James Bean, dean of the Lundquist College of Business, kicked off the Sustainable Business Group winter speakers series on Tuesday with a presentation on the life cycle of American vehicles to show what influences the purchase of a car and how more sustainable methods can be employed in car manufacturing and policies.
Bean calculated the life cycle of vehicles in an individual household. He used three standard sedans as the base models for his research: the Ford Taurus, the Chevrolet Lumina and the Dodge Intrepid.
By analyzing these vehicles in terms of their longevity or vehicular improvements with ozone gases and greenhouse gases, Bean was able to calculate all options for when an individual would need to replace his or her vehicle.
However, to grasp the national trend toward vehicle replacement, Bean employed several different methods to gather and calculate data under different scenarios.
“The typical American driver is that there is no typical American driver,” Bean said. “There are many different types of people who are interested in environmental aspects of a car or other specific purposes.”
To find a national guideline for vehicle replacement, Bean used two mathematical models — Pareto Optimals and genetic algorithms to find an optimal time to change cars under many different scenarios, such as an increased availability of hybrid cars and a price increase in fuel. The data were gathered in part through the U.S. Census Bureau, which identifies different household settings, the members’ vehicle usage and a record of car replacement.
The Census Bureau found that households switched cars every 8.6 years, while Bean’s data projected 10.2 years.
“We were surprised the fuel taxes had no effect on behavior, but if you make sustainable business good business, people will shift to hybrids,” Bean said.
The presentation is part of Bean and the University’s focus to make sustainable business the University’s
business. Bean was chosen to be dean in part because of his prior efforts working at the University of Michigan, General Motors Corp. and the Environmental Protection Agency to optimize passenger vehicles.
“I want the University of Oregon to be the best business school of our size nationwide,” Bean said. “What I don’t want the University of Oregon to be is the best business school in the northwest. We’re too big for that.”
Bean said the University could attain this nationwide status through niche business programs that are relevant to the Oregon economy, such as Sports Marketing and Sustainability.
But sustainability is another area of niche interest that Bean said is natural to the University. On his first visit to campus, Bean said he noted the Lillis Business Complex showed the University’s commitment to sustainability.
“One of the things you notice with the Lillis building is its conservation through solar panels, and, in a strategic sense, it would not be smart to ignore sustainability if this building shows it as one of our values,” Bean said.
The Sustainable Business Group is another sign that the University believes there is good business sense in sustainability efforts.
The group’s vice president, Taylor Gordon, said it was challenging to find an avenue to promote sustainability with a focus on its business sense and to untangle it from perceptions that sustainability equals environmentalism.
“We want to promote this as the wave of the future,” Gordon said. “We find a lot has to do with marketing because people see sustainability as environmentalism. (But) these principles are affecting a business’ bottom line.”
Inviting Bean to discuss the automotive industry was one way SBG Director of Programs Loren Dreyer said the group is tackling subject areas that affect students, business majors or not.

[email protected]