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Greene 9 (1:42)
Topic(s): Car Culture / Efficiency
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Video Transcript
Actually, my view is that consumers do care about fuel economy
but it's not on their minds when they buy the car. When they
buy a new car they're not thinking about fuel economy. They're
thinking about other things that are more important. Are they
getting a good price for the car, is this going to be a
reliable car, does it have all the features they want, you
know, does it convey who they are, you know, these kinds of
things are more important to them at the time they buy the
car.
Research at the University of California at Davis
show—researchers at the University of California, Davis
interviewed about sixty households in depth about their entire
car owning, car buying history and not one of those households
had ever made any precise calculation or any kind of numerical
calculation about how much it was worth to them to have a more
fuel economic vehicle.
So we know that at the time, I think we know that at
the time of purchase consumers don't worry much about fuel
economy, they worry about other things. But when they own the
care and they use it day after day and they fill it up week
after week then they appreciate the value of fuel economy, I
think. And at that point, they may be dissatisfied with the
fuel economy of their super-size SUV or something like that,
and say this is terrible, why did I buy this? But at the time
of purchase, they were thinking about something else.
