Folk Quantification of Transportation Energy: An Initial Investigation of Perceptions of Automobile Energy Use

In this paper we seek to document what, if any, divergences exist between how experts and ‘lay’ people conceptualize the energy used in automobiles, motivated by previously-documented divergences in the home energy sector. From a total of 15 interviews with 19 individuals, we identify several common ways ‘lay’ people think about automobile energy use, and draw a number of conclusions relevant to the development of transportation energy policy. Our informants thought of automobile efficiency almost exclusively as fuel economy and were aware of it, albeit based on inconsistent methods and varying degrees of rigor. They measure fuel economy almost exclusively in miles per gallon and demonstrated easy familiarity with this measure—they were very comfortable comparing their present cars with past cars, or with other cars in terms of fuel economy. However, the prevalence of this volumetric, more-is-better measure may present challenges for communication as alternative fuels (e.g. electricity) gain market share because such fuels may not comport with this measure in an intuitive way.

Language

  • English

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Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01147405
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: UC Berkeley Transportation Library
  • Report/Paper Numbers: UCD-ITS-RR-07-22
  • Files: BTRIS, TRIS
  • Created Date: Dec 29 2009 9:29AM