University of California Transportation Center

Moving the marketplace to clean and efficient vehicles is proving a complex, difficult, and long-term project. The first step, the development and commercialization of several technologies including electric, hybrid-electric, and alternative fuel vehicles is well underway. Now we must take the next step – transforming marketplace values. The challenges are formidable. There is a legacy of recent market trends. In recent years the automobile industry has focused on selling the size, power, and rugged image of truck-like vehicles; this strategy has produced some of their most profitable vehicles. Now, many consumers associate heavy, roomy, powerful, inefficient vehicle designs with images of the good life of recreation and adventure, the capacity to pick-up major home appliances at suburban superstores, or the ability to transport their child’s soccer team. These same consumers are largely ignorant that light-duty trucks – vans, sport utility vehicles, and pickup trucks – are allowed by policy to be less efficient and more polluting per vehicle mile. Ironically, there is a probably a sizable contingent of self-described environmentally conscious buyers who drive large, four-wheel drive SUVs. In our own locale, it is common to see such vehicles proudly decorated with bumper stickers exhorting people to “Keep Tahoe Blue.” (The reference is to efforts to maintain the lake’s prized clarity, a problem that appears to be connected in part to pollution from the growing populations of the Sierra Nevada foothills and Central Valley.) In such a market, how do we begin facilitate the expression of the values of efficiency, environmental stewardship, public health, and community?