Honda wants to pay you if you drive economically (and that is actually less sustainable)

But Honda still wants to pump the saved CO2 into the air

Good news: you don't need Honda to make money by being economical with the accelerator. You will notice that shifting at 2,500 rpm results in fewer trips past the pump than shifting at the limiter. For those who are not reason enough to drive economically, Honda has written a patent on a way to repay sustainable drivers.

The patent was surfaced by Carbuzz. Honda wants to reward your green driving behavior with CO2 rights. By driving economically you earn so-called carbon credits that you can sell again. For every credit, a company is allowed to emit one additional ton of CO2. They can also earn carbon credits themselves by planting trees, for example. Or companies that emit little can sell their CO2.

What Honda now has in mind is to let motorists participate in this game. The Japanese car brand wants to use a device to measure how much you consume. The more CO2 you save, the more CO2 rights you get. You can then sell it to Honda, possibly for crypto coins. This allows the car manufacturer to emit more or resell the rights.

How sustainable is that really?

You may question the real sustainability. Because if you drive home economically, you will actually emit less CO2. Under Honda's plan, a company will then pump your savings back into the air. So you are encouraged to drive economically, but the bottom line is that more CO2 is added because companies then start burning.

In Europe, the price of a CO2 right is around 80 euros. Honda could add a margin on top of that before selling the rights to the Japanese car brand. According to Shell, one CO2 right is equivalent to one ton of CO2 emissions. So if you save 1,000 kilos of CO2, you have earned approximately 80 euros.

Five years of economical driving for 80 peak

A (rather inefficient) Civic Type R emits an average of 186 grams of CO2 per kilometer. If you drive ten percent more efficiently, that is 18 grams of CO2 savings per kilometer. To get the tons of CO2 saved, you have to drive more than 55,000 kilometers. An average Dutch person has to drive extra economically for five years to earn 80 euros.

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