Here is a commentary piece from the Gotham Gazette that really makes sense. The writer, Rich Kassel, is of the opinion that the US EPA’s miles per gallon ratings are really not too useful, and I agree.

The MPG ratings make tons of assumptions about how people drive, where they drive, and who and what they are carrying around, so much so that MPG rating for a particular model could vary wildly depending on who is driving the car and where they are driving it.

Kassel suggests that automakers take the time to figure out the entire footprint of the cars they make, from production all the way until the last mile it drives. This method would take into account the amount of energy and resources required to make the car in the first place, deliver it to its destination, drive it for its entire life cycle, and finally put it to its grave at the end of its run.

This seems like a much more logical way of figuring out a car’s “greenworthiness” to me, and I hope that car manufacturers and others aren’t too lazy to begin actually calculating the carbon footprint of a vehicle from start to finish.