Are Hybrids And Electrics Going To Save The Planet Or Just Another Mindless Trend?

Just another post by Agent009...no surprises there. I wonder if he speaks as poorly as he writes?

First of all guys, thank you for the correction. However you entirely underestimate the process. Typos do get through,which ultimately is my fault.

However after the post is activated it takes about 20 minutes for the article to propagate, therefore you have about 20 minutes before the correction appears after it is caught. Of course it should never make there in the first place, but we do many more things other than make posts so we are always busy.

I am not trying to make any excuses for the headlines, but I do fix them when I see them. Many times we keep changing the title and therein is where the problem lies.

My apologies.

insert mindless rhetoric about range extended electric cars, battery costs in 5 years, tax payer sponsored rebates, and technology getting cheaper below this line

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if I were to recommend a truly "green" car to someone, I'd recommend them to look at older honda crx's and civics. They got awesome fuel economy and another vehicle doesn't have to be produced and all the extra emissions related to its manufacture and transport don't have to reoccur.

I really don't know but I hear about the new type of battery is expensive and dangerous to dispousal so let see what happens with new electric models and the evolution of them.

You have gathered the point fully.

When the car is delivered and owned it is indeed clean.

However the handling of the materials and disposal both preproduction and post production are the key issues. I would like to think that it has changed since I last read this, but the last time I saw an analysis of a Prius carbon footprint from dust to dust, it was actually more than a Hummer H3.

The total carbon footprint was extremely high because all of the countries creating the power packs had lax pollution laws. This offset everything saved during the life of the vehicle.

I haven't posted in months, but I had to now.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????

Are you really citing the completely debunked CNW fake-out, years later? Plano, this argument has been rehashed so many frakkin times on this and every other site. I am shocked that you continue that you continue to wear your blinders and quote these lies to back up your ridiculous premises. I shouldn't be shocked, coming from you. But on this one, I somehow expected more from you. What was I thinking?

thetruth1- Educate me to your resources. Right now I haven't seen anything to the contrary. You have to remember a lot of the elements needed are shipped in from Africa and refined elsewhere and then shipped to the battery maker and then on to the automaker. The carbon footprint adds up with all of the transportation alone. Then take into effect that most of the pollution involved in mining the elements in the first place.

Invisible... if they assume the lifespan of the hummer is 3x that of the prius, doesn't that mean that the Hummer has 3x more miles to travel putting out emissions? Your argument doesn't make sense... if they were assumed to be the same number of miles then the Hummer would have a greater advantage...

Answer my question invisible, if the hummer is scrapped after 3x more miles doesn't that mean it gives it wayy more time to accumulate carbon emissions? That works against the prius, not the hummer.

let me rephrase my question. How does the 3x mileage on the hummer help the prius? and here it is rephrased again in simple yes or no format if you can't rub enough brain cells together to figure that one out. If the hummer travels 3x farther than the prius, doesn't that bias the results of the survey in favour of the prius?

against the prius?*

Invisible, I'm not stating that what they did was right or wrong in that assumption, I'm stating that your argument isn't in favour of the prius. If they did the right thing, the numbers would be even more in favour of the hummer.

Actually if you take the CNW report out of the mix you still find the carbon footprint is still skewed for any electric right now. The minerals, refinement, production and the final assembly are in dieffernt parts of the world.

To give you an idea how fragile it can; be remember when the LS460h first came out? Paul McCartney's person LS was flown to him in the UK. That one transport to the UK alone wiped out everything green that the car could have ever saved.

Furthermore, the prius battery life time is about 9 years. Most 2001 prius's have less than 100,000 miles on them. So the validity of the argument remains. And yes the battery is replaceable, but who on earth is going to replace a $2300 battery in a $5000 car?

http://www.autotrader.com
http://www.autotrader.ca
http://motors.shop.ebay.com

I averaged all of the 2001 prius mileages I could find (converted the canadian ones to miles) and came out with 97792.49 miles. Which is still 10k less than the 109,000 miles that the survey indicates.

"Why are people trying to sell those Prius if they are now ready for the crusher?"

Simple :) they don't want to be stuck with a $2300 battery replacement, if they can sell them to some other poor schmo it's no longer in their hands to crush it.

And why would I average them? It's not like they are total write offs yet.

Invisible, I was referring to your post about averaging h2 mileage. I'm not flip flopping.

Points I was trying to make

-Driving a hummer 300k miles and comparing that to a prius driving 100k is biased in favour of the prius since the hummer has worse emissions and more miles to emit over.
-Their assumption are correct as the 9 year battery life on these cars has them at roughly 100,000 miles. At which point they are pretty much disposable do to battery costs when compared with vehicle resale value.

biased against the prius*

I should really start proof reading...

OK Joe, here's the problem with your logic. CNW assumes that almost all of eco damage occurs during the building of a car. Therefore if a car only lasts 100K miles, tat's 3 cars that have to be built for every one Hummer. That's where the fundamental flaw is.

CNW nowhere ever proved this premise to be true. Do your own research, and you will find that the consensus is that most of eco impacts from a vehicle are during the driving of it. Therefore, the Hummer (even if they are all destroyed at the same mileage, say 200,000) will be exponentially worse for the environment. If the Hummer truly lasted 3x as long as the Prius, this differential would be even greater.

Other premises about the building of the Prius are false. CNW believed that it took much more resources to build the Prius because it was a stand alone model, while the Hummer was based on existing architecture. Again, faulty. Because this is an old study, it did not take into account how much the Prius technology (and soon to be platform) has been utilized by so many other Toyotas and Lexuses.

Another faulty premise was that a hybrid engine and battery require so many more toxic materials to build. And yet nowhere did the study identify, by quantity and toxicity, how much more damaging this really is, compared to a hulking beast of a Hummer, with its huge engine, massive amounts of iron, glass, rubber, plastic, and other minerals needed to produce it. The nickel alone was singled out due to Priuses' NiMH batteries, yet all vehicles use nickel in numerous other applications other than just hybrid batteries.

So Joe and 009, you have been schooled. But I and many others schooled you on this years ago. So give up your FUD already. You're just making yourself look like foolish Toyota haters.

BTW, thanks for helpin out Invisible! :) I was away from my computer all day.

thetruth01, ok what you say makes sense. The way ignorant understands it doesn't make sense. Although looking it up, I thought it was on a per mile basis that they made their claims. And considering the prius is pretty much disposable after 9 years (what with nothing left of its resale and the expensive battery to replace), their 109,000 mile claim is holding strong.

I know 009, how could you? You are so eeeeeevil.

I heard Lord Vader is looking for a new apprentice.....lmao

Shh!!! I carry a pitchfork in my back pocket.

Yes, I think that they will based on the following:

1. The Gulf oil spill will convince most people in the US that offshore drilling isn't worth the environmental risk.
2. This will create panic about supplies and petrol is going to cost more than $4 per gallon by next spring.
3. The option of buying more foreign oil will be taken off the table by our concern about funding terrorist countries.
4. Electric power plants (regardless of fuel source) are much more effcient in creating power as compared to ICE's.

The first part of the oil/energy hurricane blew over us in 2008. We're in the eye now and we think that everything is going back to normal. However, the other wall is just about to hit and when its done, the landscape will look completely different.