Hybrid Escalades aren’t a stupid idea.
I remember the first time I saw a picture of the Cadillac Escalade hybrid online - I laughed. What an obvious piece of greenwashing, I thought, that’s like a “light” cigarette. Looking at the vehicle through our typical MPG (miles per gallon) lens, the hybrid’s value is dubious, and the laughter is understandable. However, adopt a GPM (gallons per mile) view, and the picture changes a bit.
As autobloggreen writes, when looking at the amount of fuel consumed to travel 10,000 miles, “a jump from 10 MPG to 11 MPG gives the same savings as going from 33 MPG to 50 MPG. In each case, you’ve reduced your consumption by about 100 gallons.” The idea started gaining notoriety in June when two professors from Duke University conducted research which showed that the GPM metric more accurately conveys fuel economy to consumers. Recently, the New York Times named GPM as part of its “Year in Ideas 2008.”
The two professors, Richard Larrick and Jack Soll, now have a website, The MPG Illusion. The site has a really cool tool - the GPM calculator - which you can use to compare the fuel economy of vehicles.
Hybrid Escalades may sound funny, but in a country where almost half of new vehicles are light trucks, hybrid SUVs could do alot to help. That’s not to say we don’t need to reduce the size and weight of vehicles - we do - but believe it or not, 6000 lb behemoths can be a part of the solution.
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