Hello everybody and thank you for joining us today. My name is Benjamin, I'm a graduate student at the University of Michigan, studying environmental behaviors and public policy. Today we're joined in the studio by Brandon Schoettle, to discuss how small changes in individual driving behaviors can have a large impact on greenhouse gas reduction within the transportation sector. Mr. Schoettle is a project manager at the Human Factor Group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. His research in part focuses on the individual driver and how they may reduce their emissions by increased fuel economy. Thank you so much for joining us today, Brandon. >> Thanks for having me. >> Great, well let's jump right in. So, in the wake of the landmark Paris Accords, signed in December of 2015, you and you colleague from UMTRI, Michael Sivak, you wrote a white paper. And this white paper discussed on the individual American can make changes within their individual behaviors to help the US meet their emissions reduction goal. So you suggest that improving vehicle fuel economy is by the far the most effective action that an individual can take. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that works? >> Sure, just broadly what we did with this paper was we looked at changes that individual Americans could make that would be relatively easy changes that don't have major effects on their live style. Because of course we could all do things that are very difficult to do that have major impacts on lifestyle. But we're looking at some realistic things that most people might actually be really willing to do. So we looked at various factors including transportation, things like residential impacts, turning down your heat in the winter, turning up your air-conditioning in the summer, things like that. Reducing food consumption, the agricultural effects you could have. But of course we did come down on the fact or the conclusion that, as you move up in terms of the amount of impact you want to have, some of those other, easy solutions start to disappear. They become difficult or impossible to do and the only thing that's really relatively easy, because it simply involves buying a different type of vehicle, is improved vehicle fuel economy. And that really gives people, individually, a big impact on their emissions from day to day. >> That's really great. Yeah, so, in that same paper you went on to discuss how transportation made up 27% of US carbon emissions or greenhouse gas emissions in 2015. And you suggested that individuals have the most impact on these emissions through light duty vehicles, as well as aircraft. Can you tell us a little bit more about why these two categories are of utmost importance? >> Sure, well of course these are the two transportation modes that Americans use to travel the most, at least the furthest distances. Public transportation get used quite a bit too, but those are often for very short trips within cities. For any long distance trips and of course most people's day to day commutes to work and to school and to visit family and things like that, usually involve driving. They often will involve a combination of driving and flying. And these are areas too where there have been big improvements over the past few decades in fuel efficiency and fuel economy. However, personal transportation with light duty vehicles, as you mentioned, is a significant 20 some odd percent of the total omissions. I believe it makes up about 16% for just light duty vehicles, the type of vehicles we all drive and have at home. >> Yeah. >> So it adds up quickly, we drive, I believe it's something like over 200 million vehicles are registered in this country. There's over 200 million drivers, that adds up to a little over 3 trillion miles of driving every year. So, as you can you imagine, 3 trillion miles of driving, fuel efficiency of those vehicles is quite important when it comes to effecting the emissions that come out of all of these vehicles, so. >> Yeah and can you tell me a little bit more about aircrafts and how they factor into these individual mitigation behaviors as well. >> Well aircraft, as I mentioned, their fuel efficiency's improved quite a bit over the past few decades through things like more fuel efficient engines. Passengers tend to be packed more densely on airplanes then they used to be in decades past. So per passenger fuel efficiency per mile is actually quite good with aircraft. And so you think of the kind of family maybe they take their trip in the springtime from Michigan down to Florida and often kids will talk about how they use to drive down. And that's a money saving thing to do sometimes, but these days, it's actually less fuel efficient to do that than it would be to get on an aircraft and fly down there, because of the massive improvements in aircraft efficiency. So, when it comes to long distance trips, it's surprising to most people, but actually flying in an aircraft is the most fuel efficient way to get there, not driving in your vehicle. >> Wow. >> And there's safety implications that come with that too. >> Yeah, that's really interesting. What are the safety implications associated? >> Well with flying, flying is particularly safe. We often have cases where we you have very bad news