By Reed Hundt.

This is a quote from a New York Times opinion piece:

If oil consumption is to drop globally, we need to drive fewer miles in more fuel- efficient cars, most of them powered by renewable electricity.

It is not quite right. We will drive approximately the same number of miles. That’s not really very flexible. Even the most aggressive mass transit projects will not reduce the total number of driven miles, given population increases. And outside the United States it is certain driven miles will rise rapidly.

So “we need to drive the same or more miles” is more accurate.

Yes, the cars need to be more “fuel-efficient” but the right way to think is that “the average driven mile needs to produce a very quickly declining amount of greenhouse gas emissions.” If the miles are constant or increasing, then the emissions per mile must be decreasing substantially and very soon.

There are three important ways to achieve this. Each must be pursued. This is the order of priority, descending.

1. Gas engines need to propel vehicles more miles per gallon, which is a synonym for greater fuel efficiency. Then each mile will produce less emissions. This benefits consumers. It lowers total cost of ownership of vehicle. It increases front end cost. Therefore there should be a tax break for buying cars with greater miles per gallon engines. The break should go up as the miles per gallon rises. It should end after a certain number of years, as the more efficient engines achieve substantial market penetration. Five years should do.

2. All ride shared vehicles should be electric because they are used to drive 7 to 10 times more miles per year than non shared vehicles. The category includes Lyft, Uber, taxis, delivery vans, etc. This should be mandated and also subsidized. If 10 percent of all vehicles are shared, and if they are each driven 10 times as many miles a year as non-shared vehicles, then it follows that 52.6% of all driven miles will be in shared vehicles. If driven miles are a constant (my assumption), then by making all shared vehicles electric-powered, more than half of all emissions will be eliminated from transportation. If the remaining gas-powered vehicles have twice the fuel efficiency, then three quarters of all emissions will be eliminated by these two moves together. 

3. All individual vehicles should be subsidized to go electric based on the number of miles they are driven per year. This leads to the same subsidy plan as item 2 above: subsidize by driven electric mile, not vehicle. This, however, is the least important of the three measures to put in place.