Totaling all the energy expended, from design to junkyard, a Hummer
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may be a better bargain. Toyota's Prius
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[is] a compact hybrid that's beloved by ardent environmentalists and that fetches premium prices because it gets nearly 50 miles-per-gallon in combined highway/city driving. Yet, new data have emerged that show the Prius may not be quite as eco- friendly as first assumed - if you pencil in the environmental negatives of producing it in the first place... ========== More:
"R.Hemmu" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@pseudo.borked.net...
See
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This is a bunch of clap trap. They are basing the numbers on the Prius only lasting 100,000 miles while the SUV was supposed to last almost
300,000 miles. Find me a fair analysis and I'll pay attention. From the article:
"The Prius registered an energy-cost average of $3.25 per mile driven over its expected life span of 100,000 miles. Ironically, a Hummer, the brooding giant that has become the bête noir of the green movement, did much better, with an energy-cost average of $1.95 over its expected life span of 300,000 miles. And its crash protection makes it far safer than the tiny Prius."
I don't think any of us know who is right in this case, but I think that it is actually a valid point - the Prius is new technology, while the Hummer is old, proven tech. Until hard numbers are available, I would assume that it would be a true statement that a Hummer will last longer in normal service than a Prius.
Of course, what everyone is forgetting is that the greenest car of all is the one you already have because you don't need to expend any energy at all to produce it, just to maintain it.
As long as we're penciling in aspects that the EPA failed to quantize, lets look again at my favorite failing of conventional IC engine driven vehicles, and that is the necessity for the engine to idle during the 0 to 5 mph crawl on a clogged freeway. We all know that the slower a Prius moves, the more efficient its use of energy becomes. In fact when it stops, the engine turns off, and will stay off if there are no other energy demands for lights or cabin heat. The electric drive system meters out only what energy is necessary to overcome tire rolling resistance and inch the vehicle along in the slow-moving line. No heat - - no fumes - - not even carbon dioxide - - until the battery needs to be topped off for another 2 or 3 miles of emission-free driving.
It's interesting, I was in Palo Alto, Friday, for the big Keeble & Shuchat camera bash (they paid the sales tax - - however - - only after charging quite a bit more than on-line pricing for their products). Back to the subject - - I never saw so many Prius automobiles in one place. I'd say every 5th, or so, car was a Prius. Palo Alto, of course, is a community of the rich, and they know how to save money on gas, and probably like to breathe. The less well-to-do have to drive their smogmobiles until their MPG figures become unbearably low, and even then in their ignorance, they go and buy another smogmobile. Okay, so much for the biased viewpoint of a Prius owner. YES!!!!!!
Did you read this BS before you posted it? The "study" requires the lifespan of the Prius to be no more than 100K miles (and I know a fellow who's got more than that on his already) and the life of the Hummer to be
300K miles (a GM product making 300K? How likely is that?). The study also ignores the hefty reward for recycling Prius batteries (if and when they ever fail, they're warranted to 8 years) and recycling is an excellent way to go green. Far more nickel is used in nickels than in batteries. The idea of the "energy cost" of the Prius coming in at $3.25 per mile is stupid. Assuming 100% depreciation over the supposed 100K "life" of the vehicle would put vehicle cost per mile at $.21/mile ($21K purchase cost /
100K miles life). Consumables and maintenance will be similar to other cars (or LOWER, as regenerative braking saves the real brakes and the engine doesn't run all the time so oil changes are less frequent). If we peg these at as much as $.29 per mile (ridiculously high) that's $.50/mile and there's allegedly $3.25 in energy cost per mile for the Prius over its life, where's the missing $2.75? Nobody gets the energy for free; any energy that was needed to build the Prius or its components is priced into the Prius. Edmunds' TCO for the Prius is $.51/mile. The Hummer's operating cost, for comparison purposes is $.98/mile (per Edmunds for the 2006 because, curiously, the 2007's TCO is unavailable - probably GM sued them to keep the bad news away from the marks.. er, customers.). Oh, look, the 2006 Prius operating turned out to be just $.45/mile.
