As ridiculously uncharacteristic as this is, my husband and I were NEW car shopping a few weeks back.

My husband is obsessed with cars, so maybe it’s not “uncharacteristic” for him (though he has only bought a few used cars in his life, never new), but for me? Very weird. Somehow though, my husband convinced me we should look for a new car. I think it was because he said the word baby. Baby will convince me of anything right now. I mean, pretty much.

But even looking at new cars I am thinking: ok, this thing needs to be SUPER reliable and long lasting and we need to keep it a long time and take amazing care of it and it needs to get great gas mileage and not be too big and and and.

Of course, with all of the newfangled stuff in and on cars nothing seems to be that great on gas mileage anymore.

Except stupid hybrids. I hate hybrids, though. I have read things about them being less environmentally friendly candle to grave, they seem to give much higher MPG predicted ratings than they actually get, and I hate driving them.

(Funny aside: My husband goes “I had a thought… I was sitting behind a hybrid with one of those ‘carpool lane ok’ stickers and thinking ‘wait, since hybrids actually have less emissions in stop-and-go traffic and city driving, shouldn’t they actually be the ones sitting in traffic while everyone else who gets better MPG and emissions on the highway get to bypass them’?” This is why I love this man.)

But there is one other option! The diesel. Diesels seem so sleek and sexy with their amazing MPG stats. Plus, in some weird turn of events, diesel is also currently cheaper in California.

I didn’t know much about diesels, though. My husband told me the oil is more crude, so I figured that must mean there is a little less energy expended in the processing before it actually gets taken into your hungry hungry car. And then that it gets better MPG. Oh, and that you could convert it into a biodeisel if you have the necessary expertise and/or money.

But that’s not much, so I decided to look up what is more environmentally friendly, unleaded gas or diesel.

Here are the points I’d be really interested in:

1. How much crude oil goes into each mile you drive (on average for the same vehicle in unleaded gas v. diesel).
2. How much pollution each of those gallons is creating, in processing before it gets into the car and during your use of it. This should include particulate and greenhouse gasses.
3. How long the actual car engine and other parts of the car tend to last on a diesel v. regular gas car (pretty sure the diesel wins out big time on this one).
4. Energy usage creating a diesel car versus gas car.
5. Environmental impact of the diesel versus gas car at the end of it’s life.

Yet it’s REALLY hard to find. I would think that those 5 simple things would give me a pretty good idea of what is actually a more environmentally friendly cradle to grave decision, but really all you see is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and speculation. It’s not that hard, people!

Here are a couple of articles I read and found interesting, but lacking:

Extreme Tech (Too focused on cost and not the environment)

Slate (I think this is too old to matter anymore)

What say you? Do you drive and what kind of vehicle?

P.S. I’m pretty sure we aren’t getting a new car anytime soon.
P.P.S. I still really think we need to learn how to do without cars. I have lived the great majority of my life without one and always prefer biking or walking somewhere to driving.