[IamIan]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

We'll be walking in circles forever with all that hybrid vs. old beater, and it all started with batteries and their environmental impact...

It is fairly simple.

The old beater is dirtier tail pipe pollution per mile or per gallon ... every mile you drive , and every gallon it uses ... for the entire life of the vehicle ... especially when you try to compare something like that 7,700lbs beast it to a vehicle like the Prius.

Thus it is only a matter of how many miles of the old dirtier miles is too many ... and it is just dirtier and pollutes more ... bellow that number the older is net cleaner ... over that number the newer is net cleaner.

If you use too big of a gap in the initial vehicles ... like a 7,700 lbs vehicle then all you do is reduce the number of mile before the Prius is net cleaner.

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Considering the energy spent in mining for rare earths used in electric motors, and either Nickel or Lithium to the batteries, then the logistics, both the energy balance and the pollution footprint from a battery pack is often pointed out to be even higher than the footprint of a Hummer H2 in a 20-year life cycle, even after the energy required to refine petroleum and to transport the gasoline is taken into account.

Not that we were even talking about BEV ... just HEV.

But ... Often by Who?

Because without some massive biased context such a thing if factually incorrect ... like that old report that was completely debunked long ago about the EV1 and the Hummer.

Even that old debunked EV1 vs Hummer report had to add in more than just the batteries production pollution ... but all the pollution to charge the EV from some of the dirtiest US electricity back in the 1980s ... and make many other known to be false claims about the life time operation of both vehicles.

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

And while you would need a computer to be hooked up to the Prius, I could fix anything in the old Mercedes just with manual tools.

Repair like that is a 100% valid reason to want that vehicle.

But it is not pollution ... and it still puts out more tail pipe pollution every gallon and consumes more gallons per mile.

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Sure there are other old beaters that could be compared to the Prius more closely than the MB 180 D, either gassers like the Metro or small Diesels like an early Rabbit. Even a current Golf TDI could be compared to the Prius if you would rather want to compare brand-new rides, and we might not forget that it still has engine options more efficient than the U.S.-spec 2.0L in overseas markets.

And if you shifted your claim away from the massive gap you insisted on of a 7,700 lb polluting massively more per mile beast vs a Prius .. to something far cleaner ... then your argument is less extreme and easier to defend ... if that other vehicle is also a more modern/current vehicle with better tail pipe pollution per gallon and per mile ... than it would again be able to shift the balance even further.

But all that is an entirely different claim than the 7,700 lb many times more pollution per mile vehicle vs a Prius for pollution.

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If you are just focused on being Anti-HEV ... from a pollution point of view ... the easier argument to make ... is to compare the HEV total Net pollution to some other vehicle that is not a HEV but that still has the same or less tail pipe rated amount of pollution.

But the older the vehicle you choose to use the harder and harder it is to do that ... because the older vehicles were far more polluting per gallon and / or per mile... and the older vehicles per more polluting to produce per lbs of material.