan pickup.

The Desire to Upgrade

The Nissan was o.k. since it could be used for driving around town plus going camping.  That truck was very reliable (in fact, I drove it through Teapot Canyon to the Doll House in Canyonlands, which is pretty frightening four wheel drive road) but it had three significant problems. First, it didn’t have air conditioning.  Most people in Colorado would say “big deal” because it only really gets hot here for about a month out of the year, and there’s no significant humidity.  But I’ve always been more sensitive to the heat than others and I really disliked driving to the movie theater on a date and sweating the whole way.  The second problem with the Nissan was that it had a manual transmission. That wasn’t a big deal to me, but my girlfriend Beth has never been very good at operating a stick shift. And since she didn’t have a car of her own (and never has) I wanted her to be able to use mine when she needed.  The third problem was that the Nissan wasn’t very comfortable.  The interior is pretty spartan and a bit small, and the bench seat made my back hurt on long trips.

So, eventually, all this (combined with a huge leap in disposable income) motivated me to buy a brand new 1998 Dodge Dakota Sport Plus.  This truck does it all!  It looks good, runs good, has plenty of power, is comfortable, has air conditioning, CD player, automatic transmission, and plenty of room.  It’s the perfect vehicle to take camping.  You can go in extreme comfort and carry lots of gear.

My Parking Headaches

Well, it didn’t take too terribly long before I realized the Dodge Dakota wasn’t a perfect vehicle in every way.  It is indeed great for long trips and for camping.  And it’s unbeatable for hauling landscaping and building materials around (something we’ve done a lot of since buying our own house).  But it just isn’t a very good vehicle for commuting.

I don’t have a very long drive to work.  I live in Broomfield, Colorado.  That’s 11 miles from Boulder, where all the good jobs are.  So, with the extra mileage of getting on and off the highway, it’s only about 30 miles a day, round trip–much better than a lot of Americans have it.

But, I do work 5 days a week in a city where parking is often a challenge. So, the Dodge has two problems.  First, it burns at least 2 gallons of gas every day I use it to commute. Not a huge problem, I suppose, with gas prices so low in the US, but it is about $70 per month just in gas. The second and much more significant problem is size.

This truck, misleadingly called a “compact pickup” by Dodge, is huge.  It barely fits in our garage, and it’s a beast to park.  If I’m trying to park in some downtown type area, I often have to pass by two or three or more parking spaces just because the only available parking space is between two other oversized vehicles.

I hadn’t really thought of this too much until I was trying to park at the parking garage by the Boulder Bookstore one day.  I passed by space after space after space, looking for one that I could squeeze my truck into.  No luck. And the corners, normally big enough for two way traffic, are so small that I had to back up to make room for every other vehicle coming down.  Eventually at the very top of the building, I found a space I could fit into.  But I had an idea.  A very simple idea.  “You know, self, you wouldn’t have this problem if you had a small car.”

It was so obvious! If I had some kind of small car, I could park, I could get around town without running over bicyclists, and I could save at least half of what I spent on gas. But what small car to buy?

Electric?  Nope

Well, I thought about it long and hard over the course of several months. My original preference was to get a GM EV-1.  At the time (and perhaps even still) this was the most aerodynamic consumer automobile ever.  It’s all electric, which only gives it a range of about 90 miles on a charge.  But that’s more than enough given my driving habits (remember, I usually drive just 30 miles a day).

The problems with the EV-1 were that GM only offered them for lease in a couple of regions in the US, and Colorado wasn’t one of them.  So, I would have had to lease the vehicle from the Saturn dealership in Scottsdale, Arizona, ship it up here, and then take it back there whenever I needed service.  That’s not very convenient.

The Postcard

Then one day I got a postcard from Public Service Company talking about the Honda Civic GX.  I didn’t know that there even were cars that ran on compressed natural gas, but there are. And the GX comes from the factory specially made to handle CNG.  It seemed like a half-assed solution, compared to the all electric vehicle, but I looked into it more.

The car ran just the same as the normal gasoline powered Civic.  In other words, it’s not going to win any drag races, but it gets good gas mileage and it’s very easy to drive and park.  And with the cheap prices of natural gas, I decided the Civic GX was the way to go.  I had to special order the vehicle, because they don’t sell tons of them and I was particular about the color I wanted. But 3 weeks later I had a new commuting car with the cleanest burning internal combustion engine on planet Earth.  That made me happy.

