Hybrids- A DANGER to the environment!
 

And no, not from emmisions. From MAKING them.

Read this article, and you might want to trade in your Prius for a Hummer. You'll be doing Earth a favor, as well as your wallet.

Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage


Prius Outdoes Hummer in Enviromental Damage
By Chris Demorro
Staff Writer, The Recorder, Central Connecticut State University
March 7, 2007

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 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.

The Prius ...lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer....expected lifetime of 300,000 miles.

lol, says who?

Please see below. The report cited in the original post (from CNW Marketing? Really? A Marketing company?) is junk science and is pretty much worthless.


'Dust to dust' is dust: Prius uses less energy than Hummer | Crave - CNET

CNW Marketing Research - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CNWMR has added data for 2007-2008 model year cars in the June 2008 release of their "From Dust to Dust" study and the Prius cost per lifetime mile fell 23.5% to $2.191 per lifetime mile while the H3 cost rose 12.5% to $2.327 per lifetime mile.[2]


...and i'm guessing thats still assuming only 1/3 the lifespan for the hybrid

I was going to note, this has been debunked many many times, just google "prius hummer" and you'll find lots. I guess it's still doing its damage though.

Google it. It's on multiple websites of various topics.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

This article is seen on as many webpages that fit on 12 PAGES OF GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS.

The production of hybrid batteries is a very real danger to the enviromnent:

Junk science? I think not. I could see that coming from someone thinking that Global Warming is a hoax, though.

[quote=Hermie;126401][quote=jkp1187;126398]Please see below. The report cited in the original post (from CNW Marketing? Really? A Marketing company?) is junk science and is pretty much worthless.Google what?

.. I misread. By "Report cited in the original post," I thought you meant the article itself.

The cost-to-own may not be acurate, but the environmental damage done from battery production is there nonetheless.

And this proves what, exactly?




Non-sequitur.

That it isn't just a marketing ploy and should be of genuine concern, if you actually do care about the environment as opposed to just getting the best MPGs out of your car.

This article is seen on many sites because it is inflammatory and serves an agenda, not because it is correct. If you can find a rigorous study done by a reputable institution supporting these claims, then it might be worth having a conversation about. Otherwise, this report is BS.

Being lots of places doesn't prove either of those things. Just like the newspapers that recently published fake stories from The Onion doesn't make the fake news any more real: The Onion Keeps On Embarrassing Newspapers

Did the revised EPA testing only lower the mileage of the Prius? I must have missed where all other cars mileage estimates stayed the same.[/sarcasm]

So I guess an EPA combined 50mpg is within spitting distance of EPA combined 30mpg.

The other problems with this article have already been pointed out. These just bothered me a lot more.

The environment I love, but the truth I love even more. And this report you're citing to is bogus.

I'll state once again:

There were studies done through the 80's and into the 90's that showed explicitly that areas which had more than one Catholic Church undoubtedly had a higher violent crime rate.













That DOESN'T make Catholics criminals, it just means that someone made the wrong assumptions about studies that were released.

What should have been gotten from those studies (and eventually was gotten, after the media and public forums had their way molesting the study by proliferating the same crap that the OP has here) was that areas with more than one Catholic Church are also more highly/densely populated. Now, you can make an inference that the higher population concentration is the cause of the elevated crime rate, and not the Catholic religion.

Figure out what studies were incorrectly referred to, and you'll almost certainly debunk anything of the sort.

The comparison of environmental damage done isn't accurate either. Specifically, the excess steel/chrome used in the H3, which conveniently isn't looked at. The most common type of steel used contains ~6-22% Nickel, which means that only 500lbs of extra steel with the minimum in terms of Nickel contains enough Nickel to equal all the Nickel in the Prius' pack. Considering the H3 weighs nearly a ton more than a Prius, it probably has more than 500lbs of extra steel, and uses more Nickel than the Prius does, not counting the extra due to more chrome (for instance on the wheels).
The CNW Marketing "study" is just marketing. It isn't even up to the rigor of junk science... :thumbup:

I was just looking that up, and you beat me to it.