stories, because there's large amounts of death and injury that occur all at once. But over the course of a year, over the course of decades, flying is very safe. Your main risk is when you take off and land. When you're flying, you're generally doing fine. But on that trip from Michigan to Florida, every mile has risk that comes with it. Every time you have to get off the highway and drive through cities, your risk goes up. As I mentioned with hundreds of millions of drivers on the road, your mixed in with all of those other vehicles on this multi-day trip to Florida. So, there's a lot of different chances for there to be safety issues that come up. Of course too driving by and large is very safe, but when you compare the two side by side, flying is just a much safer way to travel than driving. >> Yeah, that's really interesting. And when you look at comparison between driving and an airplane, it's interesting, because we always think of right before take off, anyone that's ever flown on an airplane can look at that, and be like wow, think about all of the green house gas emissions being created right here. And it's really salient. Is that something that you found in your work? >> Well, as you mentioned, there's a massive amount, you can even see it off and coming out of the engines of an aircraft. But that's divided by whatever that, say, 250 people on that aircraft. So as much as it's all coming out of a single aircraft, divided by the 150, 250, however many passengers there might be, the per passenger amount. And if you were to then take those people and put them all into cars, it actually ends up being more fuel efficient in the aircraft. As much, as you say, sitting there doesn't feel that way, because the aircraft itself is sort of cranking out so many emissions. But it's carrying so many people and it's carrying them so far, I mean actually it is a good trade-off. And as you mentioned too, sitting there people often they're nervous and they don't realize that around the world, hundreds of people die every year in air travel accidents. In the United States alone 30 to 40,000 people die on the roads every year. So there's no comparison really [LAUGH] it's kind of apples and oranges on the safety issues. >> Let's dive a little bit deeper into the individual driver's behavior. So, like many decisions that we make the individual behavior that a driver has can have a really large impact on the emissions that are coming out at the other end. So for vehicles how much we drive, what we drive and how we drive, those three items play pretty heavily into the carbon emissions side of things. So, can you tell us a little bit more about those three categories? And maybe provide a few examples from your research about these specific actions individuals can take? >> Sure, you mention these three sorts of categories, we had a separate paper that preceded the paper we did addressing the Paris Accord, where we looked at what we described as a strategic, tactical and operational decisions that a driver can make. And to put those in more sort of colloquial terms, strategic are more sort of very long term kind of overarching decisions that you make. Tactical are more of the things that may change from trip to trip, depending on what you're doing, where you're going, things like that. And operational, those tend to also be sort of overarching, but they're more how you behave. So for example, strategic decisions you might make are, the first one, of course, is do you buy a car? If so, do you buy a passenger car, do you buy a pickup truck, some other form of vehicle? Within those, pickup trucks, you can improve your fuel economy by 100%, depending on the type you pick. You could pick one with 15 miles per gallon, you could pick one with 30. I believe with cars, once you get hybrids and electric vehicles in the mix, you can do something like change your fuel economy by eight times the amount if you go from, say, a very poor fuel efficient vehicle to one of the better electric vehicles. You can have eight times the fuel efficiency there. So, within even picking a car there's some massive range of effects you can get there on those sort of strategic decisions. Tactical is more, are you carrying any extra cargo or loads in the vehicle that you don't need to be? Are you taking the most direct route? If possible, are you taking the flattest route? Are you taking this trips at times when there's the least amount of congestion? Of course, if you can take your trip at 2:30 versus 5:30, I recommend doing it at 2:30 [LAUGH], things like that. And then the operational decisions, these are the things that you have to sort of think about on a more day to day basis. It's doing things like avoiding aggressive driving, making sure your vehicle's maintained, that you have proper inflation in your tires. That you're actually using the oil that they say. Things like using the incorrect oil though your car might run fine, it actually can have some impacts on fuel economy. So all of these little things that you have to make decisions about every time you drive your car sort of all add up to these operational decisions that you have to make. And all of it, of course, can have some big impacts. There's wide ranges of how much impact each thing can have. But in an analysis