The greener car: beating high fuel consumption while we wait for electrics.

When it comes to talking about the "green car," electric vehicles, or EVs, get all the glory. And no wonder! The $30,000 state-of-the-art General Motors EV1, formerly the Impact, will roll out in Saturn dealerships this fall. Chrysler will be marketing an electric minivan, as will Honda. And Toyota's RAV4 is the first plug-in sport utility vehicle.

"It is the best of times for electric vehicles" says Time, which adds that, based on a 1995 survey, consumers will snap up 100,000 a year when they go on the market. That total is likely to increase rapidly, as the auto industry begins a countdown to 2003, when -- says the California Air Resources Board -- 10 percent of the vehicles sold in California must be electric.

But despite all the hoopla, mass-market electric cars are still a ways off, and once they do appear, they're likely to be quite expensive. Is there anything people who are buying a conventional car right now can do to lessen the horrendous environmental impact of their purchase?

Yes, indeed. Although today's cars are technological marvels, they're also grossly inefficient. As Amory Lovins, director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, points out, "Cars are made of steel, and steel is heavy, so powerful engines are required to accelerate them. Only about one sixth of the average engine's power is typically needed for highway driving, and only about one twentieth for city driving ... And the problem is getting worse: Half the efficiency gains since 1985 have been squandered on making engines even more powerful." And the consumer fad for sport utility vehicles and trucks only exacerbates the problem.

While fuel economy has been shamefully stagnant, some car companies are at least trying to better their environmental records. GM, a signatory to the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economics (CERES) Principles, is researching a novel technology to recycle ground-up plastic, rubber and glass parts into a syrupy fuel oil, with many possible uses. Ford grinds up used soda bottles and molds them into small parts, and also reclaims old tires as, for example, brake pedal pads.

Global Cooling Vehicles

Modern cars are, inevitably, energy gluttons, but at least they can be put on a diet. (The government's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles is aiming for an 80-mile-per-gallon prototype.) Meanwhile, the average car swallows up 500 gallons of gas a year, which translates into five tons of carbon dioxide ([CO.sub.2]), the primary cause of global warming. Steve McCrea, editor of Green Car Journal, suggests turning your car into what he calls a "global cooling vehicle" To offset all that [CO.sub.2], you can work with the Maryland-based Trees for the Future (TFTF), which plants trees in tropical developing countries. It's simple arithmetic. If you sponsor the planting of 200 trees, they will absorb and store the five tons of [CO.sub.2] a year your car produces. TFTF charges $30 for the 200 trees, and you get a certificate and car window sticker to show off your eco-responsibility.

Buying a used car -- or simply waiting another year or two before trade-in time -- also makes sense, because it takes the energy equivalent of 950 gallons of fuel to produce a new car. At the other end of the relationship, there's the disposal process, involving some 50 million cars and trucks worldwide every year. In 1998, Sweden will require auto producers to take responsibility for their cars at the end of the life cycle. The car's last owner will be able -- cost-free -- to return the car to the manufacturer or importer, or bring it directly to the scrapyard. Sweden is aiming for an 85 percent resource recovery rate on auto parts by 2002, and 95 percent by 2015.

In the U.S., junking a car is a hit-or-miss process, but an estimated 75 percent of the material in a scrapped car is recovered. If you're taking the car to a junkyard yourself, it pays to ask some sharp questions about where the parts are going, as well as the final destination of such fluids as antifreeze, oil and refrigerant. Some states run "junker/clunker" programs, paying cash or offering tax credits for scrap cars above a certain age (see "One Man's Junk," Currents, September/October 1994).

Another thing you can do right now is to buy low-rolling resistance tires, which are favored by EV manufacturers because they cut friction and thus increase range. The tires cost more, but will ultimately save money in fuel savings. Underinflated tires can also be a source of higher fuel bills. According to Ann Hegnauer of the U.S. Department of Energy, there's a four percent efficiency loss when a tire rated at 32 pounds per square inch (psi) is run at 22 psi. Amory Lovins has observed that if people simply drove on properly inflated tires, the U.S. could stop importing oil from Kuwait.

Keeping Cool

If you do buy new, check to see if your potential purchase's air-conditioning is chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) free. Considerable energy is expended -- and the ozone layer attacked -- if you use the older-style CFC-based air-conditioners. Good luck in trying to find a car without an air conditioner: They're now installed on 90 percent of new cars. If you do find a car without air, a simple cardboard sunscreen will help keep it cooler when it's parked, and there's always the time-honored technique of driving with the windows open. And when choosing a color, think white -- it reflects heat.

When ordering a new car, try not to go wild on the options list -- electric accessories sap a tenth of the engine's power, require a heavy-duty alternator and result in more frequent repairs. The engine upgrade may look attractive, but most of that extra horsepower will be wasted and your car could be subject to an expensive Gas Guzzler Tax. Automatic transmissions, once a luxury, now a standard feature, also cut down on fuel efficiency. And speed limits may be annoying, but they do tend to keep motorists at 45 to 55 miles per hour, the ideal cruising speeds for saving gas, says the California Department of Transportation.

Electric cars will be ZEVs, or "zero emission vehicles" (at least in theory), but while we're waiting for them there's still a lot that can be done to turn our fuel-burners into REVs, or "reduced emission vehicles"