A New Car Versus a Used Car

[The Toecutter]

I'm going to go out on a limb though and say that buying a used car may actually be cleaner than a new car due to the pollution caused in making a new car. There are so many used cars on the market that a great many cars which are still great running transportation (and some very fuel effecient as well) are simply scrapped because the owner is tired of trying to sell it. I see this all the time at a U-pull junkyard I go to. Each of these cars could easily give several years more transportation and many more given TLC. Think about it - if every person in the country kept each car they own 1-2 years longer, how many fewer new cars would we need? How much pollution would be saved?

Approxamately 12 barrels of oil are consumed in the construction of a new car.

[GasSavers_BluEyes]

Originally Posted by The Toecutter

Approxamately 12 barrels of oil are consumed in the construction of a new car.

Somehow that seems low. Does that include the energy used by the mining equipment that got the ore, trucks that took the ore to the metal factory, the factory that processed the iron into steel, trucks that shipped it to the auto maker, and so forth?

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Originally Posted by BluEyes

Somehow that seems low. Does that include the energy used by the mining equipment that got the ore, trucks that took the ore to the metal factory, the factory that processed the iron into steel, trucks that shipped it to the auto maker, and so forth?

Probably. Industry is way more efficient than consumer crap, on a scale of an order of magnitude or more imo...