Automobiles and Environment Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Automobiles are wheeled and powered vehicles of various designs that have become hugely popular around the world for personal transportation, leisure, and status. Huge numbers of automobiles have been produced in the century since their first appearance, and they have had enormous effects on urban and suburban lifestyles, distribution of goods and services, the demand for oil and the global political system, and also on the environment. As large tracts of ground are placed under road tarmac, thousands of people are killed or injured yearly, and large amounts of gases are burned in the engines and released.

Automobiles are generally powered by petroleum or similar products derived from oil, which is burned under controlled conditions in an engine chamber, which then drives cranks that turn the wheels. This basic system is made greatly more complex by the addition of numerous systems and sub-systems that range from air conditioning to satellite guidance systems to safety features. The various configurations of systems, together with stylistic and engine power characteristics, contribute to a range of products that vary significantly in both size and cost. Automobiles have tended to become safer, larger, and more powerful as time has passed.

In countries where suburban lifestyles enable people to occupy comparatively large living areas and roads to match, the negative impacts of personal use of automobiles are not always easy to detect. However, in some developing countries, where road systems may be narrow, disorganized, and poorly maintained, the regular and very heavy traffic jams are very striking and very obviously produce negative effects in terms of noise and air pollution, deterioration of the road system, and also great inefficiencies in the use of time that strongly impact social, family, and working life. These problems have been slightly eased in recent years with the provision of some limited public mass transportation schemes. Additional measures to regulate traffic have included the imposition of tolls, such as the Congestion Charge levied in central London, and the permitting of entry only for odd or even numbered registration plates on consecutive days. However, the number of deaths and injuries continues to mount.

Although most countries enforce strict limits on drinking alcohol while driving, these limits are not always policed effectively and this, together with reckless driving, poor road safety conditions, and the sheer weight of traffic, has led to a situation in which some 1.2 million people are killed annually around the world, with another 50 million injured, and these figures are set to increase by 60 percent by 2020 based on current trends and as the ability of people in developing countries to purchase their own automobiles increases.

Pollution

Pollution caused by automobiles has been reduced to some extent by the imposition of the use of catalytic converters in all automobile models in Western countries and by the removal of lead from most varieties of petroleum. However, pollution reduction depends to some extent on efficient maintenance of vehicles; this is often not feasible in developing countries, which may in any case be importing second-hand automobiles with lower pollution standards in order to reduce costs. The main pollution problem with automobiles is the release of micro-particles in the exhaust smoke, which are the burnt and partially burnt remnants of fuel used to power them. These particles can cause bronchitis and other respiratory problems, which are believed to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. While the risk to individuals of serious health effects is small, the pollution covers a very wide range of people, and so becomes significant at the level of large communities. Numerous other dangerous gases are also released, including carbon dioxide and sulphurous and nitrous oxides, which may also contribute to global warming, acid rain, smog, and other hazards.

Production

Automobile production in its early years relied upon skilled artisans employing similar techniques to those used to make horse-drawn carriages. It was Henry T. Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Corporation, who created the first mass production system involving the factory conveyor-belt system in building the Model T. This system featured specialization of activities within the factory and restriction of variants in the product portfolio to produce automobiles, which were for the first time aimed at the common consumer. On opening the factory, some 350,000 items could be produced annually with a unit price of $950; a decade later, the production total had been raised to 1 million automobiles annually with a unit cost of just $350. The result was a huge increase in the number of automobiles on the road, as people had the opportunity for the first time to control their own long-range transportation and to take advantage of the social and leisure opportunities it provided.

The attempt to provide large-scale, low-cost automobile manufacturing was replicated in a number of countries around the world, notably in Germany, where the Volkswagen organization produced large numbers of its cars for German citizens. Large-scale automobile production was generally restricted to Western countries until after the end of World War II. However, since then it has spread to most regions of the world as the manufacturing cost has been reduced in comparative terms and, to remain competitive, manufacturers have switched their production bases offshore to countries that are the intended destination for the finished automobiles and that offer lower labor and production costs.

The automobile manufacturing industry offers significant size of production sufficient for economies of scale and of scope. At the same time, a number of aspects of the manufacturing processes have matured to the extent that the use of robot technology and advanced manufacturing techniques have increasingly been replaced by human labor in a number of large companies. As regular automobile production has come to be dominated by Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries, leaving specialty and luxury niches to be filled by some European countries, so too has production of related items such as motorcycles, pickup trucks, buses, coaches, and trucks.

The rising cost of oil has stimulated the search for alternative formulations, featuring various types of vegetable oil matter and similar items. To date, these attempts have not been wholly successful as concerns persist as to the possibility of engine damage and other technical issues, together with achieving consumer acceptance. Further, from an environmental perspective, it is not yet clear that the alternatives suggested to date would offer a superior solution than already exists. More success seems to be likely in terms of electric engines, either used entirely on their own or in combination with existing petroleum engine technology. Although reliability and battery recharging issues have not been fully resolved, many promising models have already been produced. The use of other types of energy to fuel automobiles does not appear to be feasible, as a regular flow of power to a small and highly mobile unit does not fit with current understanding of how to make solar, wave, or nuclear energy fueling work.

Bibliography:

Philip Blenkinsop, The Cars That Ate Bangkok (White Lotus Press, 1996);
Michael L. Berger, The Automobile in American History and Culture: A References Guide (Greenwood Press, 2001);
Krzyzanowski, B. Kuna-Dibbert, and J. Schneider, Health Effects of Transport-Related Air Pollution (WHO Europe, 2005);
Takashi Yagi, “Industrial Robots in the Japanese Automobile Industry: Robot Equipment Trends in a Time of Steady Growth,” The Industrial Robot (v.33/5, 2006).