My Very Own NGV

Now I drive the Civic GX way more, probably a factor of 10 times as much, as the Dakota.  Even though I’ve never been a fan of Hondas, I think this is a great car for my purposes. And now I can comfortably fit 4 full sized adults, something that was pretty awkward in the pickup.

Maybe it’s not directly relevant, but since I started driving the Civic GX to work I’ve been curious how it stacks up with other vehicles I see on the road.  And one question I ask myself whenever I take the bus is, “Does my NGV pollute less, on a per-passenger basis, than taking the bus?” I finally did some research on that topic.  If you dig around enough, you can find that our government has some numbers on such things.  Here are some rough comparisons of the emission levels of a few representative vehicles you might see on the road, based on data I found on the web.  The numbers are all g/mi.

ULEV Standard 1999 Honda Civic GX 1999 Honda Civic LX 1994 Dodge Caravan 1994 Dodge B250 Van Typical Diesel City Bus NMHC 0.04 0.03 0.08 0.15 0.30

CO 1.7 0.16 1.6 1.6 4.7 14 to 24 NOx 0.2 0.02 0.07 0.3 0.7 25 to 29 CO2

220 300 470 600 2600 to 4200

SUV Backlash

One day in the summer of 1999, all of the private owners of natural gas vehicles in Colorado got together for a photo shoot. Natural Fuels, the company that sells the fuel and promotes the cause of NGVs, gathered us together to get some pictures for future advertising and also hear about our experiences as the first wave of private NGV owners. At the time there were only about 6 of us, I think, though I’m sure that’s increased since then.

On the way home from dinner (which Natural Fuels graciously provided), Beth and I were talking about this whole saga that I’ve just described.  I was griping about how many people in the Denver/Boulder area drive SUVs when they don’t really need them, and how much they pollute, and how much fuel they waste, and so on.  Beth said that it seems like buying this car was my own little backlash against SUVs.  And that’s how this website came to be.

If you’ve got your own story of SUV Backlash, email it to me.

Honda Civic GX

Here’s what Honda says about their Natural Gas Civic.

And here’s a review from Woman Motorist.

One great reason is

that Colorado state law allows you to drive the Civic GX

(and any other ILEV) in the HOV lane with only one

person.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s the

layman’s description of SB 98-30:

S.B. 98-30 Highways - high-occupancy vehicle lanes - inherently low-emission vehicles. Allows federally certified inherently low-emission vehicles (ILEVs) weighing 26,000 pounds or less to use high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes so long as the ILEVs are identified by means of an approved, orange, circular sticker or decal applied in one of several specified locations on the vehicle. Directs the department of transportation to add ILEV information to new signage relating to HOV lane usage. Allows for restriction or elimination of HOV lane use by ILEVs in the event that such use is shown to interfere with the use of HOVs by other vehicles or to result in the loss of federal highway funds.

Increases the fine for HOV lane violations from the current $50 to $65 for a 1st or 2nd violation and from $100 to $125 for a 3rd or subsequent violation within one year. Removes the surcharges formerly applicable to such fines.

APPROVED by Governor June 1, 1998 EFFECTIVE August 5, 1998

NOTE: This act shall take effect at 12:01 a.m. on the day following the expiration of the ninety-day period after final adjournment of the general assembly that is allowed for submitting a referendum petition pursuant to article V, section 1 (3) of the state constitution; except that, if a referendum petition is filed against this act or an item, section, or part of this act within such period, then the act, item, section, or part, if approved by the people, shall take effect on the date of the official declaration of the vote thereon by proclamation of the governor.

But What About Range?

The Civic GX, operating on compressed natural gas, has a shorter range than most gasoline cars - 200 miles or less.  Is this a problem?  If you commute 201 miles each day, it could be.  But for most of us, it’s not an issue, as you can see from the statistics below.

Average person trip length (miles)

Work Shopping Social and recreational All purposes 1983 8.5 5.4 12.3 8.7 1990 10.7 5.4 13.2 9.5 1995 11.6 6.1 11.3 9.1

Source: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration