Your Online Mileage and Climate Guide

If you’re researching the purchase of a new car online, your surfing should include a stop at www.fueleconomy.gov, a joint project of the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency that offers the green skinny on every new car and truck on the market.

Check out the 2009 Dodge Ram 1500 pickup with four-wheel drive, for instance, and you’ll discover that it gets 13 mpg in the city, and just 18 mpg on the highway. In a year, it will use 22.8 barrels of oil and emit 12.2 tons of carbon dioxide—not too great on a scale of 3.5 to 16.2 tons. By contrast, the Smart Car for two (33 mpg city/41 highway) uses only 9.5 barrels of oil annually and emits 5.1 tons of CO2. You can also use it for used cars, since it goes back to 1985 models.

There’s plenty of other useful information on the site, including tips for driving more efficiently. “Observe the speed limit” is one of them. The site has recently been upgraded with considerable environmental information, including the fact that cars and trucks account for 26 percent of U.S. climate emissions (1.7 billion tons per year) and the fact that the average vehicle emits six to nine tons of CO2 every year.