The lack of knowledge and the inattention to costs by cars buyers may surprise some
researchers. In defense of our survey subjects, car manufacturers don’t make it easy for
drivers to calculate or track MPG and fuel costs. Even those hybrid vehicles with
advanced energy-use instruments show fuel economy only over short periods of time,
and don’t track daily, weekly, monthly, annual, or vehicle lifetime costs.
Also, the differences in cost resulting from diverse driving styles, price variations
between gas stations, or differences in fuel economy between similar car models are
often small. So it’s unsurprising that even hybrid buyers don’t take the time to make
calculations or comparison shop for vehicles of similar size or class.
Is there a gasoline price threshold at which car buyers start doing more calculations?
Gasoline prices in parts of northern California exceeded $3.60 per gallon twice
since we interviewed our last household. While not ruling out that high prices may have
changed behaviors—it may have prompted some consumers to buy vehicles with higher
fuel economy—the people in our studies did not indicate that they plan to spend more
time making such calculations. If more vehicles had instruments that tracked fuel use
and costs, consumers might pay more attention to them. However, in many cases, such
instrumentation might only demonstrate that different driving behaviors and even
differences between similar car models do not bring large dollar payoffs.
This does not mean that consumers do not care about fuel economy. A quick look
at the current car market shows that buyers are shifting away from gas guzzlers. This is
happening in a period of heightened attention to many issues related to fuel economy,
including climate change and energy security as well as gas prices. But we cannot develop
policies or create behavior models that assume drivers calculate costs or even that private
cost is the main factor motivating consumers to choose better fuel economy. To be
successful, vehicle choice models and policies based on those models must investigate
more thoroughly all the aspects of fuel economy that motivate consumers. The payoff
is often not so much at the pump or the bank. It comes when we’re sitting at the dinner
table with family, when we’re talking with coworkers around the water cooler, or when we
check the fuel economy gauge at the end of a trip to see what a good job we’ve done