30 MPG. WTF?!

This past weekend we traveled to southern California and wound up renting a car (we’re eagerly awaiting the long-promised delivery of our own EV.) I wanted to rent an EV, because they’re better in nearly every aspect, but even leaving at 7 AM barely left us enough time to get there in time for an event, and I didn’t want to mess with charging in the middle of the Central Valley. I set aside my idealism and opted for a gas-powered vehicle.

During our drive south on I5, I looked at the dash and saw that our average gas mileage was less than 30 - in an unremarkable vehicle! I was shocked that cars which perform this poorly are still produced and sold in this day and age. We can, will, and must do much better!

Predictably, my thoughts turned to architecture. There isn’t a widely used, accurate metric like “miles per gallon” to understand the performance of our buildings, but I know that most homes, even newly designed and constructed, fall well short of what’s now readily achievable. In addition to vastly better comfort, air quality, and noise reduction, we commonly see 80%+ energy use reductions in our high-performance projects compared to standard construction, before solar. These projects are essentially the “EVs of architecture.” To quote my last paragraph, “We can, will, and must do much better!”