Posted: 3/14/2007 6:39:02 PM EDT
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Sorry if this is a dupe. But this is "ammo" we all need to combat enviro warming-earth nuts... clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188 Text: March 7, 2007 Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage By Chris Demorro Staff Writer The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer. Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius. The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right? You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs. However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse. Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles. The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare. “The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper. All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce? Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet. When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis. Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid. The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it. So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot. One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses. |
Ummm, I'm going to have to ask where they get the notion that the average hybrid will only be on the road for 100,000 miles? It's interesting but come on, that doesn't even make sense. No, I don't own a hybrid. |
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The same newspaper wrote "Rape Only Hurts if You Let It." Pretty journalistically inclinated, those ones. www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2007/02/08/university_op_ed_piece_on_rape_draws_outrage_protest/ Prius batteries don't go dead all at once when you hit 100,000 miles. They have cells. Each cell is replaceable. I think the smug factor from the "Them Priuses is Fag Cars!" camp is much higher than the dopey Prius-driving environmentalists. Mac vs. PC 2.0: Longer, Whiner, More Annoying. In the meantime I'll be enjoying my 48 MPG. |
Do you drive a VW diesel? nah. You'd get better milage than that. 
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Small diesels in small cars makes a world more sense than these batteries, chargers, etc. I owned an 01 VW jetta with a diesel, for a few years. Great little car, except for being a volkswagen, where the interior seems to fall apart. But that little diesel was a dream to drive. And a diesel won't crap out on you after 100,000 something miles. I'm sure i don't have to convince anyone of that. |
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300,000 mile life for the hummer? More like 60k before little nagging problems pop up and 130K before it rattles like a mossberg and gets traded in on the next terndy SUV. People buy Prius' to save the enviroment? Um, no. they buy them to get a small fuel efficeient car with toyota reliability. The Prius could be built with the corpses of fuzzy bunnies and actual rain forrests and people would still buy them to get 45MPG. |
I'm not buying that. Too many still on the road past 100K to think that's the average. I'm sorry but that little numbers game they played reeks. Somebody is going to have to prove to me that the average hummer is on the road for 300,000 miles while the average prius is on the road for only 100,000. I'm all fine and dandy with pointing out the nasty stuff that has to be produced to make batteries but the comparison at the end is crap. |
Now, one of those, I would buy!!! 
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I'd take this article with a grain of salt. I grew up next to Sudbury and yes, NASA did train there because it looked like the moon. However, that damage was caused in the late 1800s early 1900s because they smelted the nickle in open fire pits on the ground. Sudbury is getting greener every year and it is unrecognizable today as the moon landscape of the seventies. The Superstack actually saves the environment from damage. |
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Google Earth "sudbury ontario". Look near the intersection of hwy 80 and hwy 71. Check out those large sort of craters and work SW from there. That changes the whole perspective on NiCad and NiMH batteries. I drove a 2007 hybrid Camry today. It was very quiet. The ride was excellent over rough places that would be unpleasant in my 96 or my wife's 01 Camries. Interestingly, when hand bouncing the car the Gen. 6 seems to have stiffer springing and more dampening than our earlier cars. It certainly does ride better and is quieter. My 96 is a Gen. 3 Camry and my wife's is a Gen. 4. The 07 is Gen. 6. Toyota has made the already excellent Camry even better. We didn't drive the gasoline only Camry, but were told the hybrid is quieter. Toyota really went out of it's way to make Gen. 6 very quiet. My understanding is that the hybrid Camry gets about 28 to 30 mpg in town compared to 20 to 22 for the gas only. On the highway they would be closer. The hybrid costs about $4,000 more. I'm retired, my wifes about to retire so we don't drive that much. Lets see, 12,000 mi/yr / 20 mpg = 600 gal/yr. 12,000 mi/yr / 30 mpg = 400 gal/yr. 600 gal/yr - 400 gal/yr = 200 gal/yr. 200 gal/yr x 2.30 $/gal = 460 $/yr So, I gotta ask myself..."do you think you're gonna live that long?" "well, do ya?" The answer is probably not but maybe so. Too bad them's the economics because the Toyota hybrid drive system is an interesting technical toy as is the modified Atkinson Cycle of the piston engine. (It's the mod Atkinson Cycle coupled with unusually high effective compression ratio that gets the great gas mileage not the batteries, but the batts do provide more power than the MAC piston engine can supply.) Still I'd like to have a hybrid Camry if I could use somebody else's money to buy it and maintain it. Anybody want to buy me one? Anyone? Anyone? (think of the teacher in Farris Buehler) |
And since oil and nat gas are now 'the thing' for generating electricity (with the enviros calling coal evil, and everybody being 'stupid-scared' of nuke power)... Even if you went 100% electric, you'd still need that oil... There's just no viable alternative (and NO, ethanol won't do it - even if we grew nothing but corn on every airable acre in the country... Ethanol is a pipe-dream that's being pushed to justify more subsidies for the farm states).... |
Factor in the certainty that that battery isn't going to last 16 years (and likely not 10 years) and your payback goes to - never going to happen. |
Found the actual article, titled "Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It". It's here. I'll skip reposting it here due to being off-topic and extremely offensive (to people with no sense of humor ) |
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My good friend works for Toyota. according to him, Toyota developed the hybrid system to improve emission's. good mileage was an added benefit. Improved technology in other areas can make a "normal" piston engine nearly as clean. Diesels are great, the US is way overdue to get rid of high sulfur diesel fuel. its coming soon, (may already be here is some areas) I drive a 87 Toyota 4Runner and a 79 f150. I burn 300 to 400 gallons per day of 100LL av-gas at work. I'm not real worried about my auto emissions in the grand scheme of things |
Technically true, but irrelevant, since there is no alternative. Even if the US blows a bunch of money to not use a drop of oil imported from anywhere, China, India, Europe, etc will still buy all of the oil that the Middle East can pump out of the ground. Nothing will change until someone comes up with something that is genuinely better then oil. |
Umm..... If ethanol were to take off (which it won't), then there would be no need for subsidies because the price of corn would be sky-high and anybody could turn a profit with fourty acres and a mule. And when the price of corn goes up, so will the price of ethanol- as well as myriad other products that corn is used for in some way or another that you can't even conceive of...... So boycott ethanol!! Myself, I'm into biodiesel. Diesel angines are very effecient and reliable, and you can put dead pigs in a barrel and make biodiesel (it's a bit more complicated, granted- but you get the idea). |
Meh, biodiesel is OK when there's only a dozen or so |
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Two words: Biomass Conversion Didn't you see the dead pigs in a barrel reference, and also old sneakers, and also also partially used spam  .Seriously though, used fry oil is for kids. There are bigger and better ways, which will eventually be mismanaged and fuckled until they cost even more than what they do now. |
I'm sure there are other ways. And I'm also sure that you'll never make enough of it cheaply enough to compete with plain old diesel on a scale larger then a few dozen guys per city using it to go to work and do errands. |
The regular Camry only gets 20-22mpg??? That's pathetic. The damn thing is just a mid-sized car! Our 2003 Ford Explorer with a big V-6 gets 22mpg hwy! |