The New York Times

gets it right, but has trouble with math.

The Times’ editorial, “R.I.P. to the S.U.V.“, June 17, has the basics, but their numbers are wrong. Small cars like the Honda Civic emit about one quarter of the greenhouse gases per mile compared to trucks like the Ford F 150 and GM Hummer. GM doesn’t publish EPA milage estimates for the Hummer, but reports in the blogosphere peg them at 8 to 12 mpg. Assuming 10 mpg, driving 15,000 miles requires 1500 gallons of fuel. At $4 per gallon, that’s $6,000. The Times said $4,300 for the Hummer.

The EPA estimates that the Honda Civic EX gets 32 mpg city and 40 mpg highway. Taking the average of 36 mpg to drive 15,000 miles would require 417 gallons at a cost of $1,668 – about one quarter of the gas, and the costs to drive a Hummer. (The Times said $2,100 for the Civic.) This should be obvious – the Civic gets close to four times the mileage, therefore gas costs are close to one fourth those of the Hummer. Both vehicles would require the same number of oil changes, but with bigger engines that use more oil; these too cost more for the Hummer than for the Civic. And because the Hummer costs more to buy and to repair, insurance costs are higher.

The Prius, which gets 45 to 50 mpg, costs less to run than the Civic.   To drive those 15,000 miles at at 47.5 mpg would burn 316 gallons. At a cost of $4 per gallon, it would set you back $1,264.

Looked at another way, a 10 mile commute in a Hummer would cost 1 gallon, $4 each way, $8 per day, $40 per week.  In a CIVIC it will cost about $2.22 per day and $11 per week.  In a Prius, about $1.68 per day and $8.42 per week.

There is one area where the Hummer is better than the Civic – since it is so much bigger and heavier, its scrap metal value is higher.

R.I.P. to the S.U.V.

It’s hard to convince most Americans that there is a silver lining to $4-a-gallon gasoline. But General Motors provided a nugget of good news when it announced that it would shutter 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 gallon of gas cost just over $1. But at $4 a gallon, driving a full-powered Hummer H3 or a big Ford F-150 would cost a typical driver, who drives 15,000 miles a year, almost $4,300 in gas. This is more than 10 percent of the median earnings of full-time workers and 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 last month, the Ford Motor Company said that it would slash production of pickups and S.U.V.’s. Its full-size pickup plant in Cuautitlán, Mexico, is expected to be used to produce the Ford Fiesta, a subcompact car, instead.

Expensive gasoline is not good news for most American families. In some rural areas where people must drive long distances, and a pickup is more of a necessity than a lifestyle choice, filling up the tank can eat up nearly 15 percent of a worker’s take-home income. Pricey gasoline is acting as a brake on the economy and pushing up the price of food and other goods.

Still, 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. And even if Detroit doesn’t buy global warming, drivers can help persuade it to embrace fuel efficiency. They don’t even have to know that the Honda Civic emits less than half the 13 tons of greenhouse gases spewed by the Ford F-150.