It’s hard to convince most Americans that there is a silver lining to $1-aliter gasoline. But General Motors provided a nugget of good news when it announced that it would shut down much of its production of pickups and sport utility vehicles - and might even get rid of the Hummer, the relative of the Abrams tank unleashed on the streets in the cheap-gas days of the 1990s.
It’s hardly the solution to global warming, or the country’s dependence on imported oil, but it’s a start.
Playing the urban warrior in a Hummer was a fairly inexpensive thrill when a liter of gas cost just over 25 cents. But at $1 a liter, driving a fullpowered Hummer H3 or a big Ford F-150 would cost a typical driver, who drives 24,000 kilometers a year, almost $4,300 in gas. This is about $2,200 more than it would cost to drive the same distance in a Honda Civic.
By May, there were signs that the S.U.V.-era was over. For the first time, Detroit’s Big Three automakers and their trucks were outsold in the United States by fuel-efficient cars made by Asian companies. And monthly sales of Ford’s muscular F-series pickups fell by a third, bumping it five spots from its previous perch as America’s best-selling vehicle, behind the Honda Civic, the Toyota Corolla, the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. It was the first time since December 1992 that a car, not a truck, claimed the top spot in monthly sales.
The F-series pickup has been the nation’s best-selling vehicle, on an annual basis, since 1981. But in May, Ford said that it would slash production of pickups and S.U.V.’s. Its full-size pickup plant in Cuautitlan, Mexico, is expected to be used to produce the Ford Fiesta, a subcompact car, instead.
Americans’ response to rising gasoline prices makes an excellent case for a gas tax. It proves that drivers will change their behavior in response to high fuel prices. They don’t even have to know that the Honda Civic emits less than half the 12 metric tons of greenhouse gases spewed by the Ford F-150.