Also, nickel plating (with electricity, probably from coal/petro fired plants... LOL) is used before chrome plating, to smooth the surfaces and fill imperfections.

In terms of sheer BS, that article contained and generated so much that if we had it all going into a biomethane system, our oil problems could be cut in half :-)

Just to add one more cowpie to what others have pointed out, there's this howler:

So what's so incredible about those, other than the fact that a few not-very-skilled drivers don't beat them regularly?

"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."

8MPH/S means that all cars have a 0-60 time of less than 8 seconds... I don't think this is true at all... If the EPA is testing this way, EVERYONE should be able to BEAT EPA estimates easily. Hell, I could always beat the old numbers, and I never thought of myself as an "efficient" driver, until recently.

Sorry Hermie, I guess you missed the debunking.
 

TOTALLY DEBUNKED MONTHS AGO!!!!!!!!

Public relations company did the "study".

It is true that building ANY new car consumes a lot of energy. But this report is so full of manure that I can smell it from here.

The point about the nickel mine is true, I'ts a wasteland. BUT: I'll make the same point Christ does: Lots of nickel used in the chrome on a Hummer and the nickel in the batteries can be recycled. The nickel under the chrome? not so much.

Perhaps in the interest of safety and environmental preotection, the OP would consider a ban on the deadly dihydrogen monoxide. I mean, it kills hundreds of people a year...

Seriously. I am one of the few here that doesn't believe in in HUMAN caused global warming. I believe the planet warms and cools in direct relationship to its distance from the sun, light intensity from the sun and other factors all relating to the sun. YES, we have caused the planet harm, and for the last 30 years great strides have been taken by government, corporations, and individuals to improve the conditions around them. AND WE STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO!

And while I also think I'm preceived as an apostate (for not believing in AGW), I am doing my part to help clean things up. I own SUVs, and go on marked 4x4 trails. I do group cleanups and pick stuff up on my own. I am always amazed to find as many granola wrappers as beer cans... (I'll start a thread about National Public Lands Day) I can get pretty decent mileage from my Jeep, as long as I stay on the highways. My mileage suffers when I'm on the trails. But then, its the mileage, and quest for better that brought me here.

But the "study" lured me in too at first, until I did some looking around and saw it for what it was. Garbage. (Just like everything out of the UN's enviro arm). Yes, the study was debunked on MANY different levels...

Nice try.

Exactly!

I'd like Toyota to get a bit of attitude and have a series of ads that simply and visually illustrate and dispel this idiotic hybrid-bashing....dismissive statements from GM....where are they now? Simple pictures and graphs on Sudbury. The EMF nonsense.

End the ad with: Two million hybrids sold - only 400 battery packs bad

I haven't read this thread.


Prius is a step in the right direction. Hummer is a step back. They don't even make the H2 anymore, so what are we worried about?

Global warming doesn't even enter into it. (And that, too, is a complicated subject, and I'm not going to pretend I'm educated enough or qualified to comment on that.) But this CNW Marketing document is simply and obviously bad science.

This CNW report looked intriguing to me at first, too, (I'll always take a look at someone making a bold/contrarian claim, hey if they're right, I could learn a lot from them.) But when I read the thing, and read some of the responses, CNW didn't really have a leg to stand on. It's junk.

As a sometime scientist myself, I think calling it science is an insult to every scientist who ever lived. It's just a deliberate lie from beginning to end, intended to mislead the gullible.

The sad part is that he doesn't learn. This is certainly not the first drivel he's posted.

This is part of a plan to make sure the gullible won't buy them and it has worked perfectly! For example, in the 2008 election, the Prius owners had a lot of extra money to spend on their candidate, President Obama and Democratic candidates. In contrast, those who believed these stories about the Prius, instead spent their money on $4/gal. gasoline to feed their Hummers and not their candidates. Obama won and Democratic majorities in Congress increased.

So please, continue to share these stories. There will be another set of elections next year. When gas again reaches $4-$5/gal., again, we'll be happy to see the Prius backed candidates increase Democratic majorities in Congress.

The guy is a troll so have some fun.

Bob Wilson

:thumbup:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/PO...eckling.gi.jpg


YOU LIE!!!

