Consumers, Banks Are Trump Cards in Fight to Improve Fuel Efficiency

One of my favorite scenes from the movie, “Jurassic Park,” is the one in which the game warden for the park is trying to hunt down the missing velociraptors. The warden has spotted a raptor in the jungle and is slowly, quietly, painstakingly making his way close enough to get a shot on the dinosaur. His focus is so intense that he fails to notice that there’s another raptor standing right beside him, waiting to go in for the kill. 

I thought of that scene as I formulated my argument for this blog post. Environmental advocates have long lobbied Congress, state legislators, regulators, car manufacturers and anyone else who will listen about making more fuel-efficient cars. Cars that burn less gasoline are better for the environment. Environmentalists want Congress to force carmakers to make more efficient cars.

I think the advocates are lobbying the wrong people. They need to speak to what really drives change: cold, hard cash. Trying to get Congress to enact such far-reaching legislation is equivalent to asking them to walk through a minefield unscathed. Carmakers are loathe to adopt new models because people keep buying the current ones, and research and development costs money. I was reading a blog post today about DropBox, the tech startup, and one of the reasons the company has succeeded is because, as the article lays out, it created a product that the public didn’t know it wanted or needed yet. I think carmakers have yet to adopt such an innovative strategy when it comes to fuel efficiency and new models.

Environmentalists should be lobbying the financial institutions to get them to adopt better financing products for higher-efficiency vehicles. By speaking directly to consumers’ wallets, in the form of rebates, incentives, or lower interest rates, that is most likely to act as the catalyst for getting carmakers to roll out cars that go further on a tank of gas. 

Banks have an interest in being perceived as environmentally friendly, so offering loan programs tailored to altering consumers’ buying habits would be good public relations as well as being good business. 

There exists an easy solution for environmentalists to turn Joe Consumer into allies, and that could have a dramatic impact in forcing the automobile industry to evolve and be more environmentally friendly.