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Agreed Metro. I get a lot of comments from co-workers clinging to their gas guzzlers about how hybrids are crap because you have to pay $15k to replace the batteries after a few years. I have never heard of anyone having to do this. The batteries do not FAIL. They simply lose some efficiency. Then what are you left with? A small efficient vehicle that maybe "only" gets 40 mpg instead of 45. All the Insights and Priuses from the 90s are still on the road, charging right along. Pun intended.
That being said, I think it is unwise to ignore the ecological and energy consumption impacts from mining the raw materials and producing the battery packs and other associated high tech devices necessary to implement a hybrid powertrain into a small car. The energy impact of a vehicle must always be considered over its entire lifetime and there is no doubt in my mind that the production of hybrid batteries has a heavy toll. Some of the newer, more mild hybrids might diminish this impact (such as the new insight). But in my mind if you are ever comparing two vehicles that get similar mileage figures, and one requires a few hundred pounds of heavy metals mined from the earth and precision manufactured with industrial chemicals, this must factor into one's considerations.
As for CNW, their methods are secret and agenda unclear. While their negative bias towards hybrids is well known, it is still interesting for helping to consider the total life cycle energy consumption of relative vehicles. One might note that the VW Jetta diesel in their study places best in its class.
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