we did, where we used some kind of reasonable amounts for each of these different things, you can almost cut your fuel economy in half if you do everything wrong [LAUGH]. We sort of started off with a model of fuel economy somewhere in the thirties, and it cuts down to just a little under 20 MPG if you drive aggressively, you drive fast. Even using things like your air conditioning a quarter of the time can cut your fuel economy by 3 or 4%. So, there's all these little things. And you may decide that 3 or 4% is reasonable for you, because you want your air conditioning, but that you'll make it up by not driving aggressively or things like that. So, you can't necessarily add fuel economy, but you can certainly hurt your fuel economy quite a bit by these long list of things that you potentially fail to address or pay attention to as a driver. And you can really have the reverse effect and keep your kind of maximum fuel economy if you pay attention to these different things. >> Yeah, sounds like one of the major takeaways from that second paper that you discussed is that small incremental changes in driving behavior can actually lead to really large greenhouse gas emission reductions within the transportation sector. >> Yeah, yeah and as I mentioned, a lot of that is because there's just so many of us, almost every household in the US has at least one car, some have two or three. And fuel efficiency, of course, is a major factor and how efficient those vehicles are, but there's other things beyond just fuel efficiency too, of course. You can decide, if possible, not to use your car. Use a bike, walk, or use a form of public transportation, as I mentioned, where that bus emissions are being divided by the 30 people on it, not just 1. Or share a vehicle, it's an older idea, but if you can take two people who drive to work and they can share a car, you've now cut the number of cars those two people use in half. You've cut their emissions in half, assuming all things are equal. So there's some other decisions beyond just the raw fuel economy that can help boost your transportation efficiency. Fuel economy, of course, is the biggest way to do it though. >> Yeah, so looking for folks that maybe don't own a car, maybe don't have access to a personal car. What recommendations would you make for them to make an individual change within this scope? >> Well, now, of course, of all the things we've mentioned, not having a car is a big step toward being [LAUGH] more efficient in terms of your personal transportation. Of course, whatever you can do to use, I guess what I'll call mass transit. Taking a taxi is not going to be as fuel efficient for you, even if you share it with two or three other people as when you get on a bus with 20 other people, and that probably won't be as efficient. I believe it's true, I don't have the numbers out of the top of my head, but if you get on a subway that's actually hauling 150 people, now there's multiple cars but they're often electric, and there's some other things involved that make them clean as well. And they're hauling so many people around all at once, that just helps boost their pro-passenger fuel efficiency. And that's really what most of this kind of comes down to, is per passenger fuel efficiency, not just how fuel efficient is your vehicle. But if you can double the number of people in that vehicle, you've done quite a bit to improve things too, even if you didn't change your fuel economy. >> Yes, so speaking directly to that, looking at the future of transportation. I think that a big criticism of current ride sourcing apps, things like Uber and Lyft, is that it doesn't necessarily take cars of the road, right? A lot of people take these services and use these trips individually, right? So looking forward, how do you think that carbon emissions, specifically greenhouse gas emissions, is going to be affected by maybe an increase in carpooling behaviors? >> Now as you mentioned, Uber is maybe a good example, though it may be not completely fair to pick on them because there are others, but they're the one that everyone knows. You're right, so if I don't have a vehicle, but I use Uber, I may be just sort of trading my personal ownership for theirs. But there are some unintended consequences where you get some benefits there, because not owning a vehicle often means you don't make unnecessary trips, which often someone who has one sitting in their garage might do. So you've less temptation to just make frivolous use of the vehicle the way someone who actually owns it might. You may be sharing it, as I mentioned, with several other people at the same time, which helps. And it's interesting that you mentioned Uber too, because they're starting down this road to having self-driving autonomous vehicles. And even if you're comparing you owning a vehicle versus Uber self-driving vehicle, hopefully when this is all setup and done right, that vehicle will still beat you any day, because it's driving much more fuel efficiently. Basically its system knows about these tactical, strategic and operational, and does them to the best of its ability. That's the problem with most human drivers, as we forget about doing these things, maybe road rage takes over, we get angry. Self driving vehicles have no