Another Obama Used Car Up for Sale – for Way Too Much Money

Frankly, I’d rather have Barack Obama’s new ride but there are people in the world apparently willing to spend more than $100,000 on his used 2004 Chrysler 300C. It’s listed on eBay motors with a Buy It Now price of $1 million. Of course, that has resulted in some Yabo putting in a bid for $70 million.

Here’s a question that often comes up when discussing the green automotive scene: Is it more eco-friendly to keep your old car or to buy a new, more fuel efficient model? The answer is, as you may have guessed, very complicated. One way to attack the question is on carbon emissions, and this is the main tack that Scientific American has taken when analyzing the issue. According to SciAm, due to the emissions created when manufacturing vehicles, you should keep your current car as long as possible, so long as it is in decent running condition and getting reasonably good fuel mileage. Case closed?

Not so fast - while that’s not necessarily the wrong answer, let’s muddy up the waters a bit, shall we? Depending on the year of manufacture, a given car may not be equipped with many modern emissions controls that are standard on current models. Even if a car continues to pass its emissions testing, it is generally only required to meet the standards that were in place when it was new, and those requirements have gotten much more strict in the past few years.

Scrapping a car, as pointed out by SciAm, isn’t a particularly green option, though retrofitting modern emissions equipment is tough. A conversion to electric sounds like a nice option, but then you must consider where the electricity is coming from. As you can see, this is anything but a cut-and-dry answer, and it depends largely on what green aspect you consider most important.

[Source: Scientific American]

It definitely makes more sense from a green perspective to keep your old car running and well-maintained as long as you can‚ especially if it’s getting such good mileage. There are significant environmental costs to both manufacturing a new automobile and adding your old car to the ever-growing collective junk heap.

A 2004 analysis by Toyota found that as much as 28 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions generated during the lifecycle of a typical gasoline-powered car can occur during its manufacture and its transportation to the dealer; the remaining emissions occur during driving once its new owner takes possession. An earlier study by Seikei University in Japan put the pre-purchase number at 12 percent.

Regardless of which conclusion is closer to the truth, your current car has already passed its manufacture and transport stage, so going forward the relevant comparison has only to do with its remaining footprint against that of a new car’s manufacture/transport and driver’s footprint‚ not to mention the environmental impact of either disposing of your old car or selling it to a new owner who will continue to drive it. There are environmental impacts, too, even if your old car is junked, dismantled and sold for parts.

And don’t forget that the new hybrids‚ despite lower emissions and better gas mileage‚ actually have a much larger environmental impact in their manufacture, compared to non-hybrids. The batteries that store energy for the drive train are no friend to the environment‚ and having two engines under one hood increases manufacturing emissions. And all-electric vehicles are only emission-free if the outlet providing the juice is connected to a renewable energy source, not a coal-burning power plant, as is more likely.

If you want to assess your current car’s fuel efficiency or emissions, there are many services available online. The government website FuelEconomy.gov provides fuel efficiency stats for hundreds of different vehicles dating back to 1985. Websites TrackYourGasMileage.com and MPGTune.com can help you track your mileage and provide ongoing tips to improve fuel efficiency for your specific make and model vehicle. MyMileMarker.com takes it a step further, making projections about annual mileage, fuel costs and fuel efficiency based on your driving habits. If you have an iPhone, you can keep track of your car‚Äôs carbon footprint with the new “Greenmeter App” from Hunter Research and Technologies. The program uses numerous variables to make its calculations on-the-go as you drive, including weather conditions, cost of fuel, vehicle weight, and more.

If you simply must change your vehicle, be it for fuel efficiency or any other reason, one option is to simply buy a used car that gets better gas mileage than your existing one. There’s much to be said, from many environmental vantage points, about postponing replacement purchases of anything, not just cars, to keep what’s already made out of the waste stream and to delay the additional environmental costs of making something new.