This tripe gets refuted whenever it pops up but keeps coming back whenever it gets noticed by someone else with a room-temperature IQ. Our winner today is R.Hemmu.
A hummer may not last 300K, but I don't expect a Pirus to last more than=20
100K without a LOT of maintenance and parts being replaced to keep it in=20 as good a service shape as the Hummer. I drive a Pirus for a little=20 while, it was a box, no comfort, hard on the road, got bad MPG on the=20 freeway (at least I didn't think it was worth the cost for the MPG) and=20 seemed to only benefit me when I was doing a lot of City driving.
I've not driven a Hummer, but I did drive and own a Dakota 4x4 V8 Quad=20 Cab for many years, and it weighed 6,000# empty, got about 12MPG, but it=20 ran for over 200K before I traded it on a 4Runner Limited Edition V6.
The premium price and the additional maintenance that can't be done by=20 your typical home mechanic puts the vehicle at a higher impact on green=20 than a Hummer would, not to mention the higher build and retire costs to=20 the environment.
Even if we were to assume their impact was the same over the same period=20 of time - that would mean that a very small, limited power, cramped,=20 poor ride, unable to carry cargo vehicle was no better (green) than the=20 Hummer.=20
--=20
Leythos
- Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
- Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling a=20 drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist" snipped-for-privacy@rrohio.com (remove 999 for proper email address)
A hummer may not last 300K, but I don't expect a Pirus to last more than
100K without a LOT of maintenance and parts being replaced to keep it in as good a service shape as the Hummer. I drive a Pirus for a little while, it was a box, no comfort, hard on the road, got bad MPG on the freeway (at least I didn't think it was worth the cost for the MPG) and seemed to only benefit me when I was doing a lot of City driving.
I've not driven a Hummer, but I did drive and own a Dakota 4x4 V8 Quad Cab for many years, and it weighed 6,000# empty, got about 12MPG, but it ran for over 200K before I traded it on a 4Runner Limited Edition V6.
The premium price and the additional maintenance that can't be done by your typical home mechanic puts the vehicle at a higher impact on green than a Hummer would, not to mention the higher build and retire costs to the environment.
Even if we were to assume their impact was the same over the same period of time - that would mean that a very small, limited power, cramped, poor ride, unable to carry cargo vehicle was no better (green) than the Hummer.
Please fix your Usenet client, it's not properly quoting text and it's not properly posting your reply at the bottom of the thread, allowing you to snip/clip the unnecessary parts.
You've stated the Obvious, and that also means that it will be subject to more wear, more maintenance, more service needs - if I drive 100K miles between Michigan and Georgia in 1 year there will be less wear on the vehicle than if I drive 100K miles in a city environment over 3 years.
City driving is hard on cars in many ways. So, I would never expect a Pirus to last as long as a SUV and it's certainly not going to get that
Whilst you're right about that point, the truth is far, far worse.
In order to obtain acceptably 'brisk' acceleration from a car, it's quite normal to have an engine of say 100 bhp even in a small car, yet to propel it at say 80 mph on a flat road would only require ~ 20 bhp (to overcome air ressitance and rolling ressitance from the tyres). And yes. I've worked those figures through.
That 100 bhp engine is horribly inefficient at 20 bhp of output. It's still creating vast amounts of waste energy that the cooling system has to remove for example.
In the case of a 200, 300 or 400 bhp engine the waste is worse still.
The great thing about electric motors is that they work at high efficiency over a huge range of power outputs, so you can happily have even a 200 kW ( ~ = bhp) electric motor for blistering acceleration and it *will* be efficient in the cruise too. No waste heat to talk of you see.
I disagree; the Hummer is an evolution of a design that was pretty well worked out around the time of WW2. The Prius uses technology that wasn't used on a wide scale in an automotive application until the introduction of the Prius, and wasn't even introduced by a major manufacturer prior to GM's EV-1.
For my money, were I buying a new car with environmental consciousness in mind (and, as I stated before, I couldn't justify buying a new car on environmental grounds unless my current ride was well and truly completely worn out) I would be looking at something like a Volkswagen TDI. VW has been building Diesels far longer than hybrids have been around, and VW has a known track record for longevity.
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