ego. [LAUGH] They'll gladly let someone cut in, things like that. So there's some other non-fuel efficiency issues where the engine stayed the same, but the car is driving much more better than a normal human would be. So it's a little bit difficult to say for sure how it will all play out. Probably things will ultimately be a little bit more fuel efficient even, if you're just trading one passenger car for another. But hopefully people are also considering, who use those types of services, more mass transit options. Reserving Uber for that cold late night when you just need to get home and maybe taking the bus when it's a nice sunny afternoon and it's not so urgent to get there right away. >> Yeah, that's really interesting what you said about potentially we're able to, as engineers, go in and program these specific behaviors that you and Michael Sivak discuss in your paper. We might be able to actually put those into the vehicles that we'll be driving in the future. It's a really interesting prospect there. >> Yeah, we've talked about light duty vehicles today, but this is an important factor too for heavy trucks, that deliver most of the things we get at grocery stores and department stores and things like that. Because they have massive safety gains from a self-driving vehicle, but they also, too, will drive much more efficiently. And that's a big factor when you're talking about heavy trucks that drive hundreds of thousands of miles per truck every year. To have this truck actually, the artificial intelligence have some awareness of eco-driving techniques really adds up fast when you talk about one truck that may drive several 100,000 miles a year times 1,000 trucks in a fleet. The math is simple and it adds up fast. >> Yeah that's really interesting. So, for here, kind of as we begin to wrap up. What is one specific action that you would recommend to our learners that they can take and they can act on climate change within the context of transportation? And why is this one particular behavior of utmost importance? >> So as you add up all of the different ways you can make a vehicle more fuel efficient, it is the biggest bang for your buck. And as I mentioned early on we talked about something like going from a modest 21 MPG, which is sort of the average for vehicles in this country right now, to a relatively small increase, let's say 31 MPG. Which is far from being the best, there's 50 MPG cars, there's 100 or so when you have electric. But just that modest increase from say 21 to 31, actually cuts total emissions in the US, if everyone did that, by about 5%. It actually is a bigger cut to transportation, but when light duties make up about 16%, in the end you get about a 5% reduction. This would be for emissions within the country if everyone went out and got this sort of improvement in their fuel economy. So these are things too that as I say, unless you really have a need for certain vehicles, these don't impact your lifestyle. You're often using a very similar vehicle to what you would have had, but maybe it has a different powertrain, it's electric or it's hybrid or something like that. And so these are differences that are barely noticeable to people who are using the vehicle, but they make massive differences in the fuel efficiency and ultimately then the emissions that come out of that vehicle. >> Yeah and it sounds like one of the first steps is awareness. So for our learners the first step is to go out and to figure out within the transportation area, if you do own a vehicle and if you are driving, figure out where you can make these improvements within your efficiency. I think fuel economy is a really important place to start, and I think that your research and Michael Sivak's research really grounds us there. Really provides us with a tool and kind of quantifies a lot of the impacts that we could have. And I think that really looking forward to how do we reduce our emissions, especially from transportation, which is something that is salient in all of our lives. I think that's a really important place to start. >> Yeah and I think too, we're at a good point for this now, because if I would have said this ten years ago, the number of electric vehicles or hybrids or other things out there were minimal. They're hard to find, they were expensive. It's becoming where they are much more common, they're becoming much more affordable. Things like people who could find and could afford an electric vehicle, but said but I need to drive 200 miles and I can't do that. You can do that now, not just with an expensive Tesla but Chevrolet and others are coming out with some of these vehicles. So, the ability to actually look around, find what's out there and maximize your efficiency with the vehicle is getting better and better as we speak, much more than has ever been the case in the past. So now is a very good time if you need to look around [LAUGH] and say, what can I do to improve my vehicle, you might find there is an incredible number of options out there to do it. >> Perfect, well, thank you so much for joining us today. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, and Brandon Schoettle was our guest today. He's from the Human Factors Group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, thank you. >> Thanks.