As I mentioned above, sometimes I feel the apostate around here. I don't like the Prius much (I like the idea of it though), but mainly because of the somewhat haughty/better than you attitude these people give off. EVEN IF THEY AREN'T hypermiling... But because they "did" something...

I'm not gullible enough to not buy a car because of "studies". I don't want a Prius, or other hybrid, simply because I don't want the added expense of another car payment. Especially since I only have one left and hope to never have another. I know I'm not getting EVERY last mile from the fuel I use, but, I'm not trying to burn through all the fuel I can either. (Besides, I bicycled to the polling booth last year)

I'll even admit to being a conservative. I didn't vote for this Hope or Change (and don't care for anything I've seen yet), I didn't vote for the main opposition either... Sorry. I guess my presence here is more an anachronism than I imagined... Oh, I shop at Whole Foods and other stores that support local/organic farmers, as well, and buy from a couple local stands as well (just wish my thumb was more green so I could grow more than crabgrass and weeds in my yard!!!). I carpool as much as possible (public transportation isn't an option for me), and cycling to work isn't either (distance, terrain, lack of adequate lanes). My weekly trips to the city are optimized for freeways instead of city streets, and to limit backtracking. And recycling is FINALLY making it to my location. Might even cut my weekly city trips down. Hmmm, more time for shootin' critters, drinkin' beer and 4 wheelin', yeehaw...;)

I guess I'm just trying to say that sweeping generalizations about folks can really get in the way of decent and reasonable discourse...

(yes, there is some sarcasm in the above post before someone needs their smelling salts...)

*Faints* Oh me Oh my!!!

LOL. Dude - I doubt there are too many people here who would fault you for doing what you can with what you have!

The truth is, (I just discussed this in short with Wonderboy yesterday) - You're doing more good by doing what you can with what you already have than buying a new car and throwing away what you're already working with.

Sure, you're not the highest-mileage-getting six gun on the scene, but neither am I. The difference between us and many others in the world is that we're doing good, while they're talking about it.

Another quote I make all the time: Quit complaining and start changing.

At least you're trying to maximize what you have. I've gotten flack on other forums because I'm concerned about getting better mileage out of my 3500# minivan... "I should get a more fuel efficient car if I'm worried about economy that much." I hear that alot. I couldn't agree with it more, honestly, but it's not fiscally or economically responsible for me to throw away my perfectly working van and get a more fuel efficient car.

Instead, I'll just keep pushing myself to get better mileage in the van, and keep pushing the point with other people as well. Maybe some day, I'll mod the van and get better fuel economy than a Prius. Maybe. Someday. ;)

Until that day, I guess I'll do what I can, with what I have.

Me too, but that's because I like food that tastes good, not because of my politics. Same with the garden & compost pile.

But this association of politics with cars & fuel economy has always seemed completely bass-akwards to me. I mean your liberal is supposed to be the one who likes spending money, no? While your conservative (of the fiscal variety, at least) is stereotypically supposed to pinch every penny until Abe starts crying. But when it comes to cars, there's your left-winger in his fuel-sipping Prius, while the right-winger thinks he has to blow gallons of that $4 gas out the tailpipe.

I'll admit to the firebomb in post #29.

Perhaps my humor is a bit warped but I quoted BS (Dust to Dust) and replied with a similar infamous reply.

Civil discussions have never been plentiful enough, but my post is a response to debates getting away from "may the best idea win" to spitting matches and other shamless tatics.

I got in alot of trouble (threatened expulsion) at school for playing this prank... I posted signs about how each water supply in the school contained dihydrogen monoxide, and how a very small quantity could kill a full sized adult if inhaled... I mean, how bad could it have been to warn my fellow students and faculty?

Ok, in all honesty, it did cause quite a problem at school... but I think threatening expulsion was going a little far.

Right on. :thumbup:

Since this thread is clearly no longer going anywhere useful, I'll close it. It's been pointed out enough how flawed the study and the ideas represented by it are, so we really don't need to fight about politics, which isn't what this site is about. There are plenty of internets out there for those of you would would rather cast stones at each other than improve your fuel economy.