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2012 U.S. Vehicle Analysis

Abstract

By 2010, the United States has about 250 millions registered vehicles - roughly 800 motor vehicles per 1000 people. According to a report by Environmental Defense in 2006, American cars are responsible for nearly half of the greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles globally, despite the fact that the nation's vehicles only made up just 30% of the total cars in use in the worldwide. Intuitively, the idea of replacing low fuel-efficient vehicles with high fuel-efficient ones could significantly decrease the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Nowadays, the U.S. government has always been encouraging people to purchase clean-energy cars; in addition, both American and foreign automobile companies emphasize energy conservation over engine performance. Based on a large pool of data on 2012 car and light truck models' features as well as their relative emissions and fuel economy information, this thesis is focused on investigating the vehicles' emission and fuel-efficiency performances with the assistance of using different blocking factors such as vehicle make and class level. The aim of this thesis is to help the people ease the process of choosing the relative cleanest and most fuel-efficient vehicle that meet their own